PIECES OF OUR PAST - THE ET CETERA CHRONICLES - VOL. 21

     AGAINST THE ODDS - As a child, you have a one in 365.25 chance of being born on Christmas Day.  For most kids that isn’t such a great thing when it comes to presents and birthday parties. 


      Christmas was a landmark life in the day of James Erwin Loyd of Laurens County.  Loyd was born on Christmas Day in 1866.  He died on his 82nd birthday on Christmas Day in 1948.  The odds of being born and dying on Christmas Day are 1:133,225.  


     His wife Leonia Wood Loyd was born on March 15, 1876, still known to some as “The Ides of March,” a day on which Julius Caesar suffered his mortal fate.  She died in 1944.  The date of course was March 15th, her 68th birthday.  The Loyds are buried in the Union Baptist Church cemetery on the Soperton Highway just north of Minter.



     SORRY, I’M  WAITING FOR SOMEONE SPECIAL - Some hotel guests in Dublin didn’t receive such royal treatment.  Georgia governor Hugh Dorsey was the antithesis of ostentatiousness.  He was a plainly dressed man and looked like any other gentleman traveler of his day.  Governor Dorsey was due in Dublin on the day after Christmas in 1919.  The governor was in town at the invitation of the Chamber of Commerce to address the county’s businessmen on his plan for the Georgia Cotton Bank.  


When the governor arrived at the depot on South Jefferson Street, he noticed the large crowd gathering on the piazza of the New Dublin Hotel anxiously awaiting his arrival.  He stepped from the rear of the train and decided to walk the short distance up the street to the hotel at the end of the block.  Hotel manager Stubbs Hooks noticed the visitor coming up the street.  The thought that he might be the eagerly awaited dignitary never crossed his mind. He expected only an exalted entourage would be accompanying the governor of Georgia.    In a matter of respect to the guest he told the man that he better go ahead and eat because a large banquet was about to take place.  The governor, not wanting to embarrass Hooks, told the anxious manager that he would wait and eat with everyone else.  As the governor began to mill around in the crowd, someone approached Hooks and informed him that the man he had just talked to was the man the reception committee had been waiting on.  Stunned and stymied, Hooks recovered from his blunder and greeted the governor in the appropriate manner, all the time thinking to himself, “how could I be so stupid.”



SPITTING BULLETS - Green Pittman enlisted in the Confederate army on August 21, 1861 as a member of the “Wilkinson Guards,” which were designated as Co. I of the 3rd Georgia Volunteer Infantry.  His first major wound came at the climatic battle of the Battles of the Seven Days at Malvern Hill on July 1, 1862 when his company suffered massive casualties in brutal fighting.   Pittman survived the horrific battles of 2nd Manassas, Sharpsburg, Chancelorsville, Gettysburg, and Spotsylvania virtually unscathed.  

Green Pittman suffered a terrible wound in the Battle of Hatcher’s Run on February 6, 1865.  The mini ball struck the upper part of his nose near his left eye.  After the fighting subsided, Pittman was taken to a field hospital, where his wound was dressed and probed by an army surgeon.   Leaving the bullet in his head was the most acceptable option because of the risks of surgery.  He spent the rest of the war in a hospital.  Though Pittman knew that the mini ball was still in his head he rarely thought of it during his daily routines.  On a Sunday morning February 1869, Pittman was preparing to go to church when he felt something strange in his mouth.

As he was combing his hair, Pittman felt a large object which he almost swallowed.  There was no pain, no bleeding when the one-ounce two-pennyweight ball popped out four years after it entered his nose.  The grizzled veteran of many of the world’s most horrific battles cherished the iron ball as a reminder of his good fortune.  Augusta Chronicle, July 1, 1875.



THE AMNESIAC BRIDE - A Swainsboro woman set what was thought to be a world record for going from the grave to the altar.  On Tuesday, January 30,  1906, J.J. Sewell, one of the most hardworking and honest men in that section of the state, died of tuberculosis  leaving his entire estate to his widow Alice.  Mr. Sewell was buried on Wednesday.  His wife was present, dressed in proper attire and showing the usual emotional distress at the death of her dear departed husband.  Also at the funeral was one Robert McDaniel, who had professed his love for the widow before Sewell’s demise.  McDaniel accompanied the bereaved woman as she left the cemetery.  On Thursday, the couple appeared went to Ordinary Court Judge Yeoman’s office and obtained a marriage license.  The anxious couple quickly traveled to the home of Judge John Sutton, where they were instantly married and set off on their honeymoon.  When questioned as to the timeliness of their marriage, Mrs. McDaniel said that she needed someone to comfort her and knew McDaniel had loved her a long time.    The editors of the Swainsboro Forest Blade took an opposite stance, when they wrote, “ peace to the ashes of Mr. Sewell.  He is better off in his grave than hitched up with such a woman as this and hounded by a man who would marry her.”  Washington Post, February 5, 1906. p. 1, Swainsboro Forest Blade, February 1, 1906.

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