Many a youth has taken a knife and carved a name into a tree, but in the 1800s one man etched his name into a boulder at Shaking Rock Park.
And it is still there today.
Francis Robert Goulding is not a name anyone would recognize, but he was once an author of books for young readers. His most successful book in the 19th century was ''The Young Marooners on the Florida Coast.''
Oglethorpe County historian Lena Wise fancifully wrote in her history book on the county that ''Young Goulding probably did the carving while day-dreaming the plot to his story.''
Goulding's book about a family that set sail from Charleston, S.C., to Tampa Bay, Fla., was originally published in 1850, but underwent several printings with reprints in England and Scotland. Joel Chandler Harris praised the book as a classic.
Goulding was born in Liberty County. His father, Thomas Goulding, was a Presbyterian minister who moved to Lexington in 1829 to open a Presbyterian seminary. He taught the courses in a manse, which still exists in Lexington. The seminary was moved in 1830 to Columbia, S.C.
Francis Goulding graduated from the University of Georgia in 1829 when he was 19. If Goulding is the one who carved his name into the rock, then it was probably during the time when he attended the university and his father taught at the seminary.
Goulding later became a minister himself, according to a biographical sketch by Robert M. Willingham Jr. He pastored in several cities including Eatonton, Bath, Greensboro and Darien. He was residing in Roswell, in near poverty, when he died. He was buried in a church cemetery there.
Goulding's name is difficult to find at the park, but is under a ledge among the largest boulders there.
This article published in the Athens Banner-Herald on Thursday, May 3, 2001.
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