Photo courtesy of Rick Bouchard

Year Erected: 1988

Marker Text: Francis Robert Goulding, preacher, educator, author, and inventor, served as minister of the Bath Presbyterian Church from 1843 to 1851. During that time, he wrote his most popular book, The Young Marooners. Born in 1810 in Midway, GA, he graduated from the University of Georgia and the Columbia Theological Seminary. He invented a sewing machine in 1842, four years before Elias Howe's lockstitch sewing machine was patented. Goulding served as Chaplain during the Civil War, and preached and taught at numerous churches and schools in this area. In 1881 he died impoverished in Roswell, GA.

Re-erected by the Georgia Historical Society in 2022