The City of Roswell was founded by Roswell King in 1839 who came to the area in the mid-1830s.
Roswell King established the Roswell Manufacturing Company and built a mill to harness the power of the local rivers to make textiles.
Roswell officially became a city on February 16, 1854.
Union Soldiers occupied Roswell from July 5 - July 17, 1864 on their march to Atlanta.
The Roswell Manufacturing Company mill was destroyed by fire twice.
In 1864, Union General W.T. Sherman ordered soldiers to torch the mill.
Lightning caused the second fire.
Telephone service came to Roswell in 1901. All phone numbers were one digit.
The very first traffic signal was installed in 1949 at the intersection of Sloan and Atlanta streets for $436.40.
Dr. Francis Goulding, an early Roswell resident and author of children’s books, invented the sewing machine. Unfortunately, this machine is not associated with his name because he failed to obtain a patent.
Mittie Bulloch Roosevelt, the mother of 26th President Theodore Roosevelt, grew up in Bulloch Hall. She was the daughter of one of Roswell’s first families, the Major James Stephen Bulloch family.
Mittie’s other son, Elliot, became the father of Eleanor Roosevelt who would later marry President Franklin D. Roosevelt (a distant cousin).
Roswell is now Georgia’s eighth largest city, but its major growth in population has just happened in the last twenty years:
1870: 479
1880: 1,180
1920: 1,316
1940: 1,622
1950: 2,123
1980: 23,337
1990: 48,257
2000: 79,334
2010: 88,346
2020: 97,940
The City of Roswell has 13 parks with over 900 acres of active and passive parkland and facilities.
The City Hall building was completed in 1991 at a cost of $12 million.
The City has been chosen twice by "Atlanta Magazine" as the best place to live in the Metro-Atlanta area.
