GRAIN ELEVATOR

AGRICULTURE ENTERS THE MODERN AGE

In the days when the boys came home from over there, the farmers of Laurens County felt the urgent need to diversify their crops.  For most of the first two decades of the 20th Century, several thousand farmers, their workers, and their families consistently got their folding money from the production of cotton.  Laurens County, because of its massive size with the second most acreage of farms, consistently placed in the top three in production of the “white gold,” with Burke and Bulloch in close competition.  

In the landmark year of 1911, Laurens County produced at least 60,000 bales of the bolls of the lucrative.  In terms of weight, the haul weighed a mind-boggling thirty million pounds. The state record for a Georgia county stood for eighty fiver years until ultra modern mechanical pickers, with little field hands, set the current record.

Around that time, the veracious boll weevil invaded the South ravaging and destroying a great deal of cotton bolls.  Local economies suffered greatly as a general depression in agriculture.  Many African-American farmers began to migrate to the North, where jobs, if not plentiful, were guaranteed with greater salaries and more opportunities.

The had come when agricultural diversity was the only way to meet the coming crisis.  More and more corn was planted.  Beef and pork production accelerated.  Field crops, like watermelons, peanuts, velvet beans, and sweet potatoes could be found in the fields where cotton once thrived. 

Dr. Charles H. Kittrell, a local local watch and eye glass maker, was elected as the President of the local chapter of the Farmers Cooperative Association.  After many debates, the chapter’s board of directors voted to approved a plan to erect a seven-story grain elevator on East Madison street, near the Oconee River on East Madison Street and the railroad bridge near the city water plant.

The plant was put under the direction of manager R.L. Moore.  Company president, Dr. Kittrell, Vice President P.H. Towns, and Secretary J.R. Cherry, led the company led the company with the advice of directors, R. G. Garner, R.T. Grier, and C.F. Parker.

FARMERS CO-OPERATIVE ASSOCIATION GRAIN ELEVATOR 

The massive tower had the capacity to store 30,000 bushels of corn, peanuts, and velvet beans.  The plant manager boasted that his crew could load 50,000 bushels in a single hour.  The project’s success was accomplished by the steadfast support of the Dublin Chamber of Commerce, which had been behind the project from its very beginning.   

Construction of the grain elevator began in December, 1919 and completed in four short months.  

On the 11th day of April, 1920, hundreds of farmers and curiosity seekers assembled to witness the life changing event.  The Honorable J.J. Brown, Georgia Secretary of Agriculture and J.H. Mills, state president of the Farmers Cooperative came from as far as fifty to seventy-five miles away to buy, sell, and store their products.

Dublin and Laurens County had a natural reason to be right proud of their accomplishment.  It was said that the new structure was not only the largest of its kind in Georgia, but was the largest in the South.  

Almost all of the commercial buildings between the railroad and East Jackson Street were erected for agri-businesses.  There were large cotton gins, warehouses, liveries, wagon makers, barrel stave plants, and lumber mills. 

They say “All good things shall always come to end.”  That long standing bit of philosophy came true early in the morning of St. Patrick’s Day in 1932.  There was no joy and no smiling eyes in the “Shamrock City.” 

Manager Moore rushed to the scene to find the grain tower a smoldered mass if twisted metal and machinery in the smoldering fire.   Reportedly the fire started in the top of the tower and collapsed the elevator from top to bottom.

Manager Moore was able to erect a much smaller elevator but no where near the grand elevator.  After World War II, talk of erecting a giant elevator surfaced.  It was decided to go with smaller grain storage facilities around the city in effort not to loose the precious commodities all at one time.

In 1952, Fulton Stokes, of Tifton, Ga. And the Stokes Mill and Elevator Co.,  erected a small grain elevator on Kellam Road. 

The last true grain/peanut elevators were erected in the summer of 1956 by W.H. Lovett and his nephew W.W. Brinson on 601 East Jackson Street at  its northeast corner with Truxton Street and westward up the street on the property currently owned by Dublin International Holding Company at 406 East Jackson.  A portion of the storage facility remains as the last standing remnant of gigantic grain elevators in Dublin. ,

I write this story to remind everyone who reads it to remember when Laurens County, Georgia was the Queen of Agriculture in Empire State of Georgia.