By Jacari Brooks, Meghan Cooper & Haneefa J. Walton 

• Retired Roswell police officer is a top historian
• His life is devoted to uncovering untold stories
• Offering closure for families

A little boy, around kindergarten age, walks into a small gift shop with shells and knick-knacks scattered about for tourists. A big wicker basket bin sitting on the floor filled with straw hats caught his eye. On the band of the straw hats were a Confederate flag and a cartoon comic Confederate Colonel with a speech bubble that read, ‘Heck no! Won’t forget!’ that repeated around the band of the hat.    

“The feeling of rage went in me, I hated that flag,” Hitt said. “It was a feeling of revenge.”  

Hitt  purchased that hat in the gift shop that day as a child. It was solely based on the aspect that it had something to do with the Civil War.      

“I didn’t want to buy it to wear it,” Hitt said. “For many years it sat on my shelf in the closet, I never wore it, but I knew it had a connection to a certain period of time. That’s why I bought it.”   

For many years  Hitt  wondered where this feeling came from, he was too young to know much about the Civil War at that time and that the flag had significance. This moment from his childhood is his earliest memory of his journey and passion into history.  

Hitt has spent his whole life researching and preserving history.  He served in the Army and on both the Georgia Tech and Roswell police department where he managed to balance his careers with his passion for historic preservation and research. 

Hitt said he was moved to join the Army while working at Kennesaw National Park on the cannon crew. He said it did not make sense that he was researching and studying military history but did not have military any military service.   

“So, after high school, I left for Army boot camp, to be a part of history,” Hitt said.  

In the Army, he spent his time visiting historical sites and dressing up in historical military uniforms.  When he was stationed in Fort Hood, Texas, he was assigned to the 1^st Cavalry Division Museum. 

After serving his country, Hitt attended Kennesaw State University, where he studied criminal justice. He knew he did not want to be a history teacher, so his love of history took him down a path to law enforcement. Hitt said that law enforcement and researching history share the same objectives. 

“ In that field, you get to research a prove something happened, which is like historical research,” Hitt explained. 

Hitt, whose father was the director of admissions, joined the Georgia Tech Police Department because of their history but transferred after a couple of years to the Roswell Police Department.  

“ I wanted a larger area to study and patrol,” Hitt said. “ I then went to work for the Roswell Police Department because that city had a historic district.” 

While Hitt was with the Roswell Police Department, he begins to publish his work on the city of Roswell.  One of the first works he published on the city of Roswell was on the gold mine shafts that were being found in subdivisions in Roswell. 

“What hit the paper was, that they believed these were tunnels the Cherokee Indians built to hide-out to prevent from going on the trail of tears; or they built them to hide their gold before they left,” Hitt said. “I started doing research, and these are in sure gold mines.” 

Now 62 years old and retired, Hitt has authored and co-authored 18 books and maps.  He spends his time researching historical mysteries that occurred on land or in the air, solving them with techniques he learned while being a police officer, giving lectures and putting together memorials for the forgotten. He conducts all of his projects and investigations using his own money and donates his work to museums and libraries. Hitt was instrumental in recreating the history of Roswell, Georgia, and its Police Department. 

“I wrote a book on the Roswell Police Department because they never knew their history; the Fire Department had their own museum,” Hitt said. “The Police Department had nothing; I did research on the history of law enforcement in the Roswell area before there was a police department and how it evolved from Indian ages.”  

Roswell Historical Society Archivist, Elaine Deniro said that Hitt is always accessible to them at a moment’s notice and has donated his research papers to the Roswell Historical Society.   

“He is a tremendous help by providing us information here,” Dinero said. 

Deniro has been with the Roswell Historical Society for twenty years and has known Hitt and his work since he was a Roswell Police Officer.  

Hitt’s subject matter experience has been used by museums, libraries, and historical societies across Georgia.  Gwen Koehler, the Education Director at Bulloch Hall in Roswell, Georgia; the childhood home of President Theodore Roosevelt’s mother, Mittie Bulloch, has used Hitt to fact check research that they have conducted. 

“He is without a doubt one of the very finest researchers available,” Koehler said. “We know that if Michael has researched it and says this is the way it is; it is a fact.” 

Hitt’s research has led to the marking of a grave at the Greenwood Cemetery in Atlanta, Georgia.  The grave belongs to World War I nurse, Camille Louise O’Brien, who died in France during the war.  According to the Emory University website and research from Hitt, O’Brien’s remains were returned to her family after her death, but due to funding, the grave was never marked.  Her descendants that her remains were still in France. 

Hitt conducted research and found her remains at the Greenwood Cemetery. She had actually been buried next to her brother.  Hitt was able to get a $1,900 donation from Patterson and Son Funeral Home to provide a headstone 100 years after her death.  The ceremony was held on April 19, 2019. 

Hitt said he loves providing families with closure.  He puts together custom tours for families that are interested to learn how a distant family member may have died during in war.   

“I do research on that individual and his unit, and I dig into the details,” Hitt said.  

Hitt looks at maps, diaries, and Army reports in order to focus on the last two days of the person’s life to recreate the tour.  Afterward, he is able to give the family a visual of what the family member was looking at and where he was standing at the time of his death.  He said he covers all periods of history for his tours, but Georgia is ground zero for the Civil War due to the Atlanta Campaign. 

Hitt has been donning historical war uniforms since the early ‘70s; starting when he was in high school.  He can be seen at most reenactments in the Atlanta area.  Sometimes, he even takes his 16-year-old daughter, Madeline, along with him, and she dresses up also.  She said her fondest memories with her dad are dressing up and camping out for Civil War reenactment in Roswell. 

Currently, Hitt is researching a mysterious disappearance.  Hitt said that Countess Constance Hillyard De’Caen traveled to the United States from France to reach out to grieving families during World War I to update them on the up keeping of their loved one’s graves.  She did a lot of work with the Gold Star Mothers in Washington, D.C.  

“The national chapter of the Gold Star Mothers they never heard of her,” Hitt said. 

Hitt said that he could trace document of the Countess’s whereabouts to a hotel in Florida 1945 and then she just vanishes.  

“France nothing, United States nothing,” Hitt said. 

Hitt said that while he believes the Countess’s story will make a great book, he is not interested in publishing. However, he will give his research on her to anyone that wants to write a book after he solves the mystery. 

by Jacari Brooks, Meghan Cooper and Haneefa Walton

Men marching in a formation to the left-right-left of cadence,  the beat of drums and the whistle of a fife guide their steps as they take their place in front of spectators.  Leading the formation is First Sergeant Gary Krohn, one of the drummers is Krohn’s son, Chris, the fife player is Krohn’s daughter-in-law Gabby. 

Together the Krohn family has a combined 34-years contributing to Georgia’s Civil War history by volunteering in with a military reenactment group.   

The youngest, Chris Krohn,15, started reenacting with the unit when he was just 10-years old.   

“It is a part of the family,”  Chris said. “My dad, brother, and sister were doing it, so I wanted to join also.” 

Gary Krohn has been reenacting for 20 years. He can be seen performing in a history documentary on the civil war, that is shown at the Kennesaw National Park Museum.   

The Krohn family is not the only family in the unit. Among them is the father-son duo, Tim and Ian Costley, who joined the unit together 5-years ago. Both father and son, are the rank of Private in the artillery formation. 

The Krohn and Costley family are members of a Georgia Civil War  volunteer reenacting unit.  The unit represents and follows procedures of the 125^th Ohio Volunteer Infantry Unit formed in 1862 in Warren, Ohio.  

The 125th Ohio Volunteer Infantry Unit’s men were Union Soldiers who fought alongside General Tecumseh Sherman during the Atlanta Campaign. A significant battle for the unit came at Cheatham Hill, where they were pinned down by confederate soldiers and had to crawl out under cover of darkness. 

The volunteer unit, which the Krohn and Costley families are members, is the only full-time Union Soldier unit in the Atlanta, Georgia, area.  

“The Confederate commanders all want us to come to the battle,” Tim Costley said. “Monopolize, they have to change jackets. 

by Jacari Brooks, Meghan Cooper and Haneefa Walton

For years, the number of hereditary members of the organization “Sons of Union Veterans” have continued to grow as members trace their ancestors who served in the Civil War as a Union soldier.   

“To be a member, all you have to have is one ancestor who fought for the Union,” said James Bryja, a member of the organization.   

In 1866, shortly after the Civil War, veterans of the Union army who served formed the organization Grand Army of Republic better known as GAR. This organization became one of the first advocacy groups to support the veteran’s rights and education. As the organization continued to grow, GAR created the Sons of Veterans of the United States of America in 1881 to help maintain the practices for future generations. The group was later renamed to Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War in 1925.   

Bryja, who became a member in 2014, was successfully able to trace his second great-grandfather Henry Fornette, who served in the Union in 1864.   

“When I asked to join up, they researched through the Pentagon,” Bryja said. “All of the people who have served ever in the United States are in those records. They found Henry’s pension records.”   

Bryja says the membership has been open to anyone who can prove that their ancestors are members of GAR or SUVCW and to those who are interested in the Civil War. The role of the members has been preserving the history of the Union veterans who fought in the war.  

“We generally try to go and keep up the Civil War sites and monuments,” Bryja said. “We adopt various locations, sometimes a cemetery that no one has taken care. We clean it up.”  

There are currently more than 6,300 men in the membership who dedicate themselves to continue the principles of GAR: “Fraternity, Charity, and Loyalty.” 

by Jacari Brooks, Meghan Cooper and Haneefa Walton