During the late 1840’s, the Rev. Charles Wallace Howard discovered a natural cement stone on his property along the old Western & Atlantic Railroad (now CSX) about one and a half miles north of Kingston on Hall’s Station Road. Cement production was limited until after the Civil War, when the old Howard Company plant was sold to George H. Waring, a son-in-law of Howard’s. A group of investors from Chattanooga joined Waring in 1889, creating the new Howard Hydraulic Cement Company with George H. Waring, President; Garnet Andrew, Vice President; C. A. Moross, Treasurer and F. H. Waring, Superintendent. This plant, employing up to fifty men, operated six kilns, which reduced local rock to commercial cement. Production was between 200 and 300 barrels of cement per day.

The State of Georgia granted a town charter to the community of Cement in 1889. A post office was established in 1880, however by 1910 the post office closed and both manufacturing and mining operations began shutting down. The citizens of nearby Kingston boasted that some of the cement produced formed the foundation of the Brooklyn Bridge. One of these old stone furnaces still stands today across from Howard’s former home, “Springbank”, which burned February 1,1974. Long since abandoned, the town charter of Cement was repealed in 1995 by a legislative act in 1993 to promote community consolidation.