About Fanny Williams

Fanny Williams was an African American woman whose legacy of activism, economic sustainability, and social justice gave agency to people who did not have a voice and who impacted our community.

Based on varying census records, Fanny Williams was born in Georgia somewhere between 1866 -1868, just after the Civil War. She reported that her highest grade in school was 3rd and that she was employed as a cook. All records indicate that she was a widow, though little is known about her husband.

In 1941, Isoline Campbell McKenna decided to open a small antique store in a cabin on the Argyle Farm property just off Campbell Road. She had traveled and collected antiques, but she said her motivation was to help the African American farmworkers sell some of the products they made, like canned goods, produce, and soups. (Atlanta Constitution article Nov. 27, 1941.)

Isoline named the Cabin after Fanny from the start because she was a beloved cook and employee of the Campbell family. Aunt Fanny’s Cabin became a restaurant due to the popularity of Fanny William’s creations and grew to be a nationally known restaurant that could serve 500 diners at a time.

Fanny Williams was neither an enslaved person nor had she ever lived in the cabin, yet later marketing of the restaurant played up these myths along with a romanticized view of pre-civil war life in the South. Fanny Williams used whatever monies she had received for her employment and use of her name to fund projects that benefitted the local African American community before the heyday of the Civil Rights era. Mrs. Williams helped to fund the construction of a new building for Wheat Street Baptist Church and the first hospital for African Americans in Cobb County.

For more information, visit the AJC Article 12.9.2021 Ghosts of the Old South