Bolingbroke has gone by five names, been incorporated and dissolved, and outlasted every change thrown at it. This is its story.
All four name changes are documented in the Monroe County Historical Society records. The name "Bolingbroke" has stood for over 150 years — longer than all previous names combined.
Wadley was born on his father's farm in Brentwood, New Hampshire. His father was a blacksmith, and Wadley learned the trade before leaving New Hampshire at age 20 after his father's early death. He came to Georgia as a laborer on Fort Pulaski, working under Robert E. Lee on Cockspur Island.
While working construction, Wadley bought books and taught himself mathematics and civil engineering. That self-education launched one of the most remarkable careers in Southern railroad history. He rose from road master to superintendent to president of the Central of Georgia Railroad — a position he held from 1866 until his death in 1882.
He was the first American railroad man to conceive of a railroad system rather than a single line, uniting multiple Southern railroads under one operation.
In 1873, Wadley purchased the Cotton Place plantation in Monroe County — 1,360 acres just outside what would become the Bolingbroke railroad stop. He extensively remodeled the early-19th-century house in 1874–75 into a Victorian-style estate and renamed it Great Hill Place, after the community in New Hampshire where he was born.
Wadley lived at Great Hill Place the rest of his life. His daughter continued to reside there until 1920. When Wadley died in 1882 in Saratoga, New York, his body was transported south in a private railroad car provided by William Henry Vanderbilt and brought to Bolingbroke via Atlanta. He is interred in the Wadley family cemetery on the property, under a grove of trees.
The property — now known as Great Hill Plantation — was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1973. Many of Wadley's original structures still stand on the 329-acre estate.
National Register of Historic Places · Listed 1973Bolingbroke has been an unincorporated community in Monroe County since 1995. It sits between Interstates 75 and 475, just north of Macon — close enough to the city to be convenient, far enough to feel like its own place.
The railroad tracks still run through the center of town. The Wadley cemetery is still on the property. The Community Club still meets. Some things don't change.