Just because Wikipedia or a professor says something, doesn’t mean its true!

Parte Trois

by Richard L. Thornton, Architect and City Planner

I am about to post an article, which is a chronological timeline of events at Etowah Mounds National Landmark over the past 300 years. It will help readers understand a following article, which will discuss the inconsistencies of exhibits at the Etowah Mounds Museum and in the published books about Etowah Mounds.

Now there is section of the timeline article in which readers can easily fact check me! John P. Rogan was the supervisor at the 1883-85 Smithsonian dig at Etowah Mounds. He was eventually fired because he was not producing enough trophy artifacts, which could be given to major donors to the Smithsonian Institute. Yep, that is what happened to most of the thousands and thousands of artifacts dug out of Southeastern mounds in the 1800s and early 1900s.

Wikipedia, a legion of anthropological papers and published books tell us that Rogan moved to Bristol, Tennessee to work for a mercantile store. He then disappeared. That is pure fiction, but a legion of professors would fight you tooth and nail to change the statement. Some authority figure in the archaeology profession published an inaccurate statement, then everybody since then has cited him as the factual source.

Actually, Rogan bought a house in Cartersville with some of the money gained from secretly selling artifacts from Etowah Mounds on the side. He then started a hardware store and then bought a large commercial lot on Main Street in Cartersville, to build the largest hardware and farming supply store in Georgia, north of Atlanta.

Simultaneously, Rogan beginning advertising to wealthy men around the nation that for a fee, he would guide them to Indian mounds in the Southern Highlands, where his clients could dig up artifacts from mounds and town sites to their heart content. Rogan and his clients destroyed a whole bunch of mounds in Georgia, western North Carolina and eastern Tennessee.

Below is the burial record from Oak Hill Cemetery in Cartersville, GA for Rogan, his wife and three of his children. Obviously, he did not disappear after becoming a clerk in a mercantile store in Bristol, TN.

In 2000, I was hired to prepare plans for the adaptive re-use of the Rogan Building in Downtown Cartersville. At that time, Rogan Hardware was still an operating business down the street. The year 2000 is when I learned that John Rogan paid cash for the lot and the building via purloined artifacts from Etowah Mounds!