"Yeah, I would venture to say that is pretty much true because the whole area in there, you had everything from Candler Street to Brenau (University), but on the other side you had Ridgewood Avenue, North Avenue, and all kids lived in there, too — over to Dixon Drive," said Al Hudgins, who grew up on Candler Street and is a great-great-grandson of Candler.

"It was full of kids and families, and everybody knew everybody. Believe me."

Connie Thompson, also a descendant of Candler who grew up on North Avenue, agreed that Candler’s contributions, along with the concentration of longtime Gainesville families who grew up in the neighborhood, make Candler Street important even today.

"Gov. Candler, Mother said he was very generous with what he had and he just gave a lot away," said Thompson, who has queried her mother, Elizabeth Ashford Romberg, 97, a lot about growing up in the neighborhood. "He was looking at the big picture to improve the town, improve the city. And he was also looking to the west. He had a lot of ideas and he gave a lot of what he had away."

Candler settled in Gainesville in 1870, coming to town with the nickname "the one-eyed plowboy of Pigeon Roost," following a bloody Civil War battle in Jonesboro that caused him to lose an eye.

He didn’t waste any time making changes around town.

First, he brought a rail line to Gainesville, then built another one from Gainesville to Dahlonega. He started a brickyard off of Green Street Circle — which in the late 1800s was just outside the Gainesville city limits — and also had a lumber business.

He also started the downtown Gainesville trolley line, which ran until the early 1900s, donated land and laid the cornerstone of what is now Brenau University and built the Arlington Hotel, later sold and renamed the Dixie Hunt Hotel. That building, at the corner of Main and Spring streets, was damaged by the 1936 tornado and was completely remodeled.

Candler served as Gainesville’s mayor in 1872, was elected to the state legislature from 1872-1877 and introduced the bill calling for a constitutional convention. He won a seat in the U.S. Congress in 1882 (using his one eye as a campaign slogan: "An eye single to duty"), was appointed to secretary of state in 1894 and then elected governor of Georgia, serving from 1898 to 1902. He also started the state archives.

But it was the land behind his stately white-columned home up the road from downtown Gainesville that holds many memories for families and former residents. For decades, the small wood-frame homes built along Candler Street — which runs off of Green Street in downtown Gainesville and is just a couple of blocks from the Brenau University campus — were built and inhabited by Candler’s offspring, the Ashfords, the Lumsdens and the Rombergs.

Candler’s original house has since been torn down.

Gainesville optometrist Bill Morrison, who is one of Candler’s great-great-grandchildren, grew up a couple of blocks away from Candler Street in a home that is now part of Brenau Academy. Morrison said he remembers visiting his grandparents, who raised his mother in a home at the corner of Candler and Prior streets.

Morrison and his cousin, Al Hudgins, remember riding their bikes to Candler Street School; today the building is an office building, but retains its original charm from when it was built in 1911.

"There’s a lot of history here. A lot of history. And thank goodness they’re preserving it," said Morrison as he walked along Candler Street earlier last week. As he passed houses, he recalled family members who lived next door to others.

The neighborhood, even by the early 1900s, was filled with families and children. The week after Candler Street School opened in 1911, 865 students were already enrolled, which was a new city record.

Thompson said her mother and Hudgins’ mother used to play in an alley that ran from Candler to Park streets, nicknamed Ashford Alley. And Boulevard used to be called Race Street, because that’s where the races were held — first with horses and later with cars.

"If you cross over Jesse Jewell, there’s Race Street on that side. Race Street is where people gathered."

Thompson’s mother also told her daughter how they paved Candler Street — one wheelbarrow of cement at a time.

"It was a pretty long process," Thompson said. "She sat on the step and they would make the concrete on Green Street and roll it down, and that’s the way Candler Street was paved."

But it seems the neighborhood, for being close to the center of town, still had enough woods, paths and other wild places for the local kids to explore after school.

"There’s a guy who lived down there, his name was Frankie Gilstrap, and we would take off from here on our bicycles, and I would go down here and go get a banana sandwich, and he’d go down there and get a sandwich and we’d try to see who would get back here first to reserve a field to play dodgeball or something," Morrison said. "And we’d race every day, and he always beat me. And so one day I followed him, and he went around that corner where I couldn’t see, and he turned right around and came back and never ate lunch.

"It look me a long time to figure that out, the sneak."

Hudgins also recalled riding his bike around the neighborhood and to Candler Street School, which was right across the street from where he grew up.

"We used to ride up and down Green Street; we’d ride to town. Nobody ever locked their doors; you had a screen door," he said. "It was great growing up there. In fact, I used to ride my bike to school just to have my bike there."

Kids would ramble through the woods on the east side of the neighborhood to where Brenau Lake used to be, near the grounds of what is now Lakeview Academy. There was a secret cave under Sherwood Plaza. There was a storm drain one street north of Candler Street where the kids could crawl inside and walk to a storm drain along Green Street, where they would watch the cars go by.

"There’s a lot of great memories growing up there," Hudgins added.

Ray Greene, who grew up nearby on Forest Avenue and delivered newspapers along Candler Street, said he is reminded of the history on the street every time he walks down it.

"It was pretty much all the residential area of Gainesville was here and across Green Street, and that was it," said Greene, who also attended Candler Street School. "I remember a lot about the old neighborhood — or at least a good bit about it — but it’s amazing, when things start getting torn down, what you forget."

Morrison said the extensive family doesn’t have too many organized holiday traditions anymore; his mother passed away 12 years ago and since then, things like the holiday gift exchange have gone by the wayside.

But still, the mark Candler and his 11 children had on the town remains.

"We used to have a 10-cent tree at Christmas. We would swap names and we couldn’t spend more than a dime," Morrison said of his childhood Christmases in 1950s Gainesville.

"This is where Gainesville kind of started ... the hub," he said. "All these neighbors had families, and they were kind of like the first families of Gainesville."