A family's heritage
Henry Strickland Jr. was born in 1853. He was a young lawyer and businessman of Duluth. He married Alice Harrell who was the daughter of a pioneer settler in Forsyth County. They raised seven children. Three girls and four boys (all of whom were college graduates).
The present home was completed in 1898 by Henry Strickland Jr. and his wife Alice Harrell Strickland. Henry was a young lawyer and business man and Alice a traditional plantation lady.
In 1915, at age 55, Henry died, leaving Alice alone with two children still at home and World War I looming. Having no formal profession or college education, she could have simply withdrawn into a widow’s life, but Alice wasn’t the sort to simply stand aside.
Seeing the need for a health clinic and hospital in Duluth, she offered the entire second floor of her home for use as a prenatal clinic and children’s surgical facility. Then she took her concern for her community beyond medical needs. An ardent conservationist, she proved to be a woman of fierce determination and courage. With a shotgun in her hands, she blocked the way of power company workers, keeping them from placing lines across her land. Later, she donated a portion of her land to the community and helped organize the first conservation forest in Georgia.
She was president of the Civic Club, ran for and was elected Mayor of Duluth. She was the first women to do so in the State of Georgia. Quite an achievement for a widow at age 62, a year after women gained the right to vote.
Honored by the American Forestry Guild in 1923, when a Birch tree was planted, on Mothers Day, in her name.
Alice Strickland has been written about and honored many times since her death in 1947, as a global thinking person, with determination and imagination far beyond her years.
In 1999 her century old home was put on the Georgia Register of Historical Places and a marker dedicated in her honor. In 2002 she received the Georgia Women of Achievement Award.
