PIECES OF OUR PAST - 2001

 

PIECES OF OUR PAST

Sketches of the History of Dublin and Laurens County, Georgia

and East Central Georgia Area

2001

Written by 

Scott B. Thompson, Sr.

Copyright 2008

The Emerald City History Company, Inc. and Courier Herald Publishing Company, Inc.

The Emerald City History Company

Scott B. Thompson, Sr.

P.O. Box 1586

Dublin, GA 31040

dublinhistory@yahoo.com

FOREWORD

Pieces of Our Past is a compilation of articles chronicling the history of Dublin and Laurens County, Georgia, as well as some of the history of Johnson, Treutlen, Wilkinson, Twiggs, Emanuel, Montgomery, and Washington Counties.  Your reception of these articles has been most gratifying.   The greatest compliment that I receive is that someone has thought enough of my article to cut it out of the paper and saved it.  That is why I have compiled these articles so that they may be referred to by students and history buffs.  I believe that you are never too young or too old to study your history and heritage.  No one’s is more important than another’s.  You can find history every where you look.  It is in your family, your neighborhood, your church, your school, your favorite sport, your business, your community, your state, and your nation.  Write it down so that generations to come may remember those who proceeded them. 

My thanks to Dubose Porter and Griffin Lovett of the Courier Herald Publishing Company, who have allowed me to tell my passion for our local history to the readers of the Courier Herald.  My thanks also to my editor and proofreader, Heather Carr, who found all of those late night mistakes in my columns and who has touched them up as if they never existed. 

TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. WILLIAM MCINTOSH

2. JUDGE PEYTON L. WADE, Bibliophile Extraordinaire

3. TO SECEDE OR NOT TO SECEDE? A Question of Right or Reason

4. THE CREMATION OF THE ACADEMY

5. IT HAPPENED IN FEBRUARY, A Glimpse of Historic Happenings in Laurens County in February

6. THE BATTLE OF KETTLE CREEK

7. THE BATTLE OF OLUSTEE

8. BOB SHULER, Pacific Ace

9. MARCH HAPPENINGS, The Windy Month in Laurens County History

10. MORE ANIMAL STORIES

11. THOMAS EDWARD BLACKSHEAR, Gone to Texas

12. TOMMY BIRDSONG, A True Survivor

13. THE JOHNSON GRAYS AT CHANCELLORSVILLE, Lee’s Greatest Victory

14. EARLY LAWYERS OF LAURENS COUNTY, GEORGIA

15. MISTER HALLEY’S COMET, A Regularly Returning Piece of Our Past

16. EUGENIA TUCKER FITZGERALD, The Founder of Alpha Delta Pi

17. FOURTH ANNUAL TRIVIA QUIZ

18. JAKE WEBB, Citizen Soldier

19. STEVE BARBER, Dublin’s Baby Bird

20. THE CHILDREN OF THE CONFEDERACY, The Children of Pride

21. THE FOURTH OF JULY, Celebrating America’s Birthday

22. THOMAS WILLIAM HARDWICK, Principle Before Politics

23. FIRST MANASSAS, The Run from Bull Run

24. CHARLES WESSOLOWSKY, A Jewish Star in Gentile South Georgia

25. MARY MUSGROVE, The Queen of Georgia

26. MR. LARSEN GOES TO WASHINGTON, The Story of Congressman William Washington Larsen

27. H. DALE THOMPSON, A Son’s Eulogy

28. REV. NATHANIEL WALLER PRIDGEON, The Minister Who Preached His Own Funeral

29. NINETEENTH CENTURY TALES OF DUBLIN AND LAURENS COUNTY

30. LIEUTENANT COLONEL WILLIAM CLYDE STINSON, Duty, Honor, and Country

31. VIVIAN LEE STANLEY, A Gentleman in a World of Villans

32. WHAT CAN AMERICANS DO? Look Into Our Past For Our Future

33. IZOLA WARE CURRY, A Troubled Woman

34. WILEY MOORE, Citizen Oilman

35. ERNEST ROGERS, The Mayor of Peachtree Street

36. FATHER AND SON VETERANS, Willie T. And William “Tee” Holmes

37. THE TRIAL OF SIG LICHTENSTEIN, Adrian Merchant Defended by Jewish Antagonist

38. THE YANKEES ARE COMING! Recollections of a Nightmare

39. CHARLES TENANT, A Sailor Who Saw the World

40. INTERNET CLIPS, Local History on the World Wide Web

41. A GRAN CHRISTMAS

42. WILLIAM YOUNG, The Father of Cotton Manufacturing in the South

43. DUBLIN AND LAURENS COUNTY IN 1901

44. I WANT MY MTV - The Story of John Lack

1-01

WILLIAM McINTOSH

He was a man of two people - one white and one red.  His mother’s people, the Lower Creek Indians, called him “Tustunnugee Hutke,” or “White Warrior.”  His father’s people were Scottish Highlanders, who immigrated  to Georgia during the state’s  infancy.  William McIntosh never abandoned either of his people, all the time struggling to maintain the precarious balance between the two nations during the first quarter of the 19th Century.  It was his desire for peaceful coexistence that led to his death - an untimely and senseless death at the hands of his own bitterly divided people.  This occasional  visitor to Laurens County was one of the most important and influential Indian leaders in Georgia history.

William McIntosh, a son of a  British officer during the  American Revolution, was born in Wetumpka, an Indian village in eastern Alabama northwest of Columbus, Georgia.  He was nurtured in the Indian ways of life by his mother, Senoya, and his Coweta Indian uncles.  His father, William McIntosh, Sr., sided with King George during the War for American Independence.  William and his half-brother Roley,  son of their father’s second Indian wife, were put on board a ship bound for Scotland, where they would receive a formal education.  William was interested in learning.  Roley was somewhat less interested.  The boys were spirited away from the ship by their Indian uncles.  Their father, oblivious to their absence until the ship had sailed, continued on the voyage to his ancestral homeland.  Discouraged by the way his sons were being raised, the elder McIntosh left his family and returned to McIntosh County on the southeast Georgia coast. William’s uncles taught him all of the things he needed to know about life.  As he approached manhood, William was given leave to visit his father’s home.  William made one final trip to the coast to attend his father’s funeral.

About two hundred years ago, William was chosen as Chief of the Coweta town, at the age of twenty five.  He married Eliza Grierson, a woman of Scottish and Creek parents.  The couple’s first son, Chilly, was born at their home on the Tallapoosa River.  McIntosh, then Chief of all of the lower Creek towns, encouraged commerce with white merchants and traders.  The Lower Creeks believed that their “mixed-blooded” leaders were best suited to deal with the leaders and the people of the United States.  McIntosh stood more than six feet tall -  a height which made him a near giant during his day.  He was light skinned, but retained his Indian features of dark eyes and hair.  He wore buck skin pants and a calico shirt.  His headdress consisted of a turban with a single feather plume.

As tensions became more strained between Georgians and the Creeks (and even among the Creeks themselves), a war between England and the United States broke out in 1812.  McIntosh was commissioned a major in the U.S. Army.  He led a contingent of Indian warriors under the command of Generals John Floyd and John Coffee.  McIntosh led his warriors in support of Gen. Andrew Jackson’s legendary victory at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend.  In near total disregard of the Indians who remained steadfastly loyal to the U.S. Army, Jackson negotiated a treaty.  McIntosh believed the treaty took too much lands from the tribes who had supported Jackson.

In the years which followed the war, McIntosh and his family moved to a new home on the Chattahoochee River.  It was during this time when McIntosh maintained a home near the springs on the west bank of the Oconee River.  The springs, known later as Well Springs, is located south of Dublin  in the Rock Springs Community.  While he was visiting in Laurens County, he sent his son Chilly to school in Dublin.

Relationships between the Americans and the Seminoles flared up again in 1817.  McIntosh was commissioned a brigadier general and was placed in command of thirteen hundred Creek warriors.  They fought in several engagements with their mortal enemies, known as “The Redsticks.” After six years of fighting, McIntosh left the army, still torn by the strife between his two peoples. His uncle, Chief Howard, the leader of a friendly Cheehaw village, was killed by members of the Laurens County Dragoons under the leadership of Captains Obed Wright and Jacob Robinson.

McIntosh established a ferry across the Chattahoochee at Coweta.  He was assisted by Joe Baillie.  The Chief built a large tavern and inn at the famed mineral water springs in Monroe County, which became appropriately known as Indian Springs.  As more and more of Georgia was being settled by white settlers, McIntosh became involved in negotiations between Creek and Georgia officials.  A meeting was held at the McIntosh Inn at Indian Springs in 1821.  Despite his deep-seated objections to the U.S. government’s treaty proposals, McIntosh reluctantly signed a treaty ceding more lands to Georgia.

In 1823, George M. Troup of Laurens County was elected governor of Georgia.  Troup pushed for the removal of all Indian tribes from Georgia. Relationships with the Creeks became more tenuous.  Various towns of the Creek Nation were at odds with each other.  Troup, in an ironic quirk of fate, had an ally in his efforts to rid Georgia of the Creek and the Cherokee.  Chief McIntosh’s father was a brother of Catherine McIntosh, the mother of Governor Troup, making the two leaders were first cousins.

While some have questioned the closeness of the cousins because of their strong efforts in support of their respective constituents, the two men consulted with each other on the matters of Indian lands.  According to local legend, an accord was reached between the two leaders at McIntosh’s home at Well Springs.  McIntosh stood firm in his belief that interaction with the white people would strengthen his tribes.  Troup took an opposite view.  His determination to remove the Indian tribes led to a war of words with President John Quincy Adams. President Adams eventually backed off of his demands for Troup to desist with his plans for Indian removal.

Chief William McIntosh has been called a hero by some - a traitor by others.  He was one of the most intriguing characters in our state’s history.  His murder was condemned by both of his two peoples.  Eventually the members of his family were pardoned by the tribal council.  They left Georgia for the Indian territory of Oklahoma, where they followed in the footsteps of this once great Creek leader.

01-02

JUDGE   PEYTON  L.  WADE

Bibliophile Extraordinaire

Peyton Wade was a smart man.  His insatiable appetite for knowledge, his intense passion for books, and his enduring love for the law led Wade to the pinnacle of the legal profession in Georgia.

Peyton L. Wade was born at Lebanon Forest in Screven County, Georgia on January 9, 1865.  It was the bleak winter before the end of the American Civil War.  Peyton’s father, Dr. Robert Wade, was serving as a steward and quartermaster in Gen. Joseph Johnston’s Army of the Tennessee. Johnston and his men were trying to outlast the Union army under General William T. Sherman, which had taken Savannah and was moving northward toward North Carolina.  Wade was named for his grandfather, Rev. Peyton L. Wade of the Methodist Episcopal Church.  The elder Peyton was a large land and slave owner in Screven County and one of the largest slave and land owners in the state.

Peyton was educated by private tutors in his early life.  He later matriculated at Boy’s High in Atlanta.  In February 1884, Wade entered the University of Georgia in Athens, where his parents were then living.  While at the university, Peyton was awarded the position of Speaker of the Junior and Senior classes.  This designation resulted from his performance in oratorical competitions.  As a senior he served on the editorial staff of “The Pandora,” the university’s newspaper.  Wade was named the Class Poet.  He graduated fifth in his class in the summer of 1886.  For three years following his graduation, Wade contributed articles to “The Pandora.”

Peyton Wade accepted an offer for the principalship of the Dublin Academy a month after his graduation.  After one year as principal of the Academy, Wade assumed the position of editor of “The Dublin Times.”

After a half year stint as editor of “The Post,” Wade returned to his native county to study law under the supervision of his uncle, Ulysses P. Wade.  The law was a part of his family on his mother’s side.  His mother, Frederica Washburn, was a niece of Gov.  Joseph Washburn of Massachusetts, a Harvard law professor and treatise writer on real property.  Through his Washburn family (one of the first to settle in Massachusetts) Peyton descended from Mary Chilton, the first woman to set foot on Plymouth Rock.   Peyton began his legal career in November 1888 when he was admitted to the bar at a session of the Superior Court of Screven County.  The newly admitted attorney went home to Athens to open his law practice.  Wade recognized the need for attorneys back in Dublin.  After all, Dublin was on the verge of a commercial, educational, and agricultural revolution.  Signs were there when he was last in the city.  Wade returned to Dublin in 1889.  His practice was successful.  It was lucrative, too.

Wade’s practice primarily consisted of civil law.  His stature among  fellow attorneys quickly rose.  In 1912, Wade was chosen by his fellow members of the bar as fourth  vice-president of the Georgia Bar Association.  Among his larger clients were the Wrightsville and Tennille Railroad and the Central of Georgia Railroad.  At the turn of the century, his office was located in the Hicks Building on the southwest corner of the courthouse square.  In the summer of 1905, he moved his office to the newly constructed Brantley Building on the northwest corner of West Jackson and North Lawrence streets.

To say Wade loved books is an serious understatement.  He loved books like boys love girls, counting  his volumes by the thousands.  Many of these were rare and valuable.   When the Carnegie Library opened in 1904, Wade donated some four hundred  of his more valuable books to the library’s scant collection.  He served on the city’s library board for several years.  His personal library, located in his home which stood  on the southwest corner of Oak Street and Bellevue Avenue, was one of the largest in this area, if not the state.  In 1918, Wade donated thirteen hundred  books to his alma mater, the University of Georgia.

Wade avoided business interests, though he was a financial backer of a proposed five-mile long street car line in Dublin.  He never touted his religious affiliation, but he was a faithful member of the Presbyterian Church.  Wade shied away from politics, though he entertained the notion of running for Congress in 1902.

One of Wade’s biggest cases was actually a capital case in 1906. Wade was chosen to aid the State of Georgia in the prosecution of Gus Tarbutton and Joseph Fluker for the murder of Letcher Tyre.  Tyre was killed in an area along the line dividing Laurens and Johnson counties.  The defendant’s lawyers successfully contended the alleged murder actually took place in Johnson County and not in Laurens.  After an investigation and survey by the Secretary of State, the county line was moved closer to the river. The venue for the trial was transferred to the Superior Court of Johnson County, then in the Middle Circuit, a forum much more favorable to the defendants. 

In 1913, a vacancy occurred on the bench of the newly created Georgia Court of Appeals following the resignation of Benjamin H. Hill, son of Georgia’s great senator of the Civil War era. The other two members of the court were Judges L.S. Roan and Richard B. Russell, father of another great Georgia senator.  Under the law at that time, the vacancy was filled by the governor.  The governor was John M. Slaton.  Slaton was a classmate and close friend of Wade’s.  Slaton served as Wade’s best man in his 1895 wedding to Gussie Black, daughter of Congressman George Black and grand daughter of Congressman Edward Black of Georgia.    Naturally,  Slaton appointed his close friend to the judgeship at the urging of more than a dozen bar associations from cities in east central Georgia.

Wade’s first reported case was Pitts vs. the City of Atlanta.  The Court of Appeals of Georgia is unique.  In many cases,  it has exclusive jurisdiction and is a court of final judgment.  When Chief Judge Russell resigned to resume his private law practice in 1916, Wade was chosen by his fellow judges as Chief Judge of the Court of Appeals.  He was only the third chief judge in the history of the court.

Judge Wade died in Atlanta on August 29, 1919.  He was laid to rest in Athens.  Colleagues described him as “a noble citizen.”  A fellow appellate judge remembered him as “a brilliant conversationalist, who lightened our labor by his ready wit.”    At a memorial session of the Court of Appeals held on December 8, 1919, Judge Frank Harwell may have said it best: “ Now that his day of toil is through, I love to think he sits at ease with some old volume that he knew upon his knees.”

01-03

TO SECEDE OR NOT TO SECEDE?

A Question of Right or Reason 

It was a question that people argued over.  It was a question people fought over.  It was a question people killed over.  The complex issue of secession from the Union of the American States was debated and debated again in the halls of the Georgia legislature, county courthouses, and  streets of every city, town, and hamlet of the state.  The issue of slavery had ripped the country apart for decades.   While the people of Georgia were steadfastly  in favor of keeping their slave system, they were bitterly divided on the issue of seceding from the Union.  In the end, the people of Laurens County were no exception.

Nearly every Georgian was opposed to the election of Abraham Lincoln.  The fiery secessionist orators in the southern states had made it perfectly clear what would happen if the tall lanky man from Illinois was elected to the presidency.  Lincoln garnered only thirty seven percent of the national vote, but won a majority of the electoral college votes.   The Democratic party was split into three tickets. Laurens Countians were opposed to secession and voted for John Bell of the Union Party in the November, 1860 election.  Out of five hundred and ninety votes cast, four hundred  twenty eight, or seventy two percent went to Bell, one hundred twenty eight were cast for Democrat J.C. Breckinridge, and only thirty six for another Democrat Stephen Douglas, despite the fact that Georgia governor Herschel Johnson was his running mate.

Only thirty seven percent of Georgia’s male voters were slave owners.   The aristocratic slave owners had to convince those in North Georgia and the Pine Barrens of South Georgia that secession was necessary to Georgia’s economic and political future.   Georgia was the key to the movement of secession.  It was the largest slave state.  If she didn’t side with her neighbor states, the Confederacy would be seriously be doomed, if not destroyed altogether.

The question of secession came to a climax on November 12th, just ten days after Lincoln’s election.  Rumors of slave insurrections were rampant.  A statewide militia muster was being held in the capital city of Milledgeville.  Governor Joseph Brown was urging caution.  A series of speeches were given by leaders of the Secessionists and the Unionists.  Thomas R.R. Cobb and Howell Cobb kindled the flames of secession.  Alexander Hamilton Stephens, who was Laurens County’s first Congressman under the present district system, spoke two nights later to an admiring legislature.  Stephens proclaimed that he did not speak “to stir up strife, ...  but to appeal to reason.”  Stephens claimed, “ the election of no man is sufficient to cause secession from the Union.”  Some said “Little Alek” didn’t have his heart in it.  He didn’t want to be the leader of the Unionists.  He didn’t care for Benjamin Harvey Hill.  Gov. Herschel Johnson became the leader of the Unionists, but was little esteemed because of his position in the 1860 election.

A fine and distinguished crowd of Laurens County citizens gathered at the courthouse on the 17th of December, 1860.  Their purpose was nominate delegates to represent the county in the Convention of Secession on January 16th in Milledgeville.  William Adams stood up and moved the temporary chair to name John W. Yopp and Dr. Nathan Tucker as chairmen of the meeting.  Whiteford S. Ramsay and Cinncinatus S. Guyton were selected as the secretaries.  Messers Yopp and Tucker gave brief, but eloquent addresses.  David Harvard moved the chairmen to appoint two men from each of the county’s militia districts to compose a resolution of the final outcome of the meeting.  David Harvard, Ashley Vickers, Daniel Coombs, William Darsey, T.B. Fuqua,, John R. Cochran, Robert Robinson, Wiley McLendon, Mathew Smith, Thomas M. Yopp, E.J. Blackshear, David Moorman, Cinncinatus Guyton, Seth J. Kellam, William Adams, Edward Perry, Cullen O’Neal, and Perrian Scarboro were selected by Tucker and Yopp.  

After a brief recess,  the committee brought in its report: “Whereas a convention has been called to ascertain the will of the people of Georgia, as to the mode, measure and time of resistance in view of the recent election of Abraham Lincoln to the Presidency, and who was promoted to that office by virtue of his principles of hostility to the institution of African slavery, and in view also of the fact that a number of states of this Union have passed what they call “Personal Liberty Bills,” whereby the Constitution of the United States, and the fugitive slave law enacted in pursuance thereof, to protect the slave owner in his property is evaded.  Therefore be it, resolved: That we reaffirm the Georgia Platform, with the additional proposition, viz: That whereas the fifteen Southern states equally interested in the institution of slavery we therefore recommend that Georgia co-operate with the slave states, or as many as will unite with her in demanding of those states which resist the execution of their state laws, a repeal of their “Personal Liberty Bills,” or a full execution of the Constitution and laws in spirit for the rendition of slaves to their owners by the General Government and give us a tangible assurance of their sincerity against the agitation of the subject of slavery in Congress; and when time shall have been given for these States to act, and they then refuse to recognize and give us our rights, that than and not until then, Georgia should disrupt every tie that binds her to the Union.”  

The resolution was adopted.  Dr. Tucker and Mr. Yopp were elected by a majority of those voting to represent the county thirty days later at the convention in Milledgeville. 

Gov. Joseph Brown called for an election in each of Georgia’s counties on January 2, 1861.  Laurens Countians voted 283 to 106 against secession and to cooperate with the northern states.  The voters had chosen two aristocratic plantation owners, one from each side of the river.  Dr. Nathan Tucker, a Rhode Island born physician, was the county’s largest land owner on the east side of the river.  He was known for his compassion toward his slaves.  Tucker, an ardent supporter of the old Whig party, was vehemently opposed to secession.  John W.  Yopp, a large slave owner west of the Oconee River, was chosen by delegates to support the Unionist position of the county.   During the term which immediately preceded the election, Laurens County was represented in the House of Representatives by Charles L. Holmes and in the Senate by Hugh McCall Moore, a kinsman of John W. Yopp.

Just as the northern and southern states were divided over the issue of slavery, the counties of Georgia were equally divided over the issue of secession.  Those counties in favor of leaving the Union and forming a confederation with other states were mainly located on the Georgia coast and along the lower Savannah, Flint, and Chattahoochee Rivers.  Those favoring remaining in the Union and working out a compromise were located in the northern, central western, and east central regions of the state.

The marked difference in opinions between the eastern and western counties of Middle Georgia had its roots in the deep political divergence between the Whig and Democratic parties during the previous quarter of a century. The old Whigs, although proclaiming state rights, were opposed to secession and favored remaining in the Union.  The Democrats were ready to go to war, right then.  Laurens, Johnson, Washington, Emanuel, Montgomery, Telfair, Tattnall, Wilkinson, and Baldwin County voters selected Unionist delegates.  Voters from Pulaski, Twiggs, Bibb, Houston, and Wilcox selected men in favor of secession.

By the time of the convention, the legislatures of South Carolina, Alabama, Florida, and Mississippi had passed secession ordinances.  Georgia’s delegates assembled in Milledgeville on the morning of January 16th.  Henry L. Benning, the name sake of Ft. Benning, was called to chair the convention.  Dr. Tucker and Mr. Yopp took their seats in the crowded chamber.  It was a “who’s who” of Georgia politics.  There was the scrawny, but oh so eloquent, Alexander H. Stephens, who would soon be elected Vice President of the Confederacy.  Stephens was a member of a trio of influential Unionists, which included former governor Herschel V. Johnson of Louisville, who had been an unsuccessful vice-presidential candidate in the 1860 election, and the long-admired U.S. Senator Benjamin Harvey Hill of LaGrange.  Thomas R.R. Cobb, Howell Cobb, and Robert Toombs led the eminent secessionists in the hall.

The first order of business was to control the actions in the chamber.  An ordinance was passed to suppress all applause, jeering, and noise making while a delegate was speaking.  Gov. Joseph Brown and former Gov. Howell Cobb received special invitations to take a seat on the floor of the chamber, along with the judges of the various Superior Courts and the justices of Georgia’s Supreme Court.  The doors were closed to the public - no reporters allowed!  The transactions of the convention were to be recorded, printed, and disseminated to the public by appointed printers. No political and editorial spinning was allowed. 

Anticipations were high on the morning of the 18th.  Eugenius Nisbet of Macon rose to speak.  Nisbet proclaimed that it was not only the right of Georgia to secede from the Union, but it was her duty to join her four sister states in the formation of a Confederacy.  Former governor, Herschel Johnson, a portly two hundred forty pound giant of a man, rose in opposition.  Conceding that the Unionists did not have the delegates to prevent a split from the Union, Johnson acknowledged forty years of oppressive laws which had been crammed down the throats of the southern states by the more numerous northern states.  The prognosis for improvement was greatly diminished after the secession of the four southern states.  Johnson pressed for a thirty-day delay in the vote until Georgia could consult with other states of the South to see if a compromise couldn’t be reached.  Johnson, the name sake of Johnson County, proposed the enactment of several constitutional amendments preserving slavery as a compromise to the Secessionists.  A spirited discussion ensued.  Stephens and Hill argued for reason - the Cobbs for the right thing to do.  The question was called.  The yeas were 166.  The nays, 130.  Mr. Yopp and Dr. Tucker voted nay, in accordance with their mandate from the voters of Laurens County.  A motion to open the doors was defeated, as was a motion to publish the vote of the people.

On January 19th, Nisbet made the formal motion to adopt the ordinance of secession.  Benjamin H. Hill renewed Johnson’s motion to add a preamble to the ordinance.  The delegates said no.  Simmons of Gwinnett County tried to suggest a delay until March 3rd.  A vote on the previous question was called.  The votes were tallied: 208 yea, 89 no.  Dr. Tucker remained with the Unionists.  Yopp, realizing that further resistance to the secession movement was futile, switched over to the Secessionists and voted yea.  When the hoopla died down, the convention adjourned for the remainder of the weekend.  

The next week was taken up in determining a new constitution for Georgia.  Augustin Hansell, a former judge of Laurens County Superior Court, was appointed to the Committee on Foreign Relations.  R.J. Cochran, of Irwinton, moved the convention to allow Georgia to keep all Federal property within her bounds but to honor all public debts prior to the convention.  A motion was made to allow all Georgians who were serving in the Army or the Navy to retain their rank in Georgia’s new army.  Thomas M. McRae and F.H. Latimer, delegates from neighboring Montgomery County, recanted their vote against secession, reluctantly agreeing to support the convention’s resolution. 

On January 23rd, Georgia’s congressional delegation announced their intention to withdraw from the House of Representatives.  Peter Early Love, a native of Laurens County, left his seat as the Congressman from the First District of Georgia.  Love, a Thomasville physician and a lawyer, also served as a Judge of the Southern District of the Superior Court, which included Laurens County.

A major event of the convention came on January 24th when delegates to the February 4th organizational convention of the Confederate States of America were chosen.  The convention chose Francis S. Bartow, Martin Crawford, Eugenius Nisbet, Benjamin H. Hill, Augustus R. Wright, Thomas R.R. Cobb, Ausustus Kenan, Alexander Stephens, Robert Toombs, and Howell Cobb.  Only two of the delegates, Stephens and Hill, were sympathetic to the Unionist platform.

 

On the tenth day of the convention, the delegates voted to abolish the Federal court system in Georgia. Yopp voted with the majority, but Dr. Tucker remained steadfast in his effort to fight secession.    On January 28th, the question of retaining Federal property and customs agents came up for a vote.  Yopp and Tucker voted with the slight majority in the affirmative.  The convention adjourned at the end of January.

The convention  met again in Savannah in early March to put the finishing touches on the new laws of Georgia and to adopt the organization of the Confederate States of America, which was adopted unanimously by all two hundred seventy four delegates.  Laurens County was put in the Fourth Congressional  District of Georgia along with Baldwin, Bibb, Crawford, Jones, Jasper, Houston, Putnam, Pulaski, Twiggs, and Wilkinson Counties.  Augustus Holmes Kenan of Milledgeville served in the 1st Confederate Congress representing the district, which with the exception of Laurens, Baldwin, Putnam, and Wilkinson counties which had supported the Unionist platform.   In one last recorded vote, Messers Tucker and Yopp voted against staggering the terms of Georgia state senators.

Two hundred and ninety seven men answered the question.  Georgia seceded from the Union.  Some men cheered in exaltation.  Some shook their heads in bewilderment. Mothers began to cry, realizing the carnage which would soon envelope the entire nation. 

01-04

THE CREMATION OF THE ACADEMY

At one time or another, it has been a dream of nearly every school boy.  Whether during the boredom of poetry class, the bafflement of an algebra problem, or the mere desire to be playing on the sandlot or swimming in the creek, daydreaming boys have always wondered, “What would it be like if suddenly, the school wasn’t there the next morning?”  One hundred years ago, that dream came true.  The Dublin Academy, the pride of the Emerald City, was a mass of  smoldering ashes, charred bricks, and useless rubble.

It was a typical small-city two-story school house. The Academy, as it was known, was located on an avenue which still bares its name long after it’s demise.  Sometime around the end of the ninth decade of the 19th century, the Board of Education decided that a new school would be fitting for the city, which was just beginning to awake from a slumber of seven decades.  The old school, which was located on the lower floor of the Masonic Lodge at the intersection of Academy Avenue and the Hawkinsville Road (now Bellevue Avenue) was too small.  The narrow two-story building doubled as a city hall.  The first part of the academy was completed in 1889 on land purchased from Mary J. Currell the previous year.  There were only three teachers.  Soon a fourth room was added.  Eventually the academy boasted eight rooms, an auditorium, and a library.

January 20, 1901, a typically chilly day one third of the way through winter, dawned without any warning of the brewing cataclysm.   It was a Sunday - time for people to be in church.  Robert Wells, the school janitor, wasn’t thinking that he would need an alibi.   No one knows for sure exactly what he was doing that day.  Police theorized that Wells came to the academy building on Sunday.  No one would think that unusual.  He must be have been cleaning up.  James Foster, a young boy, was hanging around.  Wells climbed under the school.  Foster saw Wells fixing the blocks.  Wells asked the boy to fetch him some straw. Foster came back with an arm load.  “What you gonna do with it?” the boy asked.  “Give it to me!” Wells demanded.  The janitor carefully placed small pieces of the tender under the blocks,  took a can of oil, and doused the straw.  He lit a match.  Jimmy Foster ran all the way home, as fast as his legs would take him. 

“Major” Jackson, another young boy, was the first suspect to be taken into custody.  The police knew that he was a mere accomplice.  Somewhere the real fiend was out there, still hiding. Major told Chief of Police John A. Peacock that Jim and an older man were there when the fire started.  Major went on to say that the man ran toward Mr. Miller’s house after he set the school on fire.  Mr. J.W. Woodard corroborated Major’s statement.  Woodard stated that just minutes after the fire alarm sounded,  that he saw Wells walking rapidly up the Macon, Dublin, and Savannah Railroad track just beyond the Reidsville section of town, where the railroad crosses Academy Avenue.

 

Apparently Wells regained his composure and returned to the scene of the crime.  Wells walked up to see the consequences of his alleged dastardly exploits, just as the flaming frame was beginning to fall.  He told Professor Wardlaw, the school principal, that he was in a house out near the Cotton Mill well beyond Reidsville when the alarm sounded.  The inconsistences of Well’s statement with the testimony of his actions brought on suspicions of his guilt.  But how could he do it?  Professor Wardlaw told police that he couldn’t be guilty.  “Wells was a most efficient janitor.  We never had the slightest trouble with him.  It would seem that it was to his interest to preserve the building, rather than destroy it.  With the building burned, he would be without a job,” the baffled professor wondered.  What was Wells doing out at the Cotton Mill?  Why wasn’t he at his home, only a few hundred yards from the school?  These were questions that needed answers.

Just a few days after Jackson was taken into custody, he told the police that Jim Foster, a young boy with a yellow complexion, had been there with an older man.  The police picked up Jim. At first, Jim disavowed any knowledge of what went on that Sunday.  Slips of his tongue followed, slowly at first and then more rapidly.  Jim confessed his involvement in the fire to a fellow prisoner.  Wells happened to be passing by the city barracks when Jim told his fellow inmate, “There he is!” That’s the man who poured oil on the building and applied the match, Jim told the man and later Chief of Police Peacock.   Peacock summoned his deputy, J.L. Cowart, Jr., to find Wells and bring him in.  The charge was arson.  Wells was a good man, or so they thought.  How could he do such a horrible thing?  Apparently he didn’t do it, or the Solicitor General couldn’t prove it.  Wells was never indicted by the Grand Jury.  No one else was ever convicted of the crime.

Dubliners were in shock.   There was no time for a crying.  A new school had to be built.  For a while, the old one would have to do.  Alternate sites were used to accommodate the ever increasing school population. Coincidentally, the city council was considering a bond issue to raise funds to improve the infrastructure of the rapidly growing city.   The insurance proceeds from the loss of the old school would help, but not much - only a paltry two thousand dollars.  The residents of western section of the city wanted a  school located on the site of old the school.  Eastern residents wanted a school located in Garrett Park.  Although suggestions of amounts to budget ranged from $10,000 to $25,000, the consensus seems to be $25,000 to accommodate the five hundred students expected by spring and twice as many expected to be attending city schools in four years.  The vote on the March 12th bond issue wasn’t even close.  One hundred ninety five men said yes. Only two dozen voters said no.

Losing a school is never easy - memories gone in an instant.  Death by razing is regrettable, but inevitable.  Death by blazing is tragic. So quick, with no time to pluck a single relic to adorn a museum wall. Yet, a solitary allegedly arsonistic misdeed by Robert Wells a century ago may have been a favor to us all.  Like the carpet of new grass which rises through the ashes of a burned pasture, a new school, one that made us even more proud, rose from the ashes of the old academy.

01-05

IT HAPPENED IN FEBRUARY

A Glimpse of Historic Happenings in Laurens County in February

In February of 1962, near the end of the second orbit of his historic flight, Astronaut John Glenn's Mercury spacecraft passed over the southern half of Laurens County.  Near the end of his third and last orbit, Glenn's Mercury heat shield came loose.  Glenn's life and the future of the space program was in limbo.  Glenn's capsule made it through the earth's atmosphere and floated safely into the Atlantic Ocean.  One of three destroyers stationed near Bermuda was the "U.S.S. Noa."  The "Noa" became the prime recovery ship.  It's crewman raised "Friendship 7" from the waters as hundreds of young sailors looked on.  One twenty year old sailor took pictures of Col. Glenn as he emerged from the cramped capsule.  After the excitement waned, the young man when back on duty until he received a message to report to the galley to take a pot of coffee to the Captain's quarters.  Inside the room was Col. Glenn, who was relaxing after the grueling flight.  Col. Glenn graciously accepted the coffee and thanked the young man.  That young man entered the navy right out of high school.  His name was Hubert R. Rogers, Jr. of Rentz, Georgia. Dublin Courier Herald, 3/1/1962, 3/16/1962.

The community of Wilkes, which lies between Minter and Rockledge, had been without a school for over a half a year following a fire in the spring of 1941.  Under the leadership of County Supt. Elbert Mullis, Wilkes Supt. D.H. Knight, and concerned citizens of the community, a new brick school was dedicated on February 13, 1942.  The board of trustees, which included Bernice Griffin, Lawton Wilkes, Loren Thigpen, Cone Thigpen, and Dewey Johnson, were right proud of their school, which was the only brick public school outside of a municipality.  All citizens of the county were encouraged to form a motorcade from Dublin out to Wilkes School on the Soperton Road.  A musical program was performed by the Laurens County Drum and Bugle Corps.  The featured speaker for the afternoon was Gov. Eugene Talmadge, one of Georgia's most popular governors. Laurens Citizen, January 29, 1942, p. 1.

     Ruth C. Gordon, Laurens County's Health Nurse, was admitted to Post No. 17 of the American Legion in Dublin on February 5, 1942.  Mrs. Gordon, a native of southwest Georgia, had just moved from Oklahoma to take the position of County Nurse.  Mrs. Gordon served as a nurse during World War I. Dublin Courier Herald, Feb. 2, 1942, p. 1.

     Marine Corporal James W. Bedingfield of Cadwell was awarded a Silver Star by Admiral Chester Nimitz for conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity in action against the Japanese at Namur Island, Kwajalein Atoll, on February 6, 1944.  Corp. Bedingfield of the 4th Marine Division took over command of his rifle squad after the leader was mortally wounded.  He was wounded in the neck and shoulders but refused to be evacuated until the squad was relieved. He directed his squad in the face of heavy enemy fire with skill, courage, and devotion to duty and with utter disregard of his own safety.  The squad was finally relieved after four  hours of fighting. Dublin Courier Herald, May 20, 1944, p. 1.

In one of the most lopsided basketball games ever played by Dublin High School, the

GreenHurricanes of Dublin defeated the Vidalia Indians by the score of 44 to 3.  Dublin was led by Pinky Smalley, who scored 21 points, and by All District forward, Olan Kersey.  The Dublin boys led 27 to 0 at the half.  The reserves played most of the second half and held the Indians scoreless until the last three minutes when the hapless team managed to score three foul shots. Dublin Courier Herald, Feb. 11, 1942, p. 6.

As a teenage soldier celebrating the end of World War II, James Starley never dreamed of fighting in the jungles of Vietnam twenty years later.  Sergeant James A. Starley of Dublin was killed by a bomb in Vietnam on February 22, 1965.  He  was the first of twenty two Laurens Countians who lost their lives during the war.  Sgt. Starley was buried with military honors in New Providence Baptist Church Cemetery in his native Wilkinson County.   The citizens of Laurens County erected a sign in front of the Dublin Laurens Museum honoring those men who served in the armed forces during the war.  The names of those who died were painted in gold.  A dedication ceremony was held on June 30, 1967, in which the families of Bobby Finney and James Cook, the second and third men who died during the war, were special guests.  Tragically, on the very day the sign was dedicated, Sgt. Starley’s fifteen year old son John Starley was killed in a car wreck. Dublin Courier Herald, Feb. 25, 1965, p. 1, July 1, 1967, p. 1.

     Captain Jack Loyd was billed as a premier soldier of fortune.  His exploits had taken him from the Rio Grande to Alaska. It was said that Captain Jack beat sixty seven men to the draw.  He claimed to have been a Texas Ranger and an Indian scout.  Captain Jack also claimed to have been in the No. 10 Saloon in Deadwood, Dakota Territory, the night Wild Bill Hickock was killed.  Captain Jack spent four days in Dublin during the second week of February, 1940.  The climax of his visit was a special show at the Ritz Theatre at 212 W. Jackson Street where free autographed photos were given to the first two hundred kids. Dublin Courier Herald, Feb. 10, 1940, p. 6.

     John Burke, Treasurer of the United States of America, spoke to a large crowd at the Bertha Theatre in Dublin on February 8, 1918.  Burke's visit was sponsored by the bankers of Laurens County, who entertained Mr. Burke with a delicious dinner. Dublin Courier Herald  2/8/1918, p. 1.

     Laurens Countians saluted their newest U.S. Senator, Sam Nunn, with a Bar-be-que at West Laurens High School Gym on February 1, 1975.   Over three thousand persons attended the political gathering, including Senator Herman Talmadge, Sen. Robert Byrd, and Governor George Busbee. Laurens County News, 2/5/1975, p. 1.

John Miller lived down along the Laurens-Wheeler line.  Mr. Miller awoke one February night to discover a pine tree burning in his yard.  Miller went out in a light rain to inspect the tree.  After several days the stump of the tree burned out.  Miller thought nothing else about the matter supposing that the tree had been struck by lightning.  After awhile the strangest thing began to happen.  Every time it rained smoke began to rise from the hole.  Sometimes on cloudy days when no rain was falling the fire would begin to burn. Can you solve this mystery? Dublin Post, June 28, 1882., p. 3.

01-06

The BATTLE OF KETTLE CREEK

It was no Yorktown, no Saratoga, no Monmouth.  The Battle of Kettle Creek, a somewhat minor skirmish of the American Revolution, was of major importance to Georgia and the southern colonies during the early years of our first American Civil War.  Citizens of the southern colonies were bitterly divided over the question of independence from the King of England.  Neighbors fought neighbors.  Brothers quarreled and never spoke to each other again.  Friends killed friends - all over the question of freedom.  While historians have concentrated on the battles in the Middle Atlantic states, the fighting in the South, although on a somewhat smaller scale, was just as bitter, and just as deadly.

Savannah fell in the waning days of 1778.  Sunbury, the inland port city to the south of Savannah, was the next to fall.  British commanders in Georgia and the Carolinas sent out offers of clemency and rewards to those who would renounce their government and promise their loyalty to the King.  British regulars, supported by loyalists in the Savannah River Valley area, moved northwest toward Augusta, which soon fell under British control.

Wilkes Countians were in a state of panic.  They gathered what they could carry and fled across the river to safety in South Carolina.  Those who remained loyal or took the loyalty oath were spared the destruction of their homes and property.  By the first of February, 1779, the British had established posts throughout the most populated areas of eastern Georgia.  The Colonial army mustered its forces on the Carolina side of the Savannah River, some thirty miles north of Augusta.  The Loyalists positioned themselves five miles closer to Augusta, but on the Georgia side of the river.  A minor skirmish broke out on the 10th of February.

On the 12th of February, forty six years to the day after British general, James Oglethorpe landed on Yammacraw Bluff and founded the Colony of Georgia, the Colonial army crossed the Savannah River at Cedar Shoal.  The following night, they camped on the banks of Clarke’s Creek, four miles from the British army.

When the 14th day of February dawned, the American army picked up the pace of their march.  Lieutenant Colonel Elijah Clarke commanded the left wing.  Colonel John Dooley led the right wing.  Each wing commander had a hundred men.   In the latter years of the Revolution in Georgia and the Carolinas, Elijah Clarke became one of Georgia’s most well known and respected colonial army leaders.  As a part of Georgia’s gratitude for his services, Clarke was granted vast amounts of land in Washington County, Georgia. The land  included nearly two thousand acres in the Buckeye District of Laurens County, near Ben Hall and Thundering Springs Lakes.  Col. Andrew Pickens led one hundred and fifty men in the center.  A small advance guard, one hundred fifty yards to the front, led the way.  Mary Pickens Simons, who lived in Dublin from 1897 to 1945, was a great granddaughter of Col. Pickens.  Like Col. Clarke, Col. Pickens became a general and went on to become more famous in the latter years of the Revolution. 

Colonel Boyd’s British army abandoned their camp but halted in mid-morning on the north bank of Kettle Creek.  The Redcoats took time to turn out their horses to forage in the river cane swamps which surrounded their position on two sides.  Having gone on short rations for three days, the hungry soldiers feasted on roasted corn and steers.

The Americans approached the British position unseen by pickets even though they were in plain sight.  Captain James McCall was summoned to reconnoiter the British position.  He found the enemy, which was oblivious to his presence.  Captain McCall was the father of Thomas McCall, an early resident of Laurens County and a soldier of the Continental Army himself.  Another son was Hugh McCall, who once owned a tract of land in Laurens County and was known as Georgia’s first historian.  His accounts of the affair at Kettle Creek form the basis of this article.

The Americans advanced.  British pickets fired and then retreated.  The entire British force retreated to the rear of their camp, formed a line, and launched an attack.  Colonel Boyd led their advance.  Pickens’s men moved to the right, toward the higher ground where they overran the British.  Boyd was twice struck by fire.  He fell, the second blow being a mortal one.  

The British retreated through the swamps.  An hour of close and vicious fighting ensued. Just as Col. Clarke ordered his men forward, his horse was shot out from under him.  A mulatto boy, Austin Dabney, jumped to his aid.  Clarke took Dabney’s horse and led a fierce charge up the hill. Young Dabney was struck hard in his thigh - a wound which crippled him for life.  Dabney was nursed back to health by the Harris family.  Dabney lived with the Harris family for the rest of his life and was buried with them in their family cemetery in Pike County.  One of the Harris children studied law under Judge Upson, who used his political influence to get a land lot granted to Dabney, who may have been the first African-American in Georgia to be rewarded for his service to the state in the American Revolution.

Dooley and Pickens pressed the attack on the main body of the British, who broke through the cane and renewed the attack.  The issue of the battle fell into doubt.  The Americans continued to their push.  The British fell back, retreating along all possible paths to Florida and the Creek and Cherokee nations.  Pickens comforted the dying British Colonel Boyd.  Boyd maintained that his army would have won the battle if he had not fallen.  He asked Pickens to send a message along with his belongings back home to his wife in England.  He died where he was laid.

The battle lasted for an hour and forty five minutes.  British supplies and arms were abandoned in place.  Seventy loyalists and British regulars were dead.  Seventy five more were taken prisoner.  Stephen Heard, who once owned a lot of land in lower Laurens County and would later become Governor of Georgia, was taken prisoner by the British.  Twenty  two other colonials were captured or wounded.  Only nine lost their lives.   In their haste to scatter in every direction, the loyalists left six hundred horses and a large cache of arms and equipment, just what the upstart rebels needed.  It was a splendid victory!  

The Battle of Kettle Creek was pivotal in the history of the American Revolution in the South.  The Americans, invigorated in their cause, took control of the upper Savannah River Valley.  Support for the Loyalist cause diminished.  The people came back to their farms.  In this month when we celebrate Georgia’s history, this was a moment for the ages.

01-07

THE BATTLE OF OLUSTEE

Yankees love Florida in the winter.  They invariably flock to the “Sunshine State” like migratory birds annually fly south.  One hundred and thirty seven years ago, Florida wasn’t the place the Yankees wanted to be.  They would have rather been at home with their families in the Merrimac Valley of Massachusetts, ice skating on the Mystic River in Connecticut, or building snowmen in upstate New York.  The Battle of Olustee, Florida  on February 20, 1864, on a per capita basis, was the deadliest battle in the history of the Civil War - more deadly than Gettysburg, more deadly than Antietam, and more deadly than Chickamauga.

Early in February of 1864, Gen. Q.A. Gilmore, commanding the Union forces surrounding Charleston, S.C. asked for and received permission to launch an invasion into northern Florida.  The invasion was an effort to  gain a strategic foothold south of Savannah, the intended target of Gen. William T. Sherman’s juggernaut later on that year.  By February 8th, the Union force was at full strength at Jacksonville, preparing for a march westward toward Lake City.  On the 13th, General Finegan moved his Confederate forces to the rail station of Olustee to block their advance.

Just before dawn on the morning of the 20th of February, the Union army broke its  camps on the St. Mary’s river and began a quick paced march.  Federal cavalry units in advance of the column moved too far ahead.  The Union soldiers, oblivious to any attack so soon, marched with their weapons empty.  Security on their flanks was nonexistent.  The Federal column halted about two o’clock in the afternoon.  Meanwhile, the Confederate forces had left their entrenchments and moved east in search of the west bound enemy force.

Col. George Harrison, commanding the 32nd Georgia Infantry, gave the orders to march at ten o’clock that morning.  Harrison, a direct descendant of Benjamin Harrison, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, was in overall command of the 2nd Brigade.  The 32nd Georgia was made up of units from various parts of the state.  Company G was made up of men who primarily hailed from the Old Savannah Road in eastern Laurens County, northern Montgomery County, western Emanuel County, and southern Johnson County.  Among those Laurens County soldiers who served in the company were Lt. Morris Dawson, and privates Ira H. Hilbun, Dennis Kea, Wesley Kea, William D. Martin, and Thomas Miller.  Two other companies of the 32nd were attached to the 64th Georgia and ordered to engage the enemy lightly and fall back.  

The 28th Georgia was given the order to drive the Union cavalry from the railroad.  The 28th Georgia was composed of several companies from Washington County.  Some members of these companies moved to Laurens County after the war.  Among those serving in Company A were  Simeon Bland, B.H. Bryan, James Z. Bush, Joshua M. Everett, and B.H. Wood.   William T. Bedgood, Asbury Crabb, Augustus L. Rogers, T.A. Wood, and James J. Young served in Company H.  A. Pridgen and P.A. Wood served in Company B, while J.A. Beatty was a member of Company E.

The remaining companies of the 32nd moved out of their entrenchments at 1:30 p.m. to support Colquitt’s forces.  The battle would be fought in a pine forest on firm and level ground.  There was little undergrowth. Visibility among the trees was good, unlike the dense forests of the Wilderness.  At the northern end of the two-thirds of a mile circular battle field was an old plowed field, where most of the fighting would take place.  The first contact came when the 7th Connecticut ran headlong into the 6th, 8th, 19th, and 64th Georgia regiments.  At first, the Spencer carbines of the 7th Connecticut were overpowering.  The 28th Georgia moved to shore up the flank of the 64th, which lost all of its field officers in a few minutes.  The battle had begun.  Neither side had selected the battle field.  There was no planning - no organization.

The Confederates reorganized at the railroad crossing.  They pressed the attack against the 8th U.S. Colored troops.  The 8th had marched twenty four miles that morning and were at the point of exhaustion.  The 28th and 19th Georgia relentlessly poured fire into the Union left.  In a short while, the 8th lost 300 of its 550 men.  Confused and dazed, the 8th moved back toward the main Federal force.  The 19th pressed the Union center, where  five successive company color bearers were shot down in attempts to raise their colors.  The 28th was engaged with the 47th New York, while the 32nd was attacking the 115th New York regiment.  Just as the battle began, the 6th Florida and 23rd Georgia regiments were thrown into the fray.  The 32nd Georgia moved swiftly to the Confederate left, which was under the overall command of Col. Harrison.  Once in position, Harrison ordered the Confederate left to advance and press the attack.

The battle raged for three hours, without a solitary lull.  The 115th New York lost seven officers and two hundred and eighty-nine men - killed, wounded and missing.  Confederate sharpshooters posted in trees and in the tall grass and reeds picked off one blue coated Union soldier after another.  The Federals were being routed with both direct and oblique fire.  Barton’s Brigade lost more than eight hundred men.  The 6th Florida was placed at the far Confederate right and was able to turn the Union left, which allowed the 28th Georgia to become even more effective with their fire.  The 54th Massachusetts Colored Regiment, the subject of the movie “Glory,” fell victim to the flanking fire of the 28th Georgia and 6th Florida.

Gen. Finnegan ordered all units to advance. The 32nd Georgia, on the Confederate left, executed a pinwheel move turning to envelope the Union right.  About four o’clock in the afternoon, the 32nd viciously struck the Union right occupied by the 1st North Carolina Colored Troops.  Reports began to come into Harrison that his men were about to run out of ammunition.  The ordinance trains were back at Olustee and had not been moved up to the battle.  Harrison, not waiting for couriers and any further delay, ordered his staff officers to go back to the rear of the line and bring up the badly needed rounds.  The rounds came.  The 32nd routed the 1st North Carolina, which lost ten officers and two hundred and twenty men.

Darkness fell over the battle field.  The combatants retired for the evening.  The Confederates remained on the battle field.  The defeated Union army retreated toward Jacksonville.  During the night and the next day, the Confederates buried their dead and picked up the bounties of war. Five cannon, sixteen hundred small arms, four hundred accouterments, and one hundred and thirty thousand rounds of ammunition were abandoned on the battlefield by the retreating Federals, who returned to Jacksonville on the 22nd.  Gen. H.W. Mercer recalled some of the Confederate forces back to Savannah.

The Battle of Olustee was a complete Southern victory.  The Federal army made no further attacks on Florida.  Of the fifty one-hundred Union soldiers engaged in the battle, eighteen hundred and sixty-one, or thirty six percent, were killed, wounded or missing.  While the Confederate force was of nearly equal size and possessed no superior advantage, their losses were almost half that of their opponents, percentage wise, on the bloodiest day in the Civil War.

 01-08

BOB  SHULER

A Pacific Ace

We buried Bob Shuler yesterday.  By military standards he was an “ace.”  He was a handsome and shy man who never liked to talk very much about his war experiences.  Maybe the number of planes with people inside of them wasn’t as important as others might think.  Bob Shuler died last Friday.  He, like the fictional John Miller in “Saving Private Ryan,” was an American school teacher who left the school room to save lives, not to take them.  Unlike Captain Miller, he returned to serve his country for many decades to come.

Lucien Bob Shuler was born on the 3rd day of January in 1920 in Griffin, Georgia.  He attended Griffin public schools and Young Harris College.    Shuler was principal of the grammar school, taught 7th grade home room  and coached the six-man football at Cadwell High School in the years before World War II.   His basketball and football teams won county championships and Sixth District championships.  Shuler began his military career on August 4, 1941 and became  an Army-Air Force aviation cadet on December 7, 1941, the first day of our country’s entry into World War II.  Just over six months later, Shuler was commissioned a Second Lieutenant upon his graduation from flight school at Stockton Air Force Base in California.   After a two day respite, Shuler reported to Morris Field, North Carolina to train as a fighter pilot with the 20th Fighter Group.  On August 16, 1942, Lt. Shuler was transferred to the 15th Fighter Group stationed at Wheeler Field, Hawaii.  On the 1st day of February, 1943, Shuler was reassigned, this time to the 44th Fighter Squadron, 18th Fighter Group, which was then assigned to the strategic military island of Guadalcanal. 

While flying on a routine patrol with Lt. Doug Curry on the afternoon of June 16, 1943, Lt. Shuler shot down his first enemy plane.  The two pilots encountered two Japanese Vals, one of which Shuler’s fire sent plummeting into the ocean.  On August 1st, twenty five to thirty Japanese Zeros encountered Shuler’s flight from behind and above.  In a head-on attack, Shuler destroyed a Zero over the island of Gizo. 

Three days later, nine P-40 American fighters were scrambled to meet a flight of twenty five Zeros.  The planes met at twelve thousand feet above the ocean.  Shuler, in a high speed attack, downed one enemy plane.  “ I picked out one that had passed under us in a dive.  I thought at first that he might be a dive bomber, but later saw that he was a Zero.  Firing a few bursts in the dive, I really got him as he pulled out.  I let him have another burst as I pulled out.  I saw him hit the beach and explode,” Shuler said.   After climbing back up to the remainder of the flight, Shuler made two additional attacks, downing two more Japanese fighters.   “Using my speed, I gained back my altitude and was back in the fight.  I leveled off and found another Zero in my sights.  A long burst from my guns caused him to flame and explode in midair.  Turning to the left, I found myself in a similar position as before; another Zero appeared at close range.  I opened fire and saw my tracers converging on the Nip.  His wings began to rock, and he fell off into a vertical roll.  I followed him down, firing all the way long.  The plane, blazing from the cockpit, came out of the roll and went into a slight dive.  The canopy came off, and the pilot stood up with one leg on the wing and the other inside the plane.  Pulling the parachute ripcord before he had left the plane, both the plane and chute went down in the flames,” Shuler later reported.   After spotting a lone Zero, Shuler downed it for his fourth victory of the day.  “As I turned off onto the fourth Zero that passed about five hundred feet above me, I closed in and opened fire.  Although I seemed to have been getting hits, the Zero didn’t want to burn, but I continued firing until his left wing and cockpit flamed.  I tagged onto another Zero, but my guns were out of ammunition after the first burst,” Lt. Shuler recalled.  His seventh and final victory occurred on August 10 over western New Georgia.  For his extraordinary achievement in the air battle, Lt. Shuler was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross in keeping with the highest traditions of the United States Army Air Force.   That day, an important one in the war in the Pacific, was the day when American forces captured the Munda Air Field.   In one hundred and thirty eight missions, Lt. Shuler was officially credited with the destruction of seven enemy planes and the probable destruction of seven more.

Shuler himself was once forced into the water.  He was drowning, being pulled down by the weight of his equipment, when a sailor pulled him out of the water.  “The worst thing that ever happened to me during the war was the two weeks on that Navy ship until I was able to return to duty,” Shuler commented.

Lt. Shuler continued to serve as a flight commander and squadron operations officer  in the South Pacific until January 18, 1944.  He was then transferred to Pinellas Air force Base in St. Petersburg, Florida, where he served as a pilot and aerial gunnery officer until the end of the war in September 1945.   During the war, Shuler, piloting P-40 Warhawks and P-38 Lightnings,  was  awarded three Distinguished Flying Crosses, the Army Air Medal with eleven Oak Leaf Clusters, a Distinguished Unit Citation, and various other medals, which he always kept in a drawer and never said much about them.

Before the end of the war, Lt. Shuler returned to Dublin to marry a Barbara Fay Bedingfield, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Bennett Bedingfield, in a wedding service held in the First Methodist Church.  The wedding announcement, along with highlights of Shuler’s aerial exploits, made the front page of the Atlanta papers, with the caption under Shuler’s photograph reading “Pacific Ace Downed by Cupid.”

After the war, Shuler continued his education at Mercer University in Macon, where he obtained he B.A. in English in 1948, all the time remaining on the inactive reserve list. While at Mercer, Shuler served as President of the “M” Athletic Club and was a member of the student government, Kappa Phi Kappa fraternity, Blue Key National Collegiate Honor Society, Sigma Nu, and was named as “Who’s Who” in national social fraternities.   Shuler returned to active military service in September of 1949 as an instructor at Craig Air Force Base, Alabama.  

When the Korean war broke out in the summer of 1950, Shuler was assigned to combat duty as a fight commander.  Shuler served for three hundred and sixty three days in Korea.  While he was not engaged in aerial combat as he had been in World War II, Shuler flew one hundred close in combat support missions in Korea.   On one occasion, Shuler was called upon to destroy a train.  Shuler’s guns struck a bull’s-eye just as the train began to exit an underground tunnel.  In over five hundred hours of combat missions, Shuler was awarded three Distinguished Flying Crosses, twenty three Air Medals, Presidential Unit Citations in both wars, and Campaign Medals with three stars in both wars.  

Shuler was transferred from active combat duty to Scott Air Force Base Illinois, where he served until July 1952.  He served for three years as Assistant PAS at Oklahoma State University.  Shuler returned to the Pacific in October 1955, where he served in Japan until June of 1958.  As the Cold War began to really heat up, Shuler was assigned to duty as Chief of Flying Safety of the 1st Missile Division at Vandenberg Force Base in California.   In March of 1959, he was transferred to Seymour Johnson AFB, North Carolina, where he served for nearly five years.  Shuler served in the Strategic Air Command  as Commandant of the 8th Air Force NCO Academy, as Commander of the 99th Air Refueling Sqdn., attended the War College at Maxwell Air Force base, and as a member of the Silk Purse Group in Manchester, England.  Col. Shuler concluded his thirty- year Air Force career with a three year stint as head of the Air Force R.O.T.C. at Virginia Tech University.  Shuler retired in 1973, and his family came back home to live in Dublin, where he resided until his death on March 9, 2001.

01-09

MARCH HAPPENINGS

The Windy Month in Laurens County History

Tiny Cedar Grove High School was one of the smallest high schools in Laurens County.  Among high school basketball teams of the early fifties, they were giants.  The 1951 girl's basketball team was nearly unbeatable.  The six girl team was led by forwards Ouida Dixon, Edwinda Davidson, and Alethia Burch.  Other team members were Ouida Mae Turner, Moena Faulk, Geneva Young, Marilyn Wommack, Hazel Browning, and Jackie Gay.  The girls defeated the Brewton High team by 43-19 to win the western area championship of the 6th District.  Coach L.E. Farr took his team to the state championships in Macon.  The Cedar Grove girls, led by Ouida Dixon with 24 points and Edwina Davidson with 14 points, defeated  Chestatee, 9th District Champions, by 50 to 35 in the first round of the playoffs.  The next night Edwina Davidson scored 22 points to lead a second half comeback over Cusseta High by the score of 40 to 37.  In the final game, the defense held Stilson to 32 points,  with Dixon and Davidson scoring all but three of the team's points for a two point victory.  The Cedar Grove girls were champions of Girl's Class C Georgia Basketball - the first state title ever won by a Laurens County team.  By the way, the boys team coached by E.C. Strickland and composed of Donnie Harrell, Carroll Stafford, J.T. Herrington, Gary Walker, H.W. Purvis, Delma Brown, M.C. Browning, Hugh Williams, A.O. White, and Hugh Howell made it to the state tournament the same year. Dublin Courier Herald, 2/17/1951, 2/27/1951, 3/2/1951, 3/3/1951, 3/5/1951, and 3/7/1951.

The Morris Motor Company always promoted its cars.  George T. Morris arranged to

have a Tri-Motor Ford Plane in Dublin on March 20, 1936.  The Ford plane was powered with three V-8 engines for the ultimate in riding comfort.  Laurens County citizens could pay one dollar for a twelve-mile ride above Dublin and parts of the county.  A special fifty-mile ride was scheduled for 10 A.M. on Sunday morning. The plane took off and landed in a field on North Jefferson Street, one half mile from the bridge on Hunger and Hardship Creek.  Dublin Courier Herald, March 19, 1936, pp. 2, 6. 

It was a sunny Easter morning.  Very few church goers thought they would

 need their umbrellas.  Near the end of the services, a short hail storm came with a half hour long rainfall following.  Long after the benediction, people were trapped inside.  Sunday dinners were getting cold. Finally the rain let up leaving .98 of an inch in the rain gauge.  You see it was an unusually dry day in the United States that day.  Dublin's rainfall total surpassed that of San Francisco's eight tenths of an inch, giving Dublin a record national rainfall for March 25, 1909. Dublin Courier Dispatch, March 30, 1909, p. 1.

Herbert Darsey loved to ride bicycles so much that he went into the business of selling and repairing them.  In the late winter of 1931, Darsey set out on a two week trip to the Georgia and South Carolina coast.  Darsey traveled to Savannah and thence to Charleston.  From there he rode back to Savannah before going on to Brunswick.  Darsey made a final trip back to Savannah before returning to Dublin.  Darsey spent only $2.50 on the trip.  He made several stops repairing bikes along the way.  His longest one day trip was over 160 miles.  That was the day he ran into the path of a wild cat.  He rode as fast as he could for hours to make sure the wild cat was not following him.   Dublin Courier Herald, March 19, 1931, p. 1.

            For many years a horseshoe was somewhat of a lucky charm or good luck piece. Monroe Rozier was out on the Jimmy Stanley plantation cutting wood.  Rozier was wearing his 53 year old pair of pants when he discovered a hand made horseshoe inside a block of wood.  The horseshoe, in a remarkable state of preservation, was thought to have been nailed on the side of the tree 50 to 100 years before for a hitching post. Dublin Courier Dispatch, March 30, 1909, p. 1.

Legendary lady golfers, Kathy Witworth and Carol Mann, put on a golf clinic at the Dublin Country Club on March 4, 1965.  The ladies were on a national tour sponsored by Wilson Sporting Goods.  Following the luncheon and clinic, Witworth and Mann played a nine hole exhibition round against Jeanelle Lovett and Mary Birdsong of the Dublin Ladies Golf Association.  Dublin Courier Herald, March 1, 5, 1965, p. 4.

Duren I. Parker and his son, Louis Parker, were well known as fine dairymen in these parts.  They were regarded as specialists in the breeding of fine dairy cattle.  Their dairy was located just to the northeast of Dublin on what is today known as Parker's Dairy Road.  In 1940, the Parkers put their best Guernsey cow to the test.  The Guernsey was in poor shape and had to be put on a special diet.  For 365 days "Watershed Belle's" milk production was measured by the American Guernsey Cattle Club and the University of Georgia.  The tests were done in an attempt to provide cattle breeders with improved stock.  When the total figures came in, the testers were amazed.  "Watershed Belle's"  production figures were more than three times that of the average Laurens County cow.  During the test period, eight year old "Belle" produced 14,743 pounds of milk and 721.05 pounds of butterfat, a national record for a Guernsey cow.  That converts into 1714 gallons or 4.7 gallons per day.   Dublin Courier Herald, March 11, 1940, July 22, 1940.

On March 4, 1968, Lela Warnock was named the first and only woman county commissioner of Laurens County.  Mrs. Warnock served the balance of the term of her husband the late Dewey Warnock, who died on February 23, 1968.  There has not been a women on the commission since.  (Maybe women are the smarter sex) Dublin Courier Herald, March 5, 1968.

Bob Hightower, Sr. was, in the purest sense of the word, a promoter. In February of 1920, Hightower painted bear paw prints on the sidewalk leading into the Crystal Theater.  A policeman followed the tracks into the theater "loaded for bear."  The less than amused policeman had the last laugh when he fined Hightower $25.00 for defacing the sidewalk.  This time he outdid himself.  Hightower, manager of the Ritz and Rose Theaters, was bringing in a true legend to the Dublin theaters on March 26, 1938.  Hightower expected so much interest in the show that he hired a policeman and fireman to handle the crowds.   The star of the traveling show claimed that he was the real Jesse James.  He claimed that he and his cousin, Bob Ford, changed his clothes with those of Charles Bigelow, a bandit.  It was Bigelow who was shot.  The purported James claimed to have attended his own funeral disguised as a preacher and serving as his own pallbearer.  The man even claimed that he helped in digging his own grave out in front of his mother's window.  The man was also known as John James, who was sentenced to jail for manslaughter in Illinois in 1926.  James failed to report to his parole officer and was arrested nearly five months later in Charleston, West Virginia. DCH, 2/13/20; 3/24,25/& 7/2, 1938.

01-10

MORE ANIMAL STORIES

Stories about animals were favorites among newspaper editors and readers in days gone by.  Here are some of the more unusual stories about a few animals in Laurens County’s history.

MAN'S BEST FRIEND? -  On the night of June 5, 1900, one of the legendary and more amusing events in the history of Dublin City government occurred.  Just as Alderman J.D. Smith took his seat in the old wooden city council building during the reading of the minutes, the agenda suddenly shifted.  A dog, bothered by fleas, entered the room and begin to scratch his itch.  Each scratch was accompanied by a pat of the dog's tail on the wooden floor.  As the intensity of the pats grew, so did the irritation of the council and those present.  Suddenly, Alderman Henry M. Kirke noticed that the dog was mad.  Mr. Kirke and reporter C.C. Smith made it out the door near where they were standing.  The usually erudite Col. James B. Sanders made a dash for the door but was cut off by the dog.  Col. Sanders retreated and then  climbed on a table and jumped up clinging to the railing.  He pulled himself up and then proceeded to jump from a second story window.  The power house superintendent then decided his services were needed at the power house and slipped by the dog.  Mayor James B. Hicks and Clerk, A.R. Arnau found secure positions which they tentatively held.  In an act of near perfect unison the remaining councilmen climbed on top of tables and chairs.  Finally someone yelled "Shoot him!"  Before anyone could get a shot off, the fleas decided to rest.  The dog's pain ceased and he was easily led from the hall.  Undoubtedly, a short recess followed.

THAT GOAT LOVED OATS -  Two Dublin men butted heads one day.  It was not over politics or a woman, but over a goat.  Its seems that the goat loved to eat oats from one man's oat field.  The hungry animal could jump clean over a fence.  The man caught the goat in his field and called the goat’s owner, demanding $1.00 in damages.  The goat’s master was insulted.  His high jumping, head-butting, goat was easily worth $10.00.  When the men couldn’t come to an agreement, the man put the goat in the coal house.  The owner promptly filed suit.  Judge Ed Burch called the case.  By this time, two lawyers had come in on the case and commenced to passionately argue their client’s case.  Judge Burch let the arguments go on for two hours but made up his mind in the first five minutes.  The judge directed the defendant "to return the goat forthwith and immediately, if not sooner and restore the goat to the bosom of its owner, with all costs to be charged to profit and loss."  Meanwhile, the goat had disappeared.  The constable looked everywhere from the basement to the clock tower.  Judge Burch threatened to fine the humiliated Constable Solomon for losing the goat.  The owner had taken the goat back home where he could eat all the oats he wanted, unless the goat was chained or had a broken leg.  The owner of the oat field resigned himself saying "it was useless to fight a goat and a Republican."  Courier Dispatch, May 2, 1901, p. 1.

     BITTEN BY HIS OWN DOG -  Terrell, a tobacco peddler, parked his wagon along the banks of Hunger and Hardship Creek. A visitor made his way into the camp.  A struggle ensued, and Terrell killed the man.  Terrell fled, and all hope of his capture was gone.  The relatives of the murdered man thought of Terrell's dog.  The little dog, tied to the wagon at the time of the murder, followed Terrell on his travels.  A posse followed the dog as he ran off along Terrell's trail.  In a short time, Terrell was captured.  Terrell was brought back to Dublin, and in 1848, he became the first white man hung in Laurens County. "A Brief History of Laurens County, the Superior Court, and Dublin, by T.B. Darley, 1920, p. 3."

     THE GREAT DEER CHASE -   One of Laurens County's most legendary tales was at first considered to be just a fable.  The story goes that Andy Hampton's speckled hounds were out running.  After coming upon a deer, they began to chase the  deer.  The chase continued beyond the limits of Laurens County and across the Ocmulgee River.  The deer ran to the Flint River and then to the Chattahoochee River.  After crossing into Alabama the deer was shot and killed by Jack Barlow of Selma.  Barlow just happened to be a former resident of Laurens County.  He recognized the dogs and sent word back to Dublin of the end of the chase. Many doubts about the tale were silenced when the story was verified by the well respected Col. Rollin Stanley of Dublin.  Dublin Post, 6/20/82

OVERMATCHED "GATOR" -  W. L. Renfroe had just arrived home from Dublin after a good Saturday night supper.  The moon was full and bright.  Renfroe lived just beyond Rocky Creek.  Just as he was approaching his pig pen, the tail of an alligator struck his horse.  The gator knocked the horse down and took up a defensive position.  Renfroe picked up a fence rail and jammed it down the animal's wide open throat.  While waiting for his family to bring his firearms, Renfroe amused himself by filling up the gator's mouth with a dozen rails.  The alligator reportedly chewed them all to pieces.  Renfroe then brought in the heavy weaponry firing twelve pistol shots and four shotgun blasts into the defenseless animal.  Renfroe then struck the gator eight times in its head with an axe.   The gator's thick skin repelled nearly half of Renfroe's assaults.  Renfroe, then completely exhausted, went home. Twelve hours after the fight had begun, the animal died.  Renfroe loaded the animal onto his wagon and brought him into town to show off his trophy.  The ten-foot three- hundred pound alligator was one of the largest ever seen in the county.  It was discovered that in striking the horse, the gator broke its tail.  Renfroe was lauded by all for his heroic efforts in killing "the monster."  Renfroe's feat made national news in "The Washington Post."  Dublin Post, June 7, 1882, p. 3, July 19, 1882, p. 3. 

     THE BARNYARD DRUNK.  Zenus Fordham, who was mostly known for his longetivity as a centenarian, was making some apple brandy.  Just as the low wines started to run, Mr. Fordham was called away. He left a bucket to catch the low wines.  He returned the next morning to find that there was no wine in the bucket.  Mrs. Fordham remarked that something else was missing.  The Fordhams looked around the barnyard and found one of their milk cows "dead drunk."  Mr. Fordham figured that the old girl drank nearly two gallons, the usual run.  After a while the cow got up and was led home.  After two days of staggering around the cow finally sobered up. Dublin Post, August 18, 1880.

COME SEE MY PIG - R.P. Vaughn, Jr. was very proud of his pig.  So proud that he charged folks ten cents to see it.  Vaughn's pig had one head but two bodies and eight feet. The article failed to disclosed if Vaughn ever thought about bar-be-quing his pig for the celebration of the 4th of July.    DCD 4/14/1911, p. 8.

01-11

THOMAS EDWARD BLACKSHEAR

Gone to Texas

Thomas Blackshear sought fortune for most of his life.  He found it -  not in the county of his birth nor on the fertile lands of Southwest Georgia.  He found wealth on the plains of the Texas, only to slowly see it slip through his fingers as a result of the emancipation of slaves after the Civil War.  This son of one of Laurens and Montgomery’s oldest and most prominent families became one of the two wealthiest men in Grimes County, Texas.  Blackshear’s writings on his experiences in the years before, during, and after the Civil War give us an interesting view of agriculture in the South.  

Thomas Blackshear was born in Montgomery County, Georgia on August 18, 1809.  His father, Edward Blackshear, was a brother of the Joseph and David Blackshear of Laurens County, Georgia. His mother was the former Emily Mitchell.  In the first half of the 1820s, the Blackshear family joined in the exodus from Laurens and Montgomery counties to Thomasville in Thomas County, Georgia. There was no future in the “Pine Barrens” of Montgomery County, nor in the struggling hamlet of Dublin.  

Thomas’s parents sent him to Athens to study at the University of Georgia, where he graduated in 1828.  Three years later,  Blackshear married his hometown sweetheart, Emily Goodwyn Raines. Blackshear needed a fortune, large land holdings and slaves to support his wife and nine children.  In keeping with other members of his family, he entered public service.  He represented Thomas County in the Georgia legislature in 1836 and 1837. In 1841, Blackshear moved over to the Senate chamber to serve his fellow citizens for three years.  In the late 1830s, the first railroads were being built across the state of Georgia.  Blackshear bought stock in the Brunswick and Florida Railway Company.  He was elected secretary of the board of directors on January 9, 1839.

Thomas County and other counties in southwest Georgia bore the brunt of Indian attacks in the mid 1830s.  In 1836, militia units joined regular army forces in a mission to rid Georgia of the Seminole Indian tribes. Blackshear, in the tradition of his famous Indian fighting uncles from Laurens County, took command of a scout company of the second brigade of the Sixty Ninth regiment.  Blackshear remained in military service for several more years before retiring with the rank of major general.  

Blackshear had established quite a large plantation by the middle of the 19th Century.  Thomas County, by the standards of its older citizens, had become over crowded.  Blackshear was growing restless.  Too many people were flocking to Thomas County, where winters were mild and the fields were fertile.  Blackshear sold out and headed for Texas, taking his personal belongings and his slaves with him.

Blackshear located a tract of bottomland on the Brazos River, south of Navasota in Grimes County.  Soon he bought more land.  By 1860, Blackshear’s estate had grown to over one hundred fifty thousand dollars in property, including one hundred twenty three slaves.  Blackshear’s plantations encompassed nine hundred acres of improved lands, along with other lands which totaled one hundred and forty five thousand dollars in value.  By today’s standards, he would have been a millionaire many times over.  Some have credited Blackshear’s success to the fact that he allowed slaves to be put in such positions of trust as assistant overseers and crew foremen,  thereby encouraging the slaves to take pride in their work. But compare this notion with the fact that Blackshear did not follow a practice of many other slave holders to allow their slaves a half day off from field work on Saturdays.  However, he did give them a periodic half day off to clean their homes with scalding hot water.   Blackshear wasn’t totally callous about his relationships with is slaves.  In a diary entry of July 13, 1861, Blackshear lamented the death of his trusted servant Edmund.    Blackshear, at fifty one, was too old to serve in the Confederate Army.  He supported the war effort with the fruits of his plantation. Four of his sons served their state in military service.  

Times were tough after the end of the war.  The source of virtually free labor which southern planters had relied on for centuries had been abrogated.  Blackshear was less than satisfied with the employment and work habits of freed slaves.  He saw all that he had ever worked for slowly slipping away.  Blackshear maintained that he could do better with white sharecroppers, with each farmer tending a forty to sixty acre farm.  Blackshear wrote to the editor of “The Thomasville Southern Enterprise,” seeking his support in recruiting farmers who would be willing to relocate to Texas.  He maintained that the soils of southwestern Georgia had been depleted and that the bottom lands of the Brazos River would bring fortunes to all of those who would come to Texas.  As an enticement for the new farmers, Blackshear proposed that he would furnish each farm with a comfortable house, a kitchen, smoke house, and corn crib, all supplied with a well.  Each farmer would have a free family garden and enough material and land to support the building of a split rail fence and the maintenance of a livestock pens.

Blackshear was still trying to realize his dream of success.   He had been one of the twenty five wealthiest slave owners in Texas. Blackshear had been planning to make a personal trip to Georgia to find new families to emigrate to Texas, when he contracted yellow fever and died on October 20, 1867.

01-12

TOMMY  BIRDSONG

A True Survivor

Tommy Birdsong was a true survivor.  Being a prisoner of war, especially on the Pacific islands during World War II, was not like “Hogan’s Heroes” nor the over hyped, over staged, and immensely popular “Survival” shows on television today.  It was worse than Andersonville, worse than Elmira, and worse than Alcatraz.  Birdsong and thousands of Americans were humiliated, brutalized, and tortured beyond any standard of human decency.  Birdsong survived.  Most didn’t.

Tommy Birdsong, a native of Gordon, Georgia, was a young golf pro in Jacksonville, Florida.  This best years of his  life were ahead of him.  Birdsong was one of the first men drafted in the National Guard in 1940.   After training in Texas, he was sent to San Francisco and thence to the Philippines in July 1941.  

Just three days before the invasion at Pearl Harbor, Birdsong and his artillery unit were transferred to Corregidor, an island in the Philippines.   The Japanese attacked on December 7th with two hundred thousand men against seventeen thousand Americans and some sixty thousand Philippine soldiers in the Corregidor defense lines.  In a television interview on “Dublin Today,” Birdsong said, “ It always like to say this, they say it was a surprise, but it wasn’t a surprise to us. Because McArthur was the commanding general there at the time.  He moved us into the field with live ammunition three days before they bombed us - so they knew about it.  We were ready.  We thought we were ready, of course.”

  The Americans were overrun by two thousand Japanese who were in the initial amphibious assault.  The invaders also landed in North Luzon, up from Bataan.  Japanese fighters attacked Corregidor and the surrounding islands.  Birdsong's anti-aircraft battery  shot down seventeen planes before it was transferred to Bataan, a more easily defendable peninsula on the flank of Corregidor. Day after day, night after night, the Japanese pounded the American fortifications on Bataan.  The well fortified Americans turned back a major attack in February of 1942.

Thirty minutes after noon on April 9, 1942, General Edward King surrendered his American forces on Bataan.   Birdsong and thousands of his fellow soldiers were force marched to Bataan in what became known as the Bataan Death March.  On the second day, Birdsong and many others "hit the bush" and escaped by swimming back to Corregidor.  Birdsong described the events: “We were captured, surrendered.  My unit stayed together on the march, the so infamous “Death March.” I didn’t know at the time, we had about nine thousand American soldiers and about forty thousand Philippine soldiers.  On the second day of the march, we kept my unit together- there were one hundred and fourteen of us in my unit - out of the two hundred or so.  We had fought for the last three months.  Everybody turned infantry.  Civilians, Americans, all came from Manilla to Bataan.  They retreated there.  It had Marines, sailors, everybody in my platoon, fighting like infantry.  It was pretty rough, “The Death March.”  It guess you have read about it.  On the 2nd day, we hit the bush.  We had planned it - passed the word up.  We were going to try and escape.  We were going through the jungle on a narrow trail.  When we all hit the bush, we all made to Mariveles.  We were on top of Mariveles Mountain.  We made it down to across from Corregidor.  They were coming from Corregidor to pick up all they could in boats.  Some of them swam across, it was about a mile across there.  I fortunately got a boat and made it across.  We lost two men in the escape, only two men out of one hundred and fourteen, which was fortunate.”

           The fighting on Corregidor lasted about a month.  The Americans were completely surrounded.  The American Navy, still reeling from the devastating attack on Pearl Harbor, was unable to launch a rescue mission.   Japanese ships and planes constantly bombarded the well fortified American positions.   Then came the invasion.  Birdsong recalled, “  They just overwhelmed us.  There were thousands and thousands of Japanese.  We were captured again on Corregidor.  We stayed there a month.  The night they invaded us on Corregidor - it was surrounded by water and ships.  I had a BAR (a Browning Automatic Rifle).  It fired it until it froze up.  There were many Japanese attacking us.  Then we were taken.  General Wainwright finally surrendered the Philippine command.  I was there when we surrendered.  I was about thirty feet away from him when he surrendered to the Japanese.  We were rounded up and organized into units of five hundred and were taken to Manilla for the so called “Humiliation March.”  They had “lost face.”  It had taken a month to take us on Corregidor.  They paraded us in the “Humiliation March.”  We were sent on up to Cabanatawon.  It guess you read about that in the papers - about the infamous Cabanatawon Prison Camp,”  where hundreds of men were dying of malaria and malnutrition.  The prisoner's diet consisted of three things: rice, rice, and more rice.” 

Japanese soldiers  paraded the American prisoners in the streets, kicking anyone who couldn’t or wouldn’t keep up the pace.  “They were barbaric.  There is no way to describe how they were at that time.  This country has never had the full story.  There have been books written about it.  No one believes it.  We called it “humiliation.”  They lost face because we had held out so long on Corregidor for a whole month.  They had the entire army and an air force.  We had no air force, of course, no navy, but we were there with our guns.  We were pretty well fortified with our big guns.  We held out for a month.  They lost so much face.  They wanted to get even with us,” Birdsong said.

Birdsong was kept in Cabanatawon Prison until November of 1942.    The Japanese crammed  Birdsong and another five hundred or so Americans into ships, if you can call them ships, bound for Japan and Korea.   Tommy was sent to Japan.  They called them “Hell Ships.”  Birdsong was put down in the hold of a freighter - nothing to eat, except something every now and then, just to keep them alive.  On the way to Japan just off the coast of Taiwan, an American submarine attacked Birdsong’s ship, oblivious to the fact that it was packed with Americans.  Americans commanders assumed it was a  fleet of Japanese freighters.  Three ships were sunk.  One of them had Americans in it.  Two of them were freighters.  “They didn’t sink my ship of course,” Birdsong said.

The prisoners had very little possessions, sometimes only the clothes on their back, which eventually were worn into shreds and threads.   Many only had their hope and their faith. “ I wanted to live.  It’s hard to kill a man when he doesn’t want to die. If a man has hope, he can live.  Fortunately during the second year I was in there, I got a job in the kitchen cooking rice.  I had that job nearly a year.  I normally weighed about one hundred seventy five to one hundred and eighty pounds.  I was a tall man.  When I got of prison camp, I weighed ninety pounds - that’s how much I had to eat,” Birdsong remembered.

  Birdsong and his group, or what was left of them, arrived in Osaka, Japan.   The temperature was below freezing, 23 degrees - weather not exactly fit for frayed khaki short sleeve shirts on the shoeless Americans.  Two Hundred and twenty five of the five hundred men died in the first year.  Those who were able, were forced to dig coal in deep mines.  Birdsong was down to ninety pounds having lost half of his body weight.  By 1945, only a single dozen of the original 500 men were left.  

The survivors kept praying, hoping for their freedom, before they died of malnutrition.  The bombing raids until July, 1945 rained havoc all around their position, but never struck their compound.  Birdsong's best friend was killed by a guard.    Birdsong remembered, “ We were eventually sent to Nagasaki - that’s where they dropped the atomic bomb.  I was down in the coal mine. I watched out the windows just before they dropped the atomic bomb.  You’ve heard of the sky being black with airplanes, well, there were airplanes everywhere.  They dropped bombs all around the prison camp.  I mean they tore up the place. But not one bomb fell in our camp or in our compound.  That’s how accurate they were.  They knew where we were.   We were working down in the mine.  I was down in the coal mine when they dropped the bomb.  I was right outside of Nagasaki.  We thought it was an earthquake, because rocks and everything else fell.  We came out the next morning. They brought us out.  We had to wear our masks and everything over our faces.  You can still see where my hands are burned.  That’s from the radiation.  You’ve read about the atomic bomb and what it did.  It’s hard to describe it.  The whole big city - it was just wiped out - nothing standing.  I was a few miles outside of Nagasaki when the dropped the bomb.  Our camp was in Nagasaki, so we were sent through the streets.  Everything was just leveled.  Fortunately, right after that, they surrendered.  They kept us in the camp.  We didn’t have to go back to the coal mines.  That was the second atomic bomb they dropped.  Hiroshima was the first.  This was the second.” 

“There was no way to describe the relief we felt.  At first, we couldn’t believe it.  We thought that they would fight until the last man, because they did that in Japan.  They told us this.  We saw evidence of this in the Philippines.  They attacked us there and they kept coming toward us until the last man in the platoon.  We mowed them down.  They were yelling “Banzai!” and such as that. They were religious fanatics.  They thought that if they died in battle that they would immediately go to heaven.  We thought that we never expected to get out.  It didn’t think I would, unless there was some sort of armistice or some sort of negotiations.  That was the only thing to hope for.  We never thought the Japanese would surrender.  Of course they did, and I came back.”

It took another week after the second atomic bomb was dropped for American B-29 bomber pilots to begin flights to drop food to the prisoners into the camps.  Birdsong and the other lucky ones were caught in a strange place with no idea of how there were get home.  American bombers  tore up Nagasaki and most of the rest of  Japan in eight months of bombing missions.   Decades after the war, Birdsong met McGrath Keen, Sr. in Dublin.  The two men related their experiences during the final days of the war.  After a few minutes, Birdsong and Keen concluded that Keen, flying the “Lucky Lady,” was one of the pilots who dropped boxes of food and clothing to into Birdsong’s camp.   A few days later,  the paratroopers jumped into the camp areas.  They secured the area,  commandeered a train and took Birdsong and the rest of the men in Nagasaki before boarding on an aircraft carrier.

Tommy  cried.  He was  crippled at the time.  A Japanese guard hit him in the back of the neck with the butt of his rifle and broke his neck.    There was no doctor available.  An old army corpsman fashioned a brace by wrapping a  rope around Tommy’s neck   Tommy spine healed, but it grew back crooked.  He was beginning to get partially paralyzed on the right side.  After the liberation, Tommy stayed.  McArthur took the survivors  back to the Philippines.

Birdsong’s family received a  notice that he  was missing in action.  Everyone thought he was dead, except his mother.  “She never gave up.  Without my faith I could not have made it through.  We had church and prayer meetings - not like our churches, but we would get together and pray.  That helped me a lot.  Oh Lord, that helped me through, “  Birdsong tearfully remembered.  

Tommy Birdsong  won the Bronze Star for heroism.  In fact, his entire unit  won the Bronze Star,  the fourth highest award that you can get in service.    The unit award came from the gallantry in the fighting in the Philippines by a special Congressional citation..   Tommy was wounded twice and received the Purple Heart with an oak leaf cluster. Congressman J.  Roy Rowland, Jr. of Dublin helped Birdsong get a Prisoner of War Medal. Tommy Birdsong downplayed his hero status, “ The heroes are left back there.  The heroes are back on Bataan and on Corregidor.  The ones who came back were fortunate and with the help of the good Lord, that’s the only reason they did.”

Birdsong survived, but barely.  He was severely beaten about his neck with a rifle.  Three of his vertebra were shattered and permanently fused together.  From that day on, he couldn't hold his head up straight.  But he did hold his head high the day he came out of the depths of Hell and every other day after that. He was returning to the freedom which so many millions of young men and women had fought so valiantly to defend.  Tommy Birdsong came to Dublin in the 1960s as the golf pro at the Dublin Country Club.  The Birdsongs moved back to Dublin in the 1980s.  Birdsong passed away a couple of years ago.  

01-13

THE JOHNSON GRAYS 

AT CHANCELLORSVILLE

Lee’s Greatest Victory

One hundred and thirty eight years ago this week, the wheels were set in motion to begin the climatic end to the Civil War.  A Confederate victory at Chancellorsville made Robert E. Lee and his men feel invincible.  Two months later, the Confederate hopes were smashed at the Battle of Gettysburg.  A group of Johnson County men, who called themselves the Johnson Grays and who were assigned to the 14th Georgia Infantry Regiment of Thomas’s Brigade, Army of Northern Virginia, were right in the middle of this horrific fight.

Following the devastating Union loss at Fredericksburg in December of 1862, Gen. Hooker, the new commander of the Army of the Potomac, planned a bold move to attack Gen. Robert E.  Lee’s forces on the opposite side of the Rappahannock River.  Hooker sent the major part of his force north, up the river where they crossed the river and turned south.   The move went totally unnoticed by Lee, who discovered the movements at the last moment.  The Johnson County Grays, attached to Thomas's brigade, had wintered at Camp Gregg near Fredericksburg.  

Lee’s  commanders, Ambrose Powell Hill and Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson, moved from Fredericksburg along the Mine Road toward Tabernacle Church in late April, 1863.  Jackson arrived at Chancellorsville on the 1st of May.  Hill was located to his rear along the Orange Plank Road. By nightfall, the 14th Ga. was located about one mile east of Catherine's Furnace.  Thomas relieved Posey's brigade just after sun up on the 2nd.   

Jackson devised his boldest plan of his military career.  He planned to take his entire corps on a long march south and west, all the way around Chancellorsville.  At first, the Federals, thought Jackson's men were moving away from their lines.  Thomas's Brigade was sent to the rear of the column to assist the artillery train just after noon.    

The Battle Ground Guards, under the command of Gen. A.R. Wright, came to the aid of their fellow Johnson Countians to prevent  Geary’s attack on Thomas and the Johnson Grays.   Thomas and Archer had to turn their brigades back to help Wright and Posey in front of Catherine's Furnace.  After the Federal attack was repulsed, Thomas and Archer double-timed along Jackson's route, which followed the Brock Road.  By six o'clock that afternoon, Thomas was still two miles below Catherine Furnace - miles away from Jackson's front. 

Just after dark, Jackson moved to front of the column to scout for the Federal flank or rear.  While he was returning from the Federal lines, “Stonewall” was struck by elements of the North Carolina Infantry.  Jackson fell and was taken away.  The beloved General died  at Guinea Station  on the 10th of May.  Many say that the hopes of the Confederate Army died with him.  A.P. Hill succeeded to the command of the corps. 

Thomas’s Brigade marched up the Orange Plank Road , reaching Wilderness Church about ten o’clock that night.  Thomas finally  arrived west of Chancellorsville just before  midnight.  His command was placed on Pender's left, north of the Turnpike and just west of Bullock Road.  The moon was bright.  Shells were bursting.  The battle raged on until  after midnight.  By dawn, Gen. J.E.B. Stuart, now commanding Hill's Corp's, had ten brigades massed, waiting for an early morning attack.

The climax of the Chancellorsville battle began just after dawn.   Carr's Federal troops began to pull back as they were threatened by Pender and Thomas.  Thomas's brigade at the northern line of the attack rapidly turned the Federal flank.   At seven-thirty,  Pender and Thomas attacked Huger, striking Hay's right line south of the Orange Plank Road.  Thomas found the enemy two hundred and fifty yards away, and drove  them  from their works.  A second attack met with a similar success.  Gen. Hooker sent French's division of Couch's Corps to attack Thomas on his left flank and at his rear.  At this point, Thomas had no troops to protect his flanks.  Carroll's Federals threatened Thomas’s men, who were forced to retreat over Berry's and Slocumb's log works.  Thomas joined with Pender and Hall.  About ten o'clock that morning,  the Confederates pushed the Federals across the Orange Plank Road and back north of Chancellorsville. For the next two days, Hill's Corps kept Burnside's Army in check north of Chancellorsville.  

The Grays suffered the loss of Capt. Robert Harmon who was killed in the fighting.  He was succeeded by 1st Lieutenant Swain M. Fortner.  Jr..   Second Lt. James Hicks was wounded in the fighting.   J.J. Sumner was wounded in his first battle and died a few days later. His kinsmen Joseph C. Sumner suffered his third wound of the war.  John W. Walker, who had been wounded at the Second Manassas, died from his wounds several days after the battle.  Thomas’s Brigade lost 177 killed and wounded, including Lt. Colonel James Fielder, who was killed along with three captains in the brigade.

Private George W. Hall of Company G described the scene at Chancellorsville.

 “The shrieks and groans of the wounded and dying as I lay nearly insensible around me that night, displayed all the horrors of war and put feelings and imaginations through the mind that I never wish to experience again.  There scattered over the fields and immense forest the battle field encompassed lay thousands of poor wounded and dying soldiers far away from home and friends, writhing in the agonies of death with no one to speak a soothing words to their ears." 

Gen.  Lee’s top aide, Col. Charles Marshall, described the scene as the triumph, as the oh so beloved Virginia general rode on the battlefield after the fighting subsided.  " The fierce soldiers with their faces blackened with the smoke of battle, the wounded crawling on feeble limbs from the fury of the devouring flames, all seemed possessed with a common impulse.  One long unbroken cheer, in which the feeble cry of those who lay helpless on the earth, blended with the strong voices of those who still fought, rose high above the roar of the battle, and hailed the presence of the victorious chief."   

            The 14th took the rest of the month to rest and reorganize the regiment.  The Grays’s  temporary commander Lt. Swain M. Fortner, a forty three year old former state representative, was allowed to resign from the service.  He acknowledged that he did not possess enough military skill to lead the company.  Fortner was replaced by William O. Clegg who had been captured at Seven Pines and exchanged two months later.   James Hicks was promoted to 1st Lieutenant.  William T. McVay, who recently transferred to the company, was appointed 2nd Lieutenant.  During the break in the fighting, the 14th Georgia and Thomas's Brigade were placed in Pender's Division.  By mid-June, Lee launched his offensive into the North.  Lee and his Army of Northern Virginia moved through the Shenondoah Valley with their sights set on Chambersburg, Pennsylvania.

In the first three days of July, the Johnson Grays would witness Lee’s greatest defeat, “The High Water Mark of the Confederacy at the Battle of Gettysburg.  Fortunately for the men and their families, the Grays were not totally engaged in the several skirmishes in and around Gettysburg. They survived those horrible days, only to be engaged in the vicious fighting next spring west and south of the battle known as Chancellorsville. 

01-14

EARLY LAWYERS OF LAURENS COUNTY, GEORGIA

Today, May 1st, is law day.   Law Day was established by Congress forty years ago as a way of honoring those lawyers who serve the communities of our nation. In the 1800s, lawyers were among the most respected men in our community.  Because of their superior intellect and education, they often were elected colonels of the local militia, hence the long used title of Colonel for lawyers in Georgia.  Court sessions were rare, only twice a year in each county in the circuit.  Lawyers were forced to travel from county to county and even circuit to circuit to make a living, a surprisingly modest living at that.  Much of their wealth came from pursuits in other fields, including land speculation, political office, and agriculture.  Many of our early lawyers remained only a short while in our community before they left, seeking fortune and fame in the growing areas of the state.  Here are the stories of a few of these eminent men.

The preponderance of the available evidence indicates that it was not Daniel McNeel, but Eli Simms Shorter, who was the first lawyer in Laurens County.  Eli Simms Shorter was born in Georgia in 1792 and grew up in Oglethorpe County.  As he approached manhood, Shorter quit school and began reading law books in his brother's medical office.  After seven months of reading law, Shorter was admitted to the bar during a court session in Monticello.  Later in that month of February 1812, Eli Shorter moved to Dublin, where he established a lucrative practice.  Shorter purchased a lot in Dublin on December 7, 1812.  He sold the lot, which may have been improved by a small house, in October of 1815, shortly after his move to Putnam County.  Shorter continued to practice in Laurens County.  Putnam Countians elected Shorter to the legislature, where he served from 1818 to 1821.  In 1822, he became the first judge of the Flint Circuit.  Shorter engaged in profitable land speculation in eastern Alabama.  Confidential letters revealing his zest for profits were publicized by his opponents.  Shorter was elected as Judge of the Ocmulgee Circuit in 1827.  He resigned after six weeks following a church scandal and returned to the legislature.  He served his final term in 1829.  In the early 1830s, Shorter moved to Columbus, where he died on December 14, 1836.  Shorter was remembered as a brilliant lawyer and jurist, an unscrupulous land speculator, and a hopeless card playing addict - though he was praised for resisting the temptation to drink alcohol while playing cards.

William McLendon was born in Laurens County on June 3, 1818.  He was a son of a Scottish emigrant, Reason McLendon.  In 1849 he went to California during the "Gold Rush."  Traveling by boat he reached the Isthmus of Panama, where he traveled by mule and boat to the Pacific Ocean.  From there he and his party chartered a boat for a 2000 mile ride south to Callio, Peru.  Once there, the party boarded a boat for California.  McLendon returned to Georgia in 1851.  Evidently, he found no gold.  He began his practice of law in Thomasville.  He practiced until the close of the Civil War.  Most of that time, he was in partnership with Robert S. Burch, former law partner of Alexander Stephens, Vice President of the Confederate States of America.  He had been in Jamaica after the freeing of the slaves and saw what terrible conditions had ensued.  In 1866 he moved to Kentucky.  The cold weather became too much for McLendon, and he returned home to Thomasville.  He engaged in farming for a few years.  During the boom years following reconstruction, new railroads sprang up across southern Georgia.  McLendon contracted to build the Georgia and Florida Railroad from Thomasville to Albany.  He later built a substantial portion of the railroad from Waycross to Albany.  Before the financial panic of 1873, his company graded large portions of three unfinished railroads in southwestern Georgia.  His last major project was the Pensacola and Atlantic Railroad.  His son, Samuel Guyton McLendon, owned one-fourth of the company.  Samuel McLendon served as Georgia's Railroad Commissioner from 1907 to 1909 and as Secretary of State from 1919 to 1928. 

Lott Warren was born in Burke County, Georgia, on October 30, 1797.  The Warrens moved in 1804 to what later became Laurens County.  Lott, an orphan at the age of 12, went to live with his uncle, the Rev. Charles Culpepper.   While working as a clerk in a Dublin store, Warren was drafted into the Georgia Militia.  The young man was elected Second Lieutenant of the Laurens County company.  Lt. Warren was then appointed Adjutant of the detachment.  Lt. Warren returned home and studied law under Daniel McNeel before being admitted to the bar in 1821.  In 1824, Col. Warren represented Laurens County in the Legislature.  In 1826, Warren served as the Solicitor General of the Southern Circuit from 1826 to 1828.  Warren  moved to Twiggs County, representing that county in the Senate in 1830.  In 1831, Col. Warren began a three year term as Judge of the Southern Circuit.  Judge Warren then moved to Americus. In 1838, he was elected to the United States Congress.  After serving two terms in Congress, Lott Warren returned to private practice.  Judge Warren returned to the bench, serving as Judge of the Southwestern Circuit from 1844 until his resignation in August of 1852.  Lott Warren was a faithful member of the Baptist Church and followed the teachings of Christ in his legal and political career.  Judge Warren fell dead while making a speech in the courthouse at Albany on June 17, 1861.

Dr. Peter Early Love, a Laurens County native who also practiced law and sat on the bench of the Superior Court in Dublin and Thomasville,  was elected to Congress in 1859. Congressman Love was one of the Georgia congressmen who resigned their seats when the Ordinance of Secession was passed. 

James Lindsey Seward was born in the infant town of Dublin in 1813. Seward moved to Thomasville following his father's death in 1826. At the age of 23,  Seward was admitted to the bar at Hawkinsville.  Col. Seward was elected to the Georgia Legislature the following year and served three terms.  Seward returned to the legislature in 1847 and again in 1851 and 1852.  Seward defeated Francis S. Bartow in the 1852 congressional election in the 1st District of Georgia.  Congressman Seward served six turbulent years before the Civil War.  He chose not to run for re-election in 1858 but was never the less elected to the State Senate for four years.  Congressman Seward served as a delegate to the Democratic National Convention in 1860.  Seward declined an offer to serve as the provisional governor of Georgia in 1867.

The most famous lawyer of 19th Century Laurens County was not known as a lawyer.  George Troup, a Princeton educated attorney, was known more for his service in the Congress, the Senate, and as a two term governor of Georgia.  Court times were the only busy times in Dublin before the Civil War.  Among the visiting lawyers were Charles J. Jenkins and Herschel V. Johnson, future governors of Georgia, and Judge Arthur E. Cochran, brother of Dublin attorney John Cochran, namesake of Cochran, Georgia and President of the Macon  and Brunswick Railroad. 

They were eminent men, who believed in serving their community.   They were men who believed in the ideal taught to me by my father, Dale Thompson- that lawyers are put on this Earth to only to serve people and their community, no one else, not even themselves.  Case closed.  

01-15

MISTER HALLEY'S COMET

A Regularly Returning Piece of Our Past

It takes seventy six years, an average lifetime, to make its journey around the Sun and back again.  Most people only get to see it once.  Lucky ones live long enough to see it twice. It has been dubbed Halley's Comet, in honor of its discoverer, Edmond Halley.  Halley, an English astronomer,  made many outstanding contributions to the study of astronomy.  He is best known for his prediction of the regular return of a comet, one which has not lived up to the hype in its last two visits but is the best known of all comets.

Halley studied the paths of nearly two dozen comets.   A pattern soon developed.  Comets which had been seen in 1531 and 1607 were observed as having similar paths.  Halley theorized that these two comets were actually the same comet.  Then in 1682, a comet returned along the same path.  Halley was sure that the comet was the same and that the variation of one year was due to the immense gravitational force of Jupiter.  Halley predicted that the comet would return in 1758 or 1759.  A German farmer spotted the fuzzy comet with his telescope on Christmas Eve in 1758.  By the following Valentine's Day, the comet had reached its closest point to the Sun.  Edmond Halley was right.  Astronomical experts accepted his theory and named the comet Halley's comet in honor of Halley, who died in 1742.

Historians and astronomers compared notes and found that the reports of the visits of Halley's comet go back as far as 240 B.C., when it was blamed for the death of the empress dowager in China. Other catastrophic events which have been blamed on Halley's Comet include the defeat of Attila the Hun,  the death of King Harold II at the Battle of Hastings, and several widespread plagues.   Genghis Kahn, who considered the comet his own personal messenger, interpreted it as a message to massacre millions of people.  Samuel Clemens, who wrote under the pen name of Mark Twain, was born in 1835.  His conception came when Halley's Comet was near the Earth.  Twain died on April 21, 1910 , one day after the comet came around the sun on its way out of our solar system.  This coincidence was not lost on Twain and some of his admirers, who speculated that Twain came into and left this world on the comet.

With the rise in the printed media in 1910, reports of the comet and speculation of its effects on the Earth were spread over the world.  The previous visit was apparently less than spectacular.  John McArthur, of Wilkinson County, who saw the comet twice, remembered seeing Halley's Comet for the first time at the age of nine years while he was attending a corn shucking. Newspapers predicted that the comet would destroy the earth.  Reports were being made that the tail was composed of poisonous cyanogen gases, which if made contact with the Earth, would destroy all forms on life on the planet.  Entrepreneurs were selling comet insurance, comet pills, and gas masks to protect the gullible.  

By the end of April, 1910, Halley's Comet was in its best viewing position, rising in the northeastern skies of Laurens County around four o'clock in the morning in the constellation of Pegasus and near Venus, the brightest planet in the solar system.  It was traveling at twenty six miles a second, making the ninety three million mile trip from the Sun to the Earth in twenty eight days. People were still afraid that the Earth might come in contact with the fifty thousand mile long tail of the comet, despite the fact that the latest predictions estimated that the comet would come no closer than fourteen million miles.

On May 18, 1910, the skies over Laurens County were cloudy.  Naturally that was the day Halley's Comet was closest to the Earth.  Viewing conditions improved in the days following.  Laurens Countians and people all over the world got a great view of the comet, which by the end of the month would start to fade from view.  At certain points along its path,  the comet's tail stretched half way across the sky.  Although the effects of passing through the tail of the comet were exaggerated, "The Dublin Courier Dispatch" reported a few interruptions in telegraphic transmissions.  There were a few deaths reported that day.  Newman Ware, a nine month old son of Mr. and Mrs. George Ware, succumbed to a long illness.  Dr. Thomas Kea, of Adrian, also passed away on the day the comet came to take them to heaven.

Rev. C.M. Chumbley, of Henry Memorial Presbyterian Church, looked for a religious meaning to the comet.  On the following Sunday, Rev. Chumbley gave a sermon on the true meaning of the comet.  A large crowd gathered at the church, which was then located on the southeast corner of North Jefferson and Columbia Streets.  The sermon was preceded by a twenty minute musical performance, including a rousing solo by Mrs. William L. Branch.  Rev. Chumbley did his homework in preparing for the sermon, studying every available scientific, historical,  and biblical resource at his disposal. 

Rev. Chumbley told the congregation of eclectic denominations that the comet was a symbol of the assurance of the faithfulness and care of God.  Chumbley saw no conflict between science and religion.  In fact, he thought the two were related.  The regularity of Halley's Comet was a symbol of order in lives, order brought by God.  He speculated on what his father and grandfather saw the last time the comet came and what his grandchildren and great grandchildren would see with the return of the comet seventy six years in the future.  Rev. Chumbley speculated on whether or not Halley's Comet or another comet would strike the Earth and be the conflagration that would destroy the Earth as predicted in,  The Holy Bible.  Chumbley refused to admit that a collision with a comet would destroy the Earth thus fulfilling the Biblical prophecy. But here did dare anyone to deny that it was a distinct possibility that the event might happen, although the odds of such an event were one in every two hundred and eighty million comet passes.  Chumbley continued to compare historic evidence of comet or asteroid strikes to confirm the likelihood of a comet's collision with the Earth.  Chumbley, who apparently had an outstanding knowledge of astronomy, gave a highly detailed explanation of celestial events related to comets.  Rev. Chumbley concluded his sermon with an appeal to the congregation to keep their faith in God, "who promised to return again and again to take to himself all those who love and trust him."

In the world of 1986,  the return of Halley's Comet was over-hyped and over commercialized.  The comet, which is actually only a dirty snowball 9.3 miles long and six miles wide, was at its worst position for viewing in two thousand years.  We were all disappointed to say the least. Maybe our children and grandchildren will see this most heralded celestial body in all of its grand splendor.  If I make it to my hundred and sixth birthday, maybe  I will see it too in the year 2062.

01-16

EUGENIA TUCKER COCHRAN FITZGERALD 

The Founder of Alpha Delta Pi

     Eugenia Tucker grew up in a world of wealth and privilege, surrounded by people who had to struggle just to get by.  Her father, a wealthy planter, sent her to Wesleyan College in Macon, where she could obtain the finest education a fine young lady could receive.  While at Wesleyan, Eugenia and a small group of school girls founded the Adelphean Society, the first society or sorority for college women in the United States, on May 15, 1851   The Adelphean Society evolved into Alpha Delta Pi, the oldest women's sorority in the world.

     Eugenia was born January 29, 1834 in the Buckeye District of Laurens County.  Her father, Dr. Nathan Tucker, was a Rhode Island native who came to Laurens County in the 1820s to set up what later became a widespread and lucrative medical practice.  Dr. Tucker, amassed one of the largest plantations in Laurens County.  His home, Buena Vista, was located at the northeast corner of the Buckeye Road and Jackson Lake Road, formerly known as the Wrightsville and Oconee Road.  Dr. Tucker, one of  the largest slave owners in the county, was known far and wide for his compassion for his slaves.  As a delegate to the Secession Convention of 1861, Dr. Tucker voted "no" on the issue of leaving the Union.  During the war, he forbade Gen. Samuel Wray Ferguson's Mississippi Cavalry, who was on picket duty between Sherman and Andersonville, from camping on his plantation.

     Laurens County's school system in the 1840s was less than sufficient, especially for the upper class children of the county's wealthy planters.  Dr. Tucker, who surprisingly had no college education, wanted the best possible education for his five children, four girls and one boy, Lucien Quincy Tucker.   Dr. Tucker employed governesses from the North to help him in raising his family.  His wife, Elmira Horn Tucker, died at a young age.  One governess, because of her radical abolitionist ideas, caused such a stir with the house servants that she was promptly dismissed and sent home.  The library of the thirteen - room Tucker home  was lined with shelves filled with all of the classical literature of the day.  Dr. Tucker subscribed to the best magazines and once a year shipped them off to Philadelphia for binding.  Lucien and Eugenia were sent to closest private academy  at Midway, near Milledgeville.    Eugenia and her brother completed their courses at the academy.   Lucien was sent to Princeton University to complete his formal education. 

          

     A daughter of a neighbor returned from Macon with stories of how wonderful Wesleyan was.  Eugenia had never seen much of the world.  Dublin, fourteen miles away, was a lifeless and decaying town.  Midway was a little better, not far from the capital city of Milledgeville.  Eugenia, like her father, was a lover of books. Eugenia dreamed of going to college.  Finally, Dr. Tucker consented and  summoned Hector and Paris, two of his most trusted servants, to fetch his  finest black horses and hitch them  to the big carriage.  Uncle Peter, another of Dr. Tucker's oldest and most faithful servants, took Eugenia on the fourteen-mile ride up the Oconee Road to Oconee Station on the Central of Georgia Railroad.  From Oconee, Eugenia boarded the west bound train for Macon.  It was a new world with strange faces all around her.  Eugenia lips quivered.  Her heart beat raced.  The dreaded entrance examination was upon her.   Naturally,  she passed the test and entered the Junior class at Wesleyan, which in 1836 became the world's  first college established exclusively for women.

     The girls began their days with a 6:30 a.m. prayer, followed by a series of two-hour recitations.  Their day ended with a 7:00 p.m. supper.  Bed time was 10:30.  Upon meeting other members of her junior class, Eugenia found that "they were more of mischievous enjoyment than their lessons."   She decided that what Wesleyan needed was a women's society, one that "would influence her friends to join her in forming an association for their advancement."  Nineteen young girls (Eugenia was only seventeen) gathered on  May 15, 1851.  Prof. Edward A. Meyers, an English professor at the college, suggested that the group call themselves, "The Adelphean Society."   The word "Adelphean" was derived from the Greek word meaning "sister."  Eugenia was elected as President of the society.  Along with Eugenia, five of her closest friends are considered the original founders.  The girls were mostly from influential families in the state.  Ella Pierce was a daughter of Bishop George F. Pierce, the college's first president. Octavia Andrew, who entered Wesleyan at the age of thirteen, was a daughter of a Bishop James O.  Andrew. Other founding members were Mary Evans, daughter of a Methodist minister in Macon, Elizabeth Williams, and Sophronia Woodruff. 

     Eugenia graduated as valedictorian of her Wesleyan Senior Class of 1852.   In an elegant ceremony in the Tucker home on December 4, 1861, Eugenia joined hands in marriage with  Judge Arthur Erwin Cochran, formerly of Wilkinson County  but then a resident of Glynn County.  Judge Cochran was one of the most brilliant lawyers in the state.  He was a member of the Georgia legislature and a member of the Secession Convention, where he, like his future father in law, supported remaining  in the Union.  Cochran,  the first judge of the Brunswick Superior Court Circuit,  recognized the need for better railroads.  He resigned from the bench and was named the first president of the Macon and Brunswick Railroad.  The town of Cochran, Georgia is named in his honor.    Judge Cochran, a widower, had one son, Arthur Emmett Cochran, whom Eugenia raised as her own.   The younger Cochran, represented Pierce County in the Georgia legislature at the tender age of twenty one and later established a successful practice in San Diego, California.   Eugenia returned to Macon to live with her new family.  Following Judge Cochran's death in 1865, Eugenia, who was bequeathed a substantial fortune, toured with friends in Europe, places she had read about in her father's library.  After eight years of widowhood, Eugenia married Dr. Edmund Fitzgerald, of Macon, who was also a widower, with a beautiful young daughter.  Eugenia wrote in her memoir, "Nothing in my life give me more sincere pleasure than to see her occasionally and to feel that she regards me as her mother."  Following Dr. Fitzgerald's death in 1887, Eugenia moved to Washington, D.C. to live with her step daughter and her new husband, a civil engineer Captain A.F. Lucas.  Eugenia outlived most of her relatives.  Her sister, Ella, married Col. John M. Stubbs of Dublin, but who, like many young women of her time, died too young.   Her brother Luicien served with honor as a Captain in the 57th Georgia infantry during the War Between the States. 

     The Adelphean Society became Alpha Delta Phi in 1905.  Nine years later, the name was changed to Alpha Delta Pi, to avoid confusion with a men's fraternity.  That same year, Wesleyan officials abolished all sororities at the school.  Eugenia remained active in the alumni association of Alpha Delta Pi, whose motto was originally,  "We live for each other."   She was affectionately known by generations of sorority members who succeeded her as "Mother Fitzgerald."    Suddenly, on 10th day of December in 1928, Eugenia died in her sleep in Fort Worth, Texas, where she had been living the last eighteen years with her niece Roberta Andrew Flournoy.  She was buried in Oakwood Cemetery.  In August of 1933, her body was disinterred and brought back to her second hometown of Macon.  She was buried beside Dr. Fitzgerald.   At the age of ninety four, Eugenia had been the oldest alumni of Alpha Delta Pi and Wesleyan College.  She was the last survivor of those six young girls, who one hundred and fifty years ago today, founded the first and the oldest women's sorority in the United States.

01-17

     

The Fourth Annual Trivia Quiz

Once again, here are some questions on the history of our county.  See how you can do.

1. When was the first dialed telephone call made in Dublin?  a) 1949 b) 1951  c) 1958 d) 1963       

2. When was the first directly dialed long distance telephone call made from Dublin?  a) 1949 b) 1953 c) 1958 d) 1964

3. What was the first name of the Laurens County Hospital? a) Coleman Hospital  b) Dublin-Laurens Hospital  c) Memorial Hospital   d) Laurens General Hospital

4. What brought about the end of river boat excursions on freight boats on the Oconee? a) Sinking of the Titanic    b) A new state law    c) The drowning of six children  d) The fare was too high

5. If you dug a whole straight down from Laurens County all the way through the Earth, where would you come out?  a) China     b)   Vietnam    c) Tibet     d) The Indian Ocean

6. What was remarkable about E.D. White of Dublin and his brother Herschel S. White of Screven County?  a) They were identical twins   b) They were Siamese twins   c) They both were judges of Laurens County Court d) They served in the Georgia legislature at the same time.

7. When European agents came to Dublin during the early years of World War I, what were they looking for? a) cotton   b) timber   c) mercenaries   d) mules

8. Ralph Gay made front page news on the Courier Herald on February 19, 1966.  What did he do?  a) Was elected Sheriff of Laurens County b) Underwent open heart surgery c) Arrested twelve moon shiners   d) Was awarded the Silver Star for heroism in Vietnam

9. How many schools were there in Laurens County in 1902?  a) 24 b) 59c) 117

              d) 239

10. How many physicians were there in Laurens County in 1952?  a) 3 b) 15

c) 39 d) 44

11. What was the area of Academy Avenue between Marion Street and Kellam Road once called?  a) West Dublin b) Boom Town c) Reidsville   d) Cochran

12. Besides cotton and corn, what crop was one of the most widely produced field crop in Laurens County?  a) Watermelons   b) Tomatoes   c) Wheat    d) Rutabagas 

13. If you looked in the northwestern sky over Dublin on the morning of November 20, 1997, what would you have seen?  a) The moon b) A blimp c) A rainbow d) A lightning bolt

14. There was only one of these enumerated in Laurens County in 1890.  What was it?  a) railroad   b) bank   c) donkey    d) parrot

15. What was the first name of the town of Dexter?  a) Dexter   b) Green   c) Mt. Carmel d) Barnes

16. What did Sophia Smith and George Snell do on the Hunger and Hardship Creek Bridge on December 18, 1912?  a) Were killed in a car accident    b) Were married   c) Threw her ex-husband off the bridge   d)   Held a revival

17. Which of the following cities lie approximately along the same longitude as Laurens County?  a) Athens   b) Waycross   c) Cleveland, Ohio   d) Detroit, Michigan

18. What did Ellison Pritchett of Dublin build for the world’s richest man in 1937?  a) car   b) house   c) airplane   d)swimming pool

19. Who are Truxton, Bainbridge, Rogers, and Decatur Streets in Dublin named for?  a) Revolutionary War heroes   b) naval officers   c) cities and counties in Georgia d) the city’s founding fathers

20. What does the word “Oconee” mean in the Muscogee Indian dialect?  a) Water eyes of the hills   b) Muddy water   c) place of the deer    d) place of the skunk

21. What was the first name of Stonewall Street?  a) Stonewall Street b) Blackshear Avenue c) Stanley Avenue d) Pecan Street

22. What percentage of the vote did President Martin Van Buren receive in Laurens County in the Presidential Election of 1840?  a) 0%   b) 10%   c) 25%   d) 49%

23. What does the word “Dublin” mean in the old Gaelic language?  a) flowering valley b) black pool    c) clover patch   d)   Irish capital

24. During the Civil War, where was the closest battle to Dublin fought?  a) Macon   b) Griswoldville c) Ball’s Ferry   d) Sandersville

25. On May 15, 1878, Jimmy Hicks ran out into the field following a severe thunderstorm.  What did he find pressed against the fence.  a) his family home b) his father c) a cow’s tail d) his father’s wagon.

Answers: 1 (c); 2 (d); 3 (c); 4 (a); 5 (d); 6 (d); 7 (d); 8 (b); 9 (c); 10 (b); 11 (c); 12 (a); 13 (c); 14 (c); 15 (d); 16 (b); 17 (d); 18 (c); 19 (b); 20 (d); 21 (c); 22 (a); 23 (b); 24 (b); 25 (c).

01-18

JAKE WEBB

Citizen Soldier

Jake Webb woke up this morning in the comfort of his Bay Springs Road home, a modest brick house tucked in a grove of once bountiful pecan trees.  Barney, Webb’s  long-eared dog and trusted sentinel, lies  on guard duty near the front door.  Eager to bark at a stranger, Barney will allow you to scratch his chest once he sees that you are his friend.  Songbirds fly in and out of the bird feeders at the back door.  Webb’s home is just up the ridge from the old family home, which was built on the lands of his ancestor John Stewart.  It  is a peaceful place, wonderfully serene, but it stands in striking contrast to the place where Jake Webb was fifty seven years ago today.  Jake Webb, a private in C Company,  1st Battalion, 8th Regiment, 4th Infantry Division jumped out of a Higgins boat about six-thirty in the morning on Utah Beach on the coast of Normandy, France.  It was D-Day, June 6, 1944.  Webb was right smack dab in the middle of the greatest invasion in the history of the world. 

Jasper “Jake” G.  Webb, Jr. was born on November 9, 1920 in the home of his parents, Jasper G. Webb, Sr. and Lizzie Stewart.  Jake attended Pine Grove School just down the road near Thomas Chapel Methodist Church.  Times were tough.  The elder Webb share cropped farms a good piece away from the family home.  Jake worked on the farm.  His father planted corn and cotton and raised some cattle and turkeys.  The junior Webb tried his hand at farming, but he decided to travel to Tybee Island, where he joined the United States Army on June 23, 1939.  In the summer and fall of 1939, Webb underwent intensive basic training at Fort Screven in Savannah and Fort Jackson in South Carolina.  During 1940, when war with Germany seemed eminent, Webb participated in war game maneuvers in Louisiana.  Near the end of 1940, his unit was moved to Fort Benning and re-activated as the 4th Infantry Division, which was composed of the 8th Regiment from Georgia, the 12th Regiment from Michigan, and the 22nd Regiment of Alabama.  In April of 1941, Webb was ordered to detached service, driving officers in Louisiana and Texas in such places as Fort Sam Houston and Fort Bliss.  The army was conducting training exercises in the hot Texas sun.  Webb saw some of the last activities of the horse cavalry.  In the summer of 1941, Webb was sent to Camp Blanding, Florida for a while and then to South and North Carolina for even more maneuvers.  He returned to Camp Blanding, only to see the 4th Division de-activated.  Webb’s unit was sent back to Fort Benning.  Webb was between the barracks and the mess hall when the news of the Japanese invasion of Pearl Harbor was announced.

In 1942, the division was transferred to Camp Gordon near Augusta.  The following year they were sent to Fort Dix, New Jersey.  In September of 1943, Webb and the men boarded a train bound to Camp Gordon Johnston on the Gulf Coast of Florida, below Tallahassee.   Camp Johnston was an amphibious training base.  Webb and the men were training for an invasion of the European coast line, they just didn’t know where.   Their training was completed in December of 1943, and the division was sent back to Fort Jackson, South Carolina by Christmas. Two of Jake’s brothers served their country.  Ashley served in Africa.  James was an airplane mechanic with the Marine Corps.   Right after New Year’s Day, Webb was sent to Camp Kilmer, a staging area just outside of New York.  On January 6, 1944, the division boarded a ship bounded for England.  It was no pleasure cruise.  German U-Boats were constant threats to the safety of the thousands of men aboard the ship.  The division arrived in Liverpool and intensely trained for the coming invasion.  The men boarded ships which moved out into the English Channel and turned back using the English coastline to practice for the real thing. “We knew we were going to be in some kind of invasion,” Webb said.  “We didn’t even know we were going to invade till probably about June 6th, when we started crossing the Channel,” Webb remembered. Security was tight.  Webb related an incident which was kept top secret.  “We had been in Slopton Seals training  in the English Channel which was kept secret. A German submarine hit one of the LSTs and sunk it.  We were lucky it wasn’t the one I was on.  We lost those men and a lot of tanks.  It was going to support us on D-Day.  That happed about April or May, a month or so before the invasion,” Webb said.

In the days before the invasion, Webb recalled, “Before we left, General Eisenhower came and talked to us.  He told us what we had to do.  He promised the first unit that made it to Paris or Berlin would be treated to champagne.  British General Montgomery was much more serious. He had fought the Germans in North Africa.  He didn’t want us to take any prisoners - basically he told us that the only good German was a dead German.  I liked England.  The food was good, especially the fish and chips.  There were blackouts at night.  We had to go into dark entrances to get inside the pubs to eat.  While we were camped one night the Germans bombed us,” Webb said. 

The 4th Division boarded ships on the night of June 5th, the original date for the invasion, which had to be postponed because of poor weather.  “We didn’t know it at the time, but I found out later that there were thirty six U-Boats in the channel that night, but they didn’t disrupt the invasion and never got near the beaches,” Webb recalled.  About five o’clock on the morning of June 6th, the men of Company C had breakfast.  The men attended a briefing session where they were given their objectives and shown maps of their destination, Utah Beach.  His platoon was called to climb down the rope ladders to board the Higgins boats.   The ship had circled around for about an hour, and the seas were pretty rough; but Webb never got sick.  When his buddies did,  Jake just turned his head.

Webb vividly remembers the landing,  “The front gate came down and we hit the beach.  I don’t remember having any time to worry about what was about to happen.  We had been well trained, and we simply moved out.  When we landed, we didn’t know the beach was mined.  Someone yelled “mines”!   We were lucky.  The water was only knee-deep and I waded on to the beach.  It wasn’t like Omaha Beach, where so many of our men drowned with the weight of their equipment pulling them down.  I followed the tracks of the man who was out in front of me.  Just as we were setting foot on solid ground, German artillery rounds began firing on our  platoon which was in the first wave to hit the beach.  The German 88mm guns were pounding the beach and the water.  Our platoon sergeant hollered, ‘Get going - they are zeroing in on us”!  I turned around, and he was waving to us to get going and fast.  About that time a round hit near the sergeant.  A piece of shrapnel struck the sergeant’s throat.  He managed to climb into a shell crater to wait on aid from the medics.  I didn’t see him for a while, but he did return to our company when we were in Germany.  We made it about a half mile inland that day.  Our mission was to link up with the paratroopers who had jumped behind the German lines the night before.”

The 8th Regiment was ordered to link up with elements of the 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions who had jumped into the moonless skies of Normandy in the early morning hours.  The paratroopers often missed their drop zones, landing in trees, water, and in plain sight of German soldiers.  “We met up with the airborne - that’s who Kelso was with,” Webb said in reference to Lt. Kelso Horne, a member of the 82nd  Airborne Division and a resident of Laurens County. Lt Horne descended from Francis E. Flanders, whose place was just up the Snell’s Bridge Road from the Stewart place.  The other two regiments were assigned to secure the beach head.  

It was hazardous duty - making patrols into unchartered enemy territory.  On June 10th, Jake was assigned to a patrol with five or six other men.  Jake carried a B.A.R., a Browning automatic rifle.  The B.A.R. weighed twenty one pounds, so heavy that the army assigned a second man to help carry the ammunition and the rifle itself at times.  The patrol ran into a group of Germans.  The company captain  and  Webb’s assistant, Rocco DiCristino of New York, were killed.   Webb carried Rocco’s lifeless body back to the lines.  To this day, Jake wishes that he could talk to Rocco’s folks. 

Five days later on June 15th, Webb was assigned to another patrol.  The patrol came up to a road, the ultimate nightmare to any reconnoiter.  The first two men crossed the road with no problems.  Webb was the next to cross. Just as he moved out into the road, a sniper’s shot rang out.  The camouflaged sniper apparently had instructions to fire at critical elements of the enemy, whether it be an officer or a B.A.R. rifleman.  The round struck Jake in the right cheek, then in the side of his neck, narrowly missing a vein.  Jake pulled himself up and walked back to find a medic, who sent him back to the command post.  The medics  patched him up with a large bandage and put him on stretcher mounted on a jeep, which took him back to the beach, He was put on an L.S.T., which had been converted into a hospital ship.  Jake was taken back to an English hospital, where he remained until he rejoined the company on July 25th.

“I was coming back up to the line on July 25th, when about 1,800 bombers came in and bombed Saint Lo for the breakthrough onto Paris,” Jake remembered.  Jake also remembered being two or three or miles away from the bomb zone and feeling his six by six truck vibrating. “After that, we started going pretty good into Paris.  We were rolling in.  The Germans were retreating a lot then.  We got on trucks and went on into Paris.  We liberated Paris on August 25, 1944.” said Jake.  While he was in Paris, Jake was assigned to a squad to guard a bridge over the Seine River.  After a few days, the word came that it was time to move out, on to Germany.

Their eventual destination was the Heurtgen Forest, a hellish, dark, and dense  forest where many good men died.  His old platoon sergeant, who had been wounded in the first few minutes of the landing at Utah Beach, was back with the platoon then.   Jake and his unit moved through an area of pine trees and broom straw on December 1st.  Jake and the men knew the Germans were close by.  The sergeant ordered Jake “to move around to the right flank”.  When he got about half way up, a German with a machine pistol opened up on Jake, striking him in the chin.  Whatever hit him came out under his throat.  Jake fell to his knees.  For the second time, he was out of the war, or least temporarily.  Jake returned to the hospital, this time for two and one half months.  He missed all of the horror of the Battle of the Bulge, which would begin two weeks later on December 16th.

Jake returned to his company in mid-February of 1945.  One night Jake’s platoon was moving into a German town.  Right out in the middle of the road, a German tank was burning.  The men were crawling along a roadside ditch when the tank exploded.  The tank turret flew into the air and landed on the platoon leader, who was ten to fifteen yards in front of Jake.  A small piece of the tank hit Jake in his field jacket.  Once again, Jake narrowly avoided being killed.  The lieutenant wasn’t so lucky.  He was killed instantly.  

Jake spent the rest of March and April moving rapidly through the German countryside.   On May 8th, Jake’s company was 10 or 15 miles outside of Munich, Germany.  They were to rest for a few days and then were scheduled to move out toward their next objective.  Someone had a radio on in one of the trucks parked beside the road.  The news of the German surrender came in over the radio.  The men cheered and cried, both at the same time.  Jake and some of his buddies slipped off to see that prison camp at Dachau that everyone was talking about.  There was a quarantine sign at the gate.  No one was allowed to go in. Jake saw the furnaces and the smoke stacks where the Germans cremated the interned Jews.  “We saw the boxcars that were loaded with bodies inside.  I didn’t see any bodies, but I did see what appeared to be a leg sticking out of one of those boxcars,” Jake said.  “It was an awful thing,” Webb continued. 

Jake had built up a lot of service points in addition to his two wounds.  This allowed him to be discharged.  Many infantrymen knew that there was still a war going on over in the Pacific, and that in case of an invasion they would be shipped half way around the world to start fighting all over again.  On June 9, 1945, just over a year from the day he landed on Utah Beach, Jake departed LeHarve, France bound for the United States.  He was stationed at Camp Shanks, New York.   Jake took the first southbound train he could.  He was almost home.  On July 25, 1945, Webb was discharged from the Army at Fort McPherson near Atlanta.  For Jake the war was over.  His division, the 4th, suffered more casualties than any other division in the war.  Out of the two hundred or so original members of his company, only twenty came back. Most of them had been wounded at least once, some twice, or even three times.

Jake went back to Savannah to get a job.  A cousin with the Fire Department there got him a job with the police force.  Jake re-enlisted in the army in 1946, back in the 4th Division.  He was sent to Fort Benning and then to Fort Knox, Kentucky for armor training.  In the first months of 1947, Jake volunteered to go back to Europe, but was instead sent to Korea, the worst country Webb had ever seen.  Jake was assigned to work with Air Force officers.  He kind of liked that work and transferred to the Air Force.  He was sent  to Kessler Field near Tampa. It was a good assignment and one which would change Jake’s life forever.

Jake Webb had been wounded in the head twice and survived.  He was nearly killed another time.  It was a miracle that he was still alive.  But there was one more miracle left for Jake.  One night a buddy called Jake and asked him to meet him at the local Moose Club.  Jake showed up and walked into to the club.  He looked everywhere, but his friend wasn’t around. He saw an older man and woman, sitting at a table with a young lady.  It looked like his buddy wasn’t going to show, so he turned to walk out the door.  As he was leaving, a young woman was coming in.  Webb remembered she said, “Leaving so soon?”  Jake told her what was happening.  The lady asked  Jake to come back in. She took Jake to the table where the young lady and the couple were sitting.  The young lady was working in a real estate office and staying with her grandparents.  She caught Jake’s eye and he caught her’s too.  She took Jake to meet her grandparents.  Jake Webb and Freddie Moran joined hands in marriage after a month or two and have been together ever since.  Jake said that if he had left just a few seconds sooner, he would have never met Freddie, the love of his life.

Jake was assigned to Guam, where he served from 1949 to 1951.  It was during that time when the Korean War started.  Eventually, Freddie was allowed overseas to join him.  The Webbs were transferred to Scott Field, Illinois for three years.  In 1954, they returned to Georgia for an assignment at Warner Robins.  In December of 1954, Jake was shipped back to Asia for duty in Japan, where he spent three years.  The Webbs returned to the states for a tour of duty at Salina, Kansas before they returned to Tampa at McDill Air Force Base.  On September 30, 1960,.  Master Sergeant Jasper G. Webb retired from the Air Force.  The Webbs lived in Tampa for a while before the family moved back to Laurens County, where Jake got a job at the V.A. Hospital.  When a civil service job opening became available at the Federal Building, Jake took it.  He retired in 1982.  

For over forty years, this citizen, this soldier, served his country.  Had he been born twenty years earlier, Jake Webb would have served in country in World War I.  Had he been born eighty years earlier, Jake Webb would have picked up his rifle to defend his state in the War Between the States.  Had he been born sixty years later, Jake Webb would today be standing guard somewhere, protecting our homes and everything that is precious to us.

01-19

STEVE BARBER

Dublin’s Baby Bird

He was one of Baltimore’s Baby Birds.  For two brief months in the summer of 1958, he was a member of the pitching staff of the Dublin Orioles of the Georgia-Florida League.  His left-winged rapidly flung fast balls often missed their target.  His fiery temper nearly kept him out of the big show.  A sore elbow, the dread of any hard throwing pitcher, brought him down from his ascent to the zenith of the premier pitchers of the American League.

Stephen David Barber was born in Tacoma Park, Maryland on February 22, 1939.  He grew playing baseball on sandlots and listening to baseball games on the radio.  The closest major league team was the hapless Washington Senators.  Just as Steve was entering high school, the equally hapless St. Louis Browns moved to nearby Baltimore and became the Baltimore Orioles.  Steve could only dream that one day he would pitch for the Orioles or any team for that matter.

Steve left Northwestern High School in Prince George County to play baseball for the Blair High School Blazers.  In his junior year of 1955, Blair High School dominated their opponents in all sports.  The football teams and basketball teams were undefeated.  The baseball team only lost once. As a junior, the success of his high school career came into doubt.  He only pitched two innings. In his senior year, Barber won eight games without a single loss.  The Blazers won every game to capture the Washington D.C. Metro Area Championship.   

Steve was signed to a minor league contract by the Orioles in the summer of 1956.  After his first Spring training, Steve was assigned to Paris of the Sooner State League.  He went 9-9 with a less than  fair E.R.A. of 4.56.  His ten strikeouts per game average was nearly eclipsed by his eight walks per game.  Steve started the ‘58 season with Aberdeen of the Northern League.  His E.R.A shot up to over six runs per game.  His strikeouts were sliced in half.  Steve was sent down to the Class D Dublin Orioles of the Georgia-Florida League.  Managing the Orioles that year was a career minor league player who had played the previous year for Fitzgerald.  Oriole officials believed that the hard nosed scrappy player manager by the name of Earl Weaver could turn Steve around.  Steve played along side Dave Nicholson, baseball’s first bonus baby.  Dave had an equally difficult time getting into a groove, striking out more than he hit the ball.  Steve pitched against three future major leaguers that year:  Dick McAuliffe and Don Wert of the Valdosta Tigers and Mike Shannon of the Albany Cardinals.  The parent clubs would go head to head ten years later with the parent clubs in the 1968 World Series.

Steve, who became a fairly respectable hitter, couldn’t seem to get things going.  He came to Dublin in the third week of June to a club which was in the middle of the pack of the league.  Steve appeared in twenty two games, pitching one hundred and eight innings.    He managed to win five games in ten decisions, which was about the team’s average.  His strikeouts per game plummeted to less than four.  He threw hard, but just couldn’t find the umpire’s strike zone.  In twenty two games, Steve led the league in walks with one hundred and three and ended his season with a disappointing E.R.A. of five runs per game. He was about ready to give up the game.  Steve finished the ‘59 season on a high note with Pensacola of the Ala.-Fla. League.  His strikeouts were back up to ten per game.  His walks were down, and his E.R.A. plummeted to 3.85.  One of his teammates that year was Cal Ripken, Sr., whose son turned out to be a pretty fair ball player.

Paul Richards, Baltimore’s General Manager and a baseball genius, saw something in Barber.  He invited him to spring training in 1960 and gave him a chance to make the major league team. Steve responded.  In his rookie season, he pitched in thirty-six games.  By June 6th, he had an amazing record of six and one with an E.R.A. hovering around 1.55.   He won ten and lost seven games that season.  His strikeouts and walks were virtually even, but his E.R.A. stood at a more than respectable 3.21 runs per game.   His best game was a one hitter against Kansas City.   During the 1960 season, Steve nearly missed one of baseball’s greatest moments.  He had pitched against the greats of the game, Mantle, Killebrew, Kaline, Yastremski, and Maris.  It was a foggy day on the last day of the season.  The Orioles were well out of the pennant race, but the game was an important one for the opposing Boston Red Sox.  Barber started but wasn’t around for the end.  Jack Fisher came in the eighth to save the game for Barber.   The lights were on.  An aging Red Sox outfielder stepped up to the plate for the last time in his career.  With the count at one and one, the old man took one last mighty swing.  It was gone, the five hundred and twenty first homerun of his career.  That man, of course, was the “Splendid Splinter,” Ted Williams.  One of the greatest elements of baseball is “what if?”  What if Steve Barber had stayed in?  Would Ted Williams, the greatest hitter in the history of baseball, have hit a home run in his last at bat?  Or would he gotten the whiff from Barber or weakly grounded out to second base?

Steve didn’t fall victim to the sophomore jinx.  He shut out eight opponents in 1961, which tied him with Camilo Pascual for the league lead.  Steve fell two victories short of winning twenty games.  Batters were taking notice.  Steve was the fourth ranked pitcher in the Major Leagues ahead of Koufax, Drysdale, and Ford.  With the Cold War heating up, Steve served his country during the 1962 season.  Army officials gave him a pass to pitch on weekends.  Despite only periodic mound assignments, Barber went nine and six with an E.R.A. of 3.45.   Some have said that the time off gave Steve a chance to work on his mechanics during off duty hours.   Steve’s best season would be in 1963. He went twenty and thirteen that year, making him the first Baltimore Oriole to win twenty games in a season.  

After a lack luster ‘64 season, Steve returned to top form in 1965.  He won nine of his last eleven starts to put him at the top of American League pitchers.  The next year, 1966, became the first great season for the Orioles.  Led by Barber and other fellow Baby Birds, Dave McNally and Jim Palmer, the Birds won the World  championship.  By the all-star break, Steve was ten and three with an E.R.A. of 1.90.  Then it hit him.  Elbow tendinitis forced him out of the All-Star Game and the World Series.  “ Being a part of that World Series was the biggest thrill of my professional career and also the greatest disappointment of my life.  You work all of your life to get to that moment.  To be there was amazing, but the frustration of not being able to pitch was overwhelming,” said Barber.  Steve came back strong to open the 1967 season, but the pain in his elbow was beginning to take its toll. He was traded to the fading Yankees for the 1968 season. In 1969, Steve was selected by the Seattle Pilots in the expansion draft.  It was the last time he started a game.  From 1970 to 1974, he pitched in relief for the Cubs, Angels, Giants, and Braves (1970-1972).

Steve Barber ended his career on the all time Oriole list at eighth in wins and innings pitched, fifth in shutouts and  strikeouts, and second in shutouts in a season.   He won more games than he lost (121-106), struck out more than he walked (1309-950), and posted a better than average E.R.A. of 3.36.  

After retiring from baseball at the age of thirty five, Steve worked in the car business.  Today, he lives in Las Vegas and  drives a school bus carrying special education students, the nine to five job he wanted. What if?  What if Steve’s elbow had been healthy?  Who knows?  He might have joined his old skipper Earl Weaver in the baseball Hall of Fame.  Oh well, that’s baseball!

01-20

 THE CHILDREN OF THE CONFEDERACY

The Children of Pride

They called themselves the “Children of the Confederacy,” or the “C of C.”  They were the grandchildren and great grandchildren of the boys in gray.  They were proud of the Southern heritage and equally proud of their American heritage.  In Dublin, the children were lead by Miss Adelaine Baum.   Miss Baum, who had never had any children of her own, was for more than forty years the guiding force for the chapter, which was named in her honor.

The Children of the Confederacy was first organized in 1896.  In Georgia, the Children of the Confederacy was fully organized in 1912.  The organization was formed to aid and honor ex-Confederate veterans and their descendants.  Early members paid a penny a month for dues.  If the chapter wanted to pick a flower and design a badge, members could purchase a badge for ten cents.

Thirty young Dublin children gathered in the home of Miss Adelaine Baum on June 9, 1913.  Eason Cross, of the Springfield Chapter of the Children of the Confederacy, explained to the group the purposes of the organization.  The children unanimously elected Miss Baum to be their director.  Fred Star and Maxa Baker were elected President and Vice President, respectively.  Millie Beacham was chosen as the Second Vice President.  Estelle Barrett, Secretary; Louise Flanders, Treasurer;  Warren Baum, Historian; Ethel Pritchett, Corresponding Secretary; and Madge Hilburn, Editress, were the remaining others elected at the meeting.  By the end of the first year, membership in the organization has swollen to eighty.

The second annual meeting of the Georgia chapters was held in Dublin on June 4, 5, and 6 in 1914.  Miss Madge Hilburn, the local president of the chapter, called the meeting to order.  Mayor C.A. Weddington welcomed the crowd of kids to the Emerald City.  The convention closed with the election of state wide officers.  Madge Hilburn was elected First Vice-President of the State organization.  Other officers in 1914 were Ruby Page, Clara Stubbs, Martha Stanley, Olive Bishop, Sarah Baker, Ethel Pritchett, and Loulie Walker.

Miss Carrie Dawson stepped in to fill the place of Miss Adelaine, when she fell ill for many months during 1915.  Madge Hilburn was accorded the great honor of representing the Eastern Division of the Georgia Division  of the United Confederate Veterans at the 1915 annual convention held in Richmond, Virginia.  During the early years, the children raised money by selling flowers to provide the needy with books, clothes, and medicine.  Many of these needy people were veterans or their spouses.  One of the highlights of 1916 came on Memorial Day. The children formed an honorary escort for Gov. Nat Narris and the veterans in their parade from the depot to the old city cemetery, where the group marked the graves of veterans.  In three years, the membership had risen five hundred percent to one hundred and fifty members. As a result, the group split into two divisions, with kids under twelve being assigned to the Clara Stubbs Auxiliary. Miss Adelaine wore herself completely out while preparing for the United Daughters of the Confederacy Convention in Dublin in 1916.  She had to be replaced by Loula Walker for a brief time. The children furnished music and served as ushers during the gathering.

The years of World War I were busy ones for the chapter.  The members met once a week at the Red Cross center to volunteer for war relief work.  The older children sewed sheets for soldiers.  The younger members made scrapbooks.  All of the kids voted to give up their refreshments and give the money to the war effort.  The work picked up in 1918 when the chapter donated books, magazines and scrapbooks to soldiers.  Clothes and homemade goodies were sent to soldiers at Camp Wheeler in Macon and other places. The kids sold more than thirty thousand dollars in war bonds.   They held a bazaar and sponsored a fiddler’s convention to raise money.  The children never missed a chance at being in a parade to show their patriotism.  During the war years, the chapter was led by Ollie Donaldson, Mildred Arnau, Joe Williams, Lucille Hilburn, Estelle Barnett, Lucille Chumbley, Elizabeth Arnau, Gertrude Marvin, Mavis Weddington, Florence Simmons, and Loula Walker.

 

1920 was another big year for Miss Adelaine’s children.  The annual Georgia Confederate Veterans convention was held in Dublin in May.  The boys and girls assisted in giving sight seeing rides to more than five hundred visiting veterans.  Miss Baum held an informal reception in her South Calhoun Street home.  The kids passed out seventeen hundred ice cream cones and three hundred cigars that day.  Later in the afternoon, one hundred twenty five of the children marched in the parade in the formation of the U.S. and Confederate flags.

The children were always willing to help someone in need.  They adopted a French war orphan.  The old soldiers in the Confederate Soldiers home always received food, which was paid for through fund raisers, such as a Tom Thumb Wedding, book parties, and moving picture shows.

The Adeline Baum Chapter hosted the state convention again in 1926.    Thirty delegates from around the state were in attendance at the First Baptist Church.  Judge Camp welcomed the visitors by presenting them a key to the city.   State President Russell Brinson of Dublin presided over the meeting.  Miss Baum was presented a silk umbrella in recognition of her services as a state wide organizer.  

Miss Adelaine was always coming up with ways to support the organization.  She used to stay up late at night preparing ketchup for her kids to sell on the streets of Dublin.  The kids soon tired of selling the homemade stuff and often had to be bribed by their parents with money to go to the picture show after ketchup sales slowed.

The final state meeting in Dublin was held in 1952.  In attendance was Nannette Claxton of Dublin, who had been a previous State President.  When the last of the Confederate Veterans died in the 1950s and times began to change,  the Adelaine Baum Chapter of the Children of the Confederacy was no more.

The Children of the Confederacy adopted a creed to preserve pure ideas, honor the memory of veterans, and to teach the true history of the War Between The States, which they maintained that the war was not all about slavery.  They pledged to act in a manner which would reflect honor upon their noble and patriotic ancestors.

There were no fire eating secessionists in their ranks. When they saw suffering and pain, they showed compassion.  When they saw a veteran, they stood in awe and reverence.  When they saw a flag, they saluted.  They were flag wavers, pure and simple.  They waved two flags, the American and the Confederate.  To them, the two were not mutually exclusive.  They were children, children of pride.

01-21

THE FOURTH OF JULY

Celebrating America’s Birthday

Two Hundred and twenty five years ago tomorrow a group of daring men began signing their names to a document, a document which would formally exclaim our country’s independence from oppressive tyranny of the King of England.   George Walton, Lyman Hall, and Button Gwinnett signed for the Colony of Georgia.  It was hardly a unanimous feeling in the Colonies.  Some have said that one third of the American colonists favored independence, one third favored remaining under the protection of King George, and the other third just didn’t care.  Actually, the war which started over a year earlier in Massachusetts was America’s first Civil War.  It was brother against brother, father against son, and neighbor versus neighbor.

The area that makes up present day Laurens County was spared from battles during the war.  The battles were primarily fought along the Savannah River from northeast Georgia down to Savannah, which fell into the control of the British in 1779.  In the year the war formally ended, the State of Georgia acquired all of the land between her then current bounds and the Oconee and Altamaha Rivers.  State officials decided that in order to entice new settlers, land would be given to those who has served their country during the war.  These grants became known as “Bounty Grants.”   All of Laurens County east of the Oconee River was granted to those who had served in the Revolution.  Most of the lands were settled by the former citizen soldiers, except for lands granted to officers.  Gen. Elijah Clarke acquired tens of thousands of acres as a bounty for his service to Georgia.  Clarke alone was awarded a thousand acres  in the area near Ben Hall and Thundering Springs Lakes.

Laurens County and other counties around the state and the country are named for heroes of the American Revolution.  Laurens County was named for Col. John Laurens.  Laurens, a native of South Carolina, was an aide to Gen. George Washington.  Laurens worked with Benjamin Franklin to secure more financial and military aid to support Washington’s army.  Laurens returned to America only to be captured in his home state.  After the surrender of Lord Cornwallis at Yorktown, considered by many to be the end of the Revolutionary War, Laurens was killed while riding near Combachee, South Carolina.  Laurens County’s first county seat, Sumpterville, was named for Benjamin Sumpter,  another South Carolinian who served with honor during the Revolution.

The following is a list of some of the known Laurens Countians who are known to have served America in her war to gain independence from the crown of King George III: Henry Anderson, John Anderson, John Arline, Jonathan Bacon, Simon Beck, John Bennett, David Blackshear, James Branch, William Bush, Owen Carroll, Alexander Cary, Samuel Cason, John G. Coats, Jonathan Coleman, Theophilus Coleman, John Cooksey, Sampson Culpepper, Benjamin Daniel, Benjamin Darsey, Benjamin Davis, John Dean, William Dean, Thomas Duncan, Thomas Farmer, John Fullwood, Bartholomew Gainey, Levi Glass, James Glass, Henry Goodman, Edward Hagan, Instant Hall, Benjamin Hampton, Jonathan Holly, John Hudson, Edward Hutchins, Henry Hutto, Jesse Joiner, Jonathan Jones, William Kinchen, William Livingston, Thomas McCall, Benjamin Manning, Drury Manning, John Manning, James Marlow, William H. Matthews, Dennis McLendon, Thomas Moore, William O’Neal, Burrell Phillips, Mark Phillips, Wiley Pope, Lewis Powell, Thomas Pullen, Sr.,  Frederick Roberts, John Rowland, Wright Ryals, John Shine, Ezekiel Smith, Hardy Smith, David Spear, Nicholas Swilley, George Tarvin, Archibald Thomas, Etheldred Thomas, John Thomas, Peter Thomas, Micajah Varsar, Thomas Vickers, Eli Warren, Josiah Warren, William Whitehead, Solomon Williams, William Yarborough, William Yates, Oren Young, and Phison Young.  (From The Official History of Laurens County, Georgia, 1807-1941, pp. 19-22; List of Land Lottery Grants Made to Veterans of the Revolutionary War, Alex M. Hitz)  There were, undoubtedly, more who fought for freedom.  Interestingly there are no lists of those who remained loyal to the King, unless you count Gov. George M. Troup, whose family were Loyalists.

The 4th of July is the day we celebrate the signing of our “Declaration of Independence.”  Actually the document was not completely signed until weeks later.  For the last two and one quarter centuries, we have celebrated the day with fireworks, food, and fun.   In the South, there was a lull in the celebration in the decades following the Civil War.  The 4th of July reminded all Southerners of the devastating and mortal deaths that the Army of Northern Virginia and the Army of Tennessee suffered at the Gettysburg and Vicksburg battles on July 3rd and 4th, 1863.  

The first recorded celebration was published in the Georgia Journal, recounting the activities on July 4th, 1815.  John Guyton opened the celebration with the reading of the Declaration of Independence, which was followed by a speech by Rev. McDonald.  At four o’clock, dinner was served.  Gen. David Blackshear, who had just returned from his triumphs during the War of 1812, served as President of the meeting.  Gen. Blackshear was assisted by Thomas McCall, who had been Georgia’s Surveyor General in the 1790s.  Eighteen toasts were made to everything from the country, to its officers, to the flag. Volunteer toasts were made by Gen. Blackshear, McCall, Thomas Chase, Jonathan Sawyer, John Guyton, and George W. Welch.

Another recorded celebration of the 4th of July in Laurens County was in 1820.  An account of the celebration was published in a Milledgeville paper, The Southern Recorder.  It was one of many held around the state.  A large crowd assembled at the courthouse in Dublin around noon.  Dr. Thomas Moore eloquently read every word of the “Declaration of Independence.”   Leroy Harris, a captain of a local militia company,  gave a patriotic oration.  Robert Coleman had the most difficult task.  He had to serve food to everyone.  Undoubtedly, there were many women doing all of the cooking. Former United States Senator and Laurens County resident, George M. Troup, presided over the celebration.  David Blackshear, who had fought for independence as a child, served as vice president.  Blackshear, one of the greatest statesmen in our county’s history, died on the 4th of July seventeen years later.   The usual fare for such a celebration included after dinner toasts.  Toasts were made to the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, George Washington, and many other eminent military and political leaders.   Among the toasters were George Troup, David Blackshear, John Guyton, Thomas Moore, Charles S. Guyton, William R. Caldwell, Wright R. Coleman, Dr. Robert L. Troup, Lt. Col., Elijah Blackshear, Dr. Patrick J. Hoey, Henry H. Fuqua, Maj. John Thomas, Leroy G. Harris, James W. Armstrong, Neil Munroe, Lott Warren, George Mather, Robert C. Hood, Capt. Davis Smith, and Robert Coleman.  

Celebrating our independence was not a new thing.  For decades, the date on many deeds was followed by the words, “in the year of our Lord and in the ___ year of our Independence.”  During the 1930s, Fourth of July celebrations were revived.  For many years, Dublin would play Wrightsville in a game of baseball.  Public celebrations were never popular until twenty-five years ago, when we celebrated our country’s bicentennial and everyone was caught up in July 4th fever.  The annual fireworks show at the Shamrock Bowl began on that memorable day.

Tomorrow, July 4th, 2001 is the 225th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Celebrate your freedoms.  Celebrate your blessings.  Celebrate America!     

01-22

THOMAS WILLIAM HARDWICK

Principle Before Politics

He didn’t always do the popular thing.  He tried to do the right thing, even if it cost him an election.  In a sense, he was ahead of his time.  His ideas to improve Georgia turned out to be good ones, even though they didn’t seem to be popular with a majority of Georgia’s voters at the time.  He fought the Ku Klux Klan.  He appointed Georgia’s and the country’s first woman United States Senator.  He promoted the idea of a massive highway system and improving Georgia’s port system.  For three decades he served his county, his state, and his country in political office.  For a short time in 1926, Thomas Hardwick lived in Dublin, where he practiced law and published “The Dublin Courier Herald,”in which he espoused in his political views.

Thomas William Hardwick was born on the 9th day of December, 1872 in Thomasville, Georgia.  His parents, Robert William Hardwick and Zemula Schley Matthews Hardwick, moved to Washington County, where Tom attended the Tennille School before studying at Gordon Military Institute.  Tom graduated from Mercer University in 1892.  He entered law school at the University of Georgia. One year after his marriage to Maude Perkins, Thomas Hardwick was admitted to the bar of Washington County Superior Court. From 1895 to 1897, Hardwick served as Solicitor of Washington County Court.      In 1898, Hardwick was elected to represent Washington County in the Georgia House of Representatives.  Hardwick, a conservative Democrat, prevailed in the election despite the strong Populist views of many Washington countians.   Hardwick was elected Captain of Company D, 6th Infantry Regiment of the Georgia State Troops, also known as “The Washington Guards,” in 1901 and 1902.  He served in the Georgia Legislature for four years until 1902, when he was elected to the Congress of the United States.  His first speech in Congress urged the repeal of the 14th and the 15th amendments, which he maintained had been improperly ratified.  In 1906, Hardwick joined with populist leader Thomas E. Watson to elect Hoke Smith to the governorship of Georgia.  Hardwick and Smith sought and acquired the passage of a law to disenfranchise Negro voters of Georgia.  Watson and Hardwick fell out with each other in the 1908 gubernatorial election.  In 1910, Watson opposed Hardwick in his congressional race.   

When U.S. Senator Augustus O. Bacon died in 1914, Hardwick threw his hat in the ring in the election to fill the remainder of the second term.  Despite a second place finish to Gov. John M. Slaton, Hardwick was nominated by the Democratic Convention on the fourteenth ballot.    Hardwick, a supporter of state rights, abhorred the growing Federal government.  He supported Woodrow Wilson, but voted against the passage of the Selective Service Act, the Food Act, the Railroad Act, the Child Labor Act,  and was opposed to America’s entry into World War II.  His stance cost him in his re-election campaign in 1918.  Hardwick, considered an isolationist, attacked the establishment of the League of Nations.  

In his 1920 gubernatorial campaign, Hardwick promised voters that he would balance the state budget, cut government waste, increase teacher salaries, and support voting reforms.  Sound familiar?  Hardwick wound up only four votes shy of the necessary majority to capture the Democratic nomination in the primary election.  He easily defeated Clifford Walker in the run off election with the aid of two heavyweight Georgia politicians, Sen. Thomas Watson, who was again on his side,  and his old ally, former governor Hoke Smith.  

The economy was the main issue on the voters mind.  Cotton production had dropped by nearly three-fourths during the pre-boll weevil years.  Hardwick made several new and bold proposals to jump start the deteriorating economic situation in Georgia.  He advocated the creation of  a Board of Regents to operate Georgia’s colleges and universities, a new highway system, a state income tax system, and the development of a port in Savannah. The democratically dominated legislature didn’t agree with all of Hardwick’s ideas.  In those days, there were no Democrats versus Republicans, only fights between various Democratic factions. The legislature did pass bills to allow citizens to vote by secret ballot, to place a state tax on gasoline, and to establish a separate department to audit the various branches of Georgia’s government.  

Despite the fact that Hardwick opposed the adoption of the 14th and 15th amendments which protected Negro citizens from injustice. He was defied the Klu Klux Klan on every front.  Hardwick also protected many Negro prisoners by issuing an executive order prohibiting the beating of prisoners by their guards.  His position on these volatile issues cost him in another re-election bid.  Clifford Walker easily defeated Hardwick, who again lost the support of Tom Watson after he failed to appoint enough of Watson’s friends to political offices and positions.

In 1922, Thomas Hardwick was given the opportunity to make one of the most important appointments of his political career.  Sen. Thomas Watson, Hardwick’s on again and off again ally died on September 26, 1922.  In a gesture of friendship, Gov. Hardwick offered the position to Watson’s widow, who graciously declined to serve.  Hardwick then turned to Rebecca Felton, a eighty-seven-year-old widow, who was a leading reform advocate of the day. Mrs. Felton accepted the offer and became the first Georgia woman and the first American woman to serve in the United States Senate.  Hardwick sought to return to the Senate, but he was defeated by Walter F. George.  In an interesting note, Sarah Orr Williams of Dublin served as secretary to Senators Watson, Felton, and George.  Hardwick, in his last senatorial campaign, lost in a landslide to William Harris in 1924.

Hardwick retired from politics and resumed his law practice in Atlanta and Washington, D.C..  For a brief time, Hardwick served as a member of the Advisory Council of the War Transaction Section of the United States Department of Justice.  In 1926, he purchased the “Dublin Courier Herald.”  The newspaper gave Hardwick a forum in which to express his views on the political issues of the day.  The front and back pages carried nothing but political material.  The inside pages carried local news.  Hardwick’s paper, by his own account, was one of the largest circulated papers in Georgia.  

Thomas Hardwick purchased a home at the northeast corner of Academy Avenue and South Calhoun Street in 1926.  The home is currently being restored by Charlie Garbutt to house the offices of his construction company.  That same year, Hardwick argued the for the appellant in the case of Fenner v. Boykin before the United States Supreme Court. Hardwick sold his house to R.T. Peacock, Sr. and returned home to Sandersville to practice law.  Hardwick lost his third bid for governor losing to Eugene Talmadge in 1932.  

  

Thomas Hardwick died after suffering a heart attack at the home of his daughter, Mrs. Frederick B. “Mary” Rawlings in Sandersville on January 31, 1944.  He is buried there in the Old City Cemetery. Thomas William Hardwick was a politician with principles.  His belief in doing what was right in the face of what was politically expedient cost him many years of political service, which was profoundly important to him. His programs for the establishment of a Board of Regents, a state income tax, a more than adequate transportation system, and a sea port were eventually adopted.  His unpopular stand against the KKK eventually became the prevailing opinion of most Georgians.  By today’s standards, he would be considered an enigma, strongly conservative on some issues, and equally as liberal on others.  In the days of political corruption, he was a shining light for integrity and honesty.  The “Macon Telegraph” eulogized Hardwick as “a public servant of dauntless courage and unimpeachable integrity.  In every relation of his life, he was faithful to his trust.”

 01-23

FIRST MANASSAS 

The Run From Bull Run

They were going to whip the Yankees in a month.  The war was going to be over before by Christmas.  One hundred forty years ago this week, the South and the North went head to head in the first battle of the War Between the States.     The southern army named its battles for the nearest town or land mass - the northern army for the nearest creek or river.  The armies clashed near the railroad junction at Manassas, Virginia, near the creek named Bull Run.  The Yankees were equally confident.  High ranking government officials, their wives, and curious spectators traveled by wagons and buggies the short distance from Washington, D.C. to see the Grand Army of the Republic destroy the upstart rebels.  When it was over, both sides were suffering.  The Confederates had stood their ground, losing many lives and valuable field leaders along the way.  The Federals, stunned and unexpectedly overwhelmed, ran most of the way back to the safety of the fortified capital city.

The 8th Georgia Infantry was there that day.   Company G of the 8th Georgia was known as the Pulaski Volunteers.  The Volunteers officially organized on May 16, 1861, a little more than a month after the war began at Fort Sumter, South Carolina.  The company, under the command of Capt. T.D. Lawrence Ryan, was composed primarily of men from Pulaski, Telfair, and Laurens Counties.    One of the most intriguing members of the Volunteers was James Argo.  Argo was born in 1796 and fought for his country in the War of 1812.  He joined the Volunteers at the age of sixty five and served until the close of the war.  Laurens County’s sole company, the Blackshear Guards, had not yet been mustered into Confederate service.

  

A week before the company was officially organized on May 16th, sixty or seventy of the Volunteers traveled to Dublin to train with the Blackshear Guards.  After an exhaustive drill, the Guards entertained the Volunteers with a feast.  With their stomachs full, the men were in no mood for any intensive activity, and by mid-afternoon headed back for Hawkinsville, stopping on the way at the home of Samuel Yopp, four miles outside of Dublin.

Daniel H. Mason, of Laurens County,  was elected as the company’s Second Sergeant.  Sgt. Mason, the thirty one year old son of William Mason and his wife, the former Margaret Pullen of northeastern Laurens County, was one of the first Laurens Countians to enlist in the Confederate Army.  

Around the 10th to the 15th of July, the 8th Georgia was ordered to Martinsburg, Virginia, where Stonewall Jackson’s forces were converging with the Federal army.  The conflict never materialized, and on the 19th the Confederate Army marched toward Manassas Junction.  The report of cannon fire was heard during the mid morning hours of the 20th.  The regiment marched double quick to the sound of the guns.  They arrived just before noon and found themselves in an open field and in easy view of Union artillery and riflemen.  The volunteers quickly moved to the cover of a pine thicket near the Stone Bridge over Bull Run, where the Federals had crossed earlier in the day.  

The 8th Georgia opened fire.  The Federals fired back.  The slaughter began. The six hundred men of the 8th Georgia held on for forty five minutes, just long enough to delay the enemy until Beauregard and the remainder of Johnston’s armies could come up to the lines.  In despair and confusion, the Volunteers fell back into a ravine in the rear of the thicket.  The Volunteers attempted to rally.  The Federals rushed in nearly surrounding the devastated Pulaski Countians after they managed to get off only one volley of musketry fire.   Colonel Francis S. Bartow, a former Georgia Congressman, rode toward the 8th’s position.  Bartow, who had his horse shot out from underneath him, was escorted by the surviving Volunteers to a more secure position.  Col. Bartow sat down to rest.  In contemplation of the ongoing tumult, Bartow lamented, “My men are nearly all killed and I can not longer to live.  I pray God that a bullet may pierce my heart.”  

Captain Ryan asked permission for his remaining men to join a South Carolina unit in one last gallant charge.  The request was denied and the survivors of the 8th were sent to the rear of the lines out of range of enemy fire.  The Confederate lines were collapsing.  Col. Bartow, commanding the 7th and 8th Georgia regiments,  and Gen. Barnard Bee of South Carolina rushed to the aid of Col. Nathan Evans’s men.  Despite the reinforced line, the Confederates began to fall back toward Henry Hill.  After a lull in the battle, Gen. Bee attempted to rally his men by yelling the immortal words, “ There stands Jackson like a stone wall.”  Col. Bartow led the 7th Georgia in a charge.  His prayer was answered.   Bartow received a mortal wound.  The dying colonel stated, “They have killed me, boys, but never give up the field.”   Gen. Bee, too, received a mortal wound.  Lt. Col. William Gardner, commanding officer of the 8th Georgia, was severely wounded and removed from the field.   The 8th suffered horrific losses.    New and fresh Confederate units smashed the Federal flank.  After the firing had slowed to a smattering, the Pulaski Volunteers made their way to an elevated position overlooking the village of Centerville.  David G. Fleming of the Volunteers recalled, “ Men, carts, wagons, carriages, artillery, horses, and everything rushing frantically and ‘topsy-turvy’ over each other, and all running for dear life.”  Soldiers and spectators fled in mass confusion all the way home to Washington.  Victory overcame the sting of death, if only briefly.  The Volunteers greeted Gen. Beauregard as he came up to salute their efforts.  The Confederates whipped the Yankees just like they said they would, but at a cost which was more dear than they ever imagined.  Both sides learned that day that the war would not be a quick one.  Nearly a half million more men would die before peace would come.

There was one more task to do before the end of the day.  It was not a pleasant one, but it had to be done.  The men knew that they had to return to the thicket.  Their comrades were there, some wounded, some dying, and some already dead.  Alvey Goodson, John Lowery, J.W. Carruthers, and Jesse Scarborough were dead.  Thomas Boatright was dying.  W.N. Bowen, A.R. Coley, J.E. Floyd, A. McClelland, and Isaac Rains were severely wounded.  Sgt. Daniel Mason was there too, blood gushing from a wound in his arm.  Bowen, McLelland, and Rains soon died.  Fleming pondered, “On viewing the small pines, and remembering how thick the bullets came, our wonder was how any of us escaped, except by protection of an unseen hand.”

Sgt. Mason was taken to a primitive field hospital and later transported to Charlottesville, Virginia, where a Confederate surgeon amputated his arm.  David Fleming, Mason’s dear friend and messmate, described the sergeant as “a most excellent soldier.”   Mason, like many amputees of the day, didn’t make it.  After a few weeks of lingering in constant agony, Mason died.  He is buried in the Confederate Cemetery in Charlottesville.  Sgt. Daniel Mason was Laurens County’s first victim of that long and eternally tragic war, the War Between the States, which began in earnest with all of its death and horror, one hundred and forty years ago this week.  

01-24

 

CHARLES WESSOLOWSKY

A Jewish Star

in Gentile South Georgia

Charles Wessolowsky peddled goods for a living.  His primary goal in life was to maintain his Jewish faith, all while living in a Gentile world.  His zeal for living, learning, and serving led him to the zenith of both worlds, Jewish and Gentile.  He was admired by thousands as a leader in religion, government, and military service.  For a brief time, Wessolowsky peddled his wares to the people of Laurens and surrounding counties.

Charles Wessolowsky was born in the hamlet of Gollub in the province of Posen, Prussia on the 3rd day of September, 1839.  Like many young adults in Prussia, Wesslowsky left his homeland primarily to avoid military service under a leadership which was hardly supportive of  the problems of Prussian Jews.    Asa, Charles’s older brother, emigrated to America and landed in Sandersville, Georgia, the economic hub of northeast Central Georgia.  Two years later in 1858, Charles, at the age of nineteen years, made the difficult decision to leave home and join his brother.  Charles arrived in the port of New York and began a long journey to Sandersville.  His money ran out in Richmond, Virginia, necessitating a five hundred mile plus walk to Sandersville.  

Charles hit the road shortly after his arrival.  With a back breaking pack filled with goods and sewing notions on his back, he set out on his journey, a stranger in a strange world.  He knew very little English - not even enough to count pennies and nickels.  He had expected to be mistreated by the local citizens.  He found the opposite was true.  The farmers of Washington, Johnson, and Laurens counties were not vicious bigots he had been led to believe.  Charles was flabbergasted when he was invited to spend the night with a family, who fed him a piece of bacon. He politely ate the bacon,  but fretted because of his religious beliefs.  Charles soon learned that he did not need to give up his religion to survive in America. The people of the area treated him with respect, even serving him an acceptable diet of food.  His customers and even their children helped him to learn to read English.  A school primer book became one of his most prized possessions.  He studied every time he read his prayer book.  He began to read classical literature, out loud at times to practice his southern accent.

The Wesslowsky brothers formed a partnership in 1859 in  the Riddleville Community, southeast of Sandersville.  Charles, in a marriage arranged by Asa, married Joanna Paiser in 1859.  His first child, Morris, was born on New Year’s Day, 1860.  Morris may have been named for Morris Dawson, another Posen born peddler. Dawson maintained a store of the John A. Phillips Company with one or both of the Wesslowskys at Cedar Hill in the Boiling Springs Community in northeastern Laurens County in the years before the Civil War.   As war became eminent, the Wesslowskys set their sights on Savannah in hopes of making a better living.  Their lives were about to be turned upside down and inside out.

On May 7, 1862, nearly thirteen months after the first shots of the Civil War were fired at nearby Fort Sumpter, Charles and Asa enlisted at Savannah  in Company G of the 32nd Georgia Infantry.  A kinsman, Adolph H. Kieve, joined with them under the assumed name of Adolph Wesslowsky.    The men served for a while under Captain John Phillips and Lieutenant Morris Dawson, their old friends.   

In the late summer of 1862, the Jewish soldiers held a meeting in Savannah to vent their anger at the expulsion of Jews from the South Georgia city of Thomasville.  Lt. Dawson chaired the meeting in which Charles rose to chastize those who mistreated his people, whom he claimed were as patriotic to the Confederate cause as anyone else.   The whole experience left a life long impression on Charles and convinced him that America was a haven for those experiencing religious persecution and one which should have no tolerance for bigotry.  The Wesslowskys were transferred to Company E, a company raised out of Washington County, their first home in America.   Asa was transferred to the Quartermaster Corps when he became unfit for military service.  Adolph, who had played in the regimental band, was beset by yellow fever which led to his death at Mt. Pleasant, South Carolina in 1864.  Charles, who rose to the respected rank of Sergeant Major,  fought in the battles of Battery Wagner and Olustee before being captured at New Hope Church, near Dallas,  Georgia on November 28, 1864 . Charles was sent to the custody of the 15th Army Corps and then to Hilton Head Island until the end of the war.

Charles returned to Sandersville for a short time, then returned to Savannah to open a small store on the corner of Broughton and Habersham Streets.  Charles left his creditors behind and moved to Albany, where Adolph Kieve had once operated a successful business.  Charles quickly rose to a leadership position in the Jewish community of Albany.  Charles also rose to prominence in the Gentile Albany community.  He became a leader in the Masonic lodge and served a term as a city alderman, Clerk of Superior Court (1871-1875), a two year term in the Georgia House of Representatives (1875-1876), and one year in the Georgia Senate in 1877.

Wessolowsky, feeling the need to restore Jewish brotherhood in the South,  became increasingly involved with the B’nai Brith movement.  Charles finally accepted an offer to become the associate editor of “The Jewish South,” a Jewish newspaper which promoted pride, unity, and conciliation.  Once again, Wesslowsky hit the road, this time to preach the need for the B’nai Brith movement as a vital part of the Jewish community’s survival.  He traveled throughout the South lecturing to anyone who would lend an ear.  After four years with the paper, Charles returned to Albany to engage in business with his son.  He resumed his roles in the Jewish community and in the Masonic Lodge.  From 1895 to 1897, Wessolowsky was honored with his position as Grand High Priest of the Grand Chapter of Georgia, Royal Arch Masons.  He then became Worshipful Master of the Albany Lodge, No. 24.  

While he was lecturing on Masonic principles  in Tampa, Florida, in March, 1904, Wessolowsky suffered a stroke.  A second stroke on July 8th ended his life.  Condolences and high praises were expressed by the thousands of his friends.    On his tombstone are the words, “Charles Wessolowsky, born 1839, died 1908, Past Grand High Priest of Georgia.”  Wesslowsky requested the inscription because he thought it was of the upmost importance that a Jewish immigrant could rise to a high position and could live in and succeed in a Gentile world, without losing his identity as a Jew.

01-25

MARY MUSGROVE

The Queen of Georgia

Mary Musgrove, next to Nancy Hart, was the most famous woman of 18th Century Georgia.  Half Indian and half white, Mary served the people of Georgia before leading a revolt to destroy it.  Her personal life was often tragic. Mary, the largest landowner in the colony of Georgia when she died, established a trading post at the mouth of the Oconee River at its confluence with the Ocmulgee River, at a place known as “The Forks.”

Mary, the daughter of a South Carolina trader and a niece of Mico Brin, the Chief of the Creek Nation, was born at the turn of the 18th Century in Old Coweta town in West Georgia.  When she was seven years old, Mary, who had been known until then by her given name Consaponakeeso, moved with her father back to South Carolina, where she was baptized into the Christian faith.  In 1716, Col. John Musgrove was commissioned to negotiate with the Creeks in Georgia in an effort to prevent the expansion of the Spanish empire north from Florida.   Mary was invited because of her ability to speak fluent English and Creek.  Mary fell in love with the Colonel’s son, John Musgrove, Jr.   The two were married and remained in the Indian nation.  Mary became fluent in various dialects of the Creek and Muscogee tribes.

In 1732, with the influential aid of Col. Musgrove, John and Mary Musgrove purchased a lot of trading goods and livestock and set up a trading post at Yamacraw Bluff opposite South Carolina near the mouth of the Savannah River.  A year later, a party of British colonists led by Gen. James Oglethorpe landed at the bluff, where they established the Colony of Georgia.  Oglethorpe selected Mary to serve as an interpreter and liaison between the colonists and the Yamacraw Indians.  Mary’s influence with both of her people led to friendly relationships well into the 1750s. 

Following the death of John Musgrove, Jr., Gen. Oglethorpe asked Mary to move inland, one hundred and fifty miles from the mouth of the Altamaha River at a place known as Fort Venture.  It was there that Mary met and married Captain Jacob Mathew, a British officer.  Mary accompanied Gen. Oglethorpe into the interior of Georgia to negotiate to a critical treaty with the Creeks . The treaty gave the English a permanent foothold in Georgia and led directly to the British victory over the Spanish at the Battle of Bloody Marsh.

A storm of controversy surrounded Mary during her marriage to Captain Mathew.  Mary had been granted the islands of St. Catherines, Ossabaw, and Sapelo and a four thousand acre tract near Savannah  by her Indian people.  In addition, Mary claimed that the colony owed her for her services to Gen. Oglethorpe.   Capt. Mathew became ill and died in Savannah in 1742.

Mary became acquainted with Rev. Thomas Bosomworth, Chaplain of Oglethorpe’s regiment at Fort Frederica on Saint Simons Island.  Thomas and Mary were married in 1744.  Rev. Bosomworth, a somewhat seedy character, took up his wife’s cause in her claims for land and money.  Bosomworth traveled to England to plead her case.  Following his return, the Bosomsworths moved inland to establish a trading business.

The couple chose a strategic location at the confluence of the Oconee and Ocmulgee, the rivers which form the mighty Altamaha River.  While the exact location of the post is not known, it is likely that it was located in the southwestern corner of Montgomery County on the east side of the Oconee and the northern side of the Altamaha.  While at “The Forks,” the Bosomworths enjoyed a lucrative business.  Mary was able to maintain friendly relationships with the Indians and the Georgians along the coast.  The outpost allowed the British to maintain surveillance of Spanish military activities emanating out of Florida.  The Bosomworths were the first to bring slaves into the Oconee River basin.

The Reverend enlisted Major William Horton in command of the British forces at Frederica to aid the Bosomworths.  After Horton was recalled, Rev. Bosomworth convinced his successor, Col. Heron to join with him.  Mary was proclaimed the Empress of the Creek Nation.  Bosomworth promised the leaders of the Creek tribes untold wealth if they would march against and attack the British in Savannah.   In July of 1749,  Mary, dressed in the attire of her mother’s family, led the advance.  Bosomworth wore his canonical robes.  Three or four hundred Indians, covered with war paint, followed.  Captain Noble Jones rode out to meet the oncoming band of angry Indians.  Jones was able to convince the Indians that the Bosomworths had lied to them.   The attackers laid down their arms and were treated to a feast.  The Bosomworths were secreted to jail.  Bosomworth’s brother rushed in from South Carolina and convinced the couple to relinquish their claims in exchange for their freedom.  Bosomworth reneged on his promise and continued to press Mary’s claims.  Finally he was successful when Governor Henry Ellis authorized the sale of Ossabaw and Sapelo and to pay the proceeds to Mary.  Mary was allowed to retain St. Catherine’s Island along with a stipend of twenty one hundred pounds.  Mary and Thomas lived on St. Catherine’s until her death in 1766.   Mary was buried near her island home.  Thomas married Mary’s chamber maid.  Later he sold the island to Button Gwinnett, who signed the Declaration of Independence on behalf of the Colony of Georgia.  Following Gwinett’s death in a duel with Lachlan McIntosh, title to the island reverted to Bosomworth, who lived there until his death several years later.

01-26

MR. LARSEN GOES TO WASHINGTON

The Story of Congressman William Washington Larsen

William Larsen was a public servant.  For nearly forty years, he served his community in government at the local, state, and federal levels.  This son of emigrant parents was the longest serving congressmen of the six Laurens countians who have served in the Congress of the United States.  Larsen was a more than able lawyer, was the progenitor of no less than seven lawyers and a public servant of the utmost kind.

William Washington Larsen was born on August 12, 1871 in the hamlet of Hagan, Georgia, then in Tattnall County, but now in Evans County.  Larsen’s father, Peter Larsen of Ostrup, Denmark, was a machinist by trade.  The elder Larsen turned down a commission in the Danish military and chose to come to America instead.  Peter Larsen’s wife, Ann Margrada Neilsen, joined him in New York City at the end of the Civil War.  The Larsens came to Savannah after the war and migrated to Bulloch, Bryan, and Tattnall counties.  It was in the latter where Peter situated his blacksmith shop. 

William left home at the age of fourteen. His father died when William was only fourteen months old.   He worked on farms, in cotton factories, and in the piney woods gathering turpentine to earn enough money to further his education.  William attended Bryan County schools, the Bryan Institute, and South Georgia Military College in Thomasville.  From time to time, he taught school.  William entered the University of Georgia in 1893 but had to leave after two years to support his family.  Larsen moved to nearby Swainsboro to study law under the supervision of the firm of Williams, Twiggs, and Williams.  On April 26, 1897, Larsen was admitted to the bar of Emanuel County Superior Court.   A week before Christmas in 1898, Larsen joined hands in marriage with Dovie Estell Strange, daughter of David J.  Strange and Mary Ann Edenfield Strange.

Gov. Allen D. Candler appointed Larsen as the Solicitor General of the City Court of Swainsboro, a court of limited jurisdiction over misdemeanor crimes and small claim civil disputes. Larsen prosecuted cases in the City Court until the end of 1904, in addition to his regular duties as a practicing attorney.  During his fourteen years in Swainsboro, Larsen practiced law in association with Alfred Herrington and F.H. Saffold.  In the years following the Spanish American War, cities organized State Guard organizations for local defense.  Larsen helped to establish Company C of the Georgia State Guards, in which he served as the company lieutenant.  While living in Swainsboro, Larsen purchased the “The Forest” and later  acquired “The Blade.”  Shortly after, he merged the two papers into the “Forest Blade.”  Larsen served as a member of the Swainsboro City Council and as Mayor Pro Tempore from 1905 to 1909.  Larsen left Swainsboro in January 1910, when he accepted an appointment by Gov. Joseph M. Brown as the Secretary of the Executive Department of Georgia.  His term ended with Gov. Brown’s term in 1911.  Larsen did remain in office for one month under Gov. John Slaton.  

Larsen decided that instead of returning to Swainsboro permanently that he would move to Dublin, Georgia.  In 1912,  Dublin was one of the premier cities in Georgia and offered more opportunities for success.  Larsen formed a successful partnership with C.C.  Crockett   The firm represented Dublin’s largest banks, the First National, the Dublin Banking Company, and the Southern Exchange Bank.  Larsen practiced law for a while in partnership with his nephew, William Tell Larsen, who was tragically killed while crossing railroad tracks in his automobile.  The Dublin Judicial Circuit was created on August 18, 1911.  The circuit’s  first judge, Kendrick J. Hawkins, died  while in office.  On July 15, 1914, Gov. John M. Slaton appointed Larsen to the bench to fill Judge Hawkins’s remaining term, which ended on December 31, 1914.

Upon the urging of friends and colleagues, William “Wash” Larsen entered politics and announced his candidacy for the seat of Congressman Dudley M. Hughes to represent the 12th Congressional District of Georgia. Larsen defeated the venerable Hughes had been a local stalwart in the Congress for more than ten years. 

Just as Larsen was settling down in his Congressional seat, the United States declared war against Germany.  While facing the onslaught of the boll weevil, which threatened to destroy the lifeblood of his district, Larsen led the successful effort to locate U.S. Highway 80 through the 12th District and in particular his hometown of Dublin.  Congressman Larsen was reelected seven more times by the people of his district.  While in Congress, Larsen served on the Agriculture and Highway committees. 

Following the census of 1930 and the redistricting of congressional districts in 1932, Larsen did not offer himself as a candidate for Congress. He bowed out in favor of his friend, Cong. Carl Vinson of Milledgeville, who went on to faithfully serve and support the people of Laurens County for sixteen more terms.  In one of his last acts in Congress, Larsen set in motion the process to build a new  federal courthouse and office building in Dublin.  Nearly four years after he left office, the building, now known as the J. Roy Rowland Federal Courthouse, was opened for public use.

Larsen knew the importance of a good education in the modern day 20th Century.  From 1912 to 1927, Wash Larsen served as a trustee on the Board of the State Normal School in Athens, until he accepted a position on the Board of Trustees for the University of Georgia. He served on the Board of Trustees until his death.  As a part of his position on the board, Larsen was chosen to serve on the board of directors of the Medical Department of the University of Georgia.   Larsen began a term on the Board of Directors of Middle Georgia Agricultural and Mechanical College in Cochran in 1931.  

Following his retirement from Congress, Congressman Larsen accepted an appointment by President Roosevelt  as regional manager of the Emergency Crop and Feed Loan Section of the Farm Credit Administration in Columbia, South Carolina.  Larsen resigned that position in 1936 to enter the Georgia gubernatorial campaign.  Despite some solid support in his old district, Larsen bowed out of the race, which was eventually won by E.D. Rivers. In the following year, Rivers appointed  Larsen as a director of the Georgia Unemployment Insurance Commission.

Dovie Larsen died on April 13, 1928.  Nearly four years later on April 3, 1932, Larsen married Miss Margaret Van Dyke, daughter of Frank and Nellie Duncan Van Dyke, prominent residents of Fairfax County, Virginia.  The Larsens spent most of their time on the family farm in Twiggs County near Jeffersonville, but they maintained a home in Dublin on Crescent Drive in Stubbs Park.

Wash Larsen spent his last Christmas recovering from a bout with pneumonia.  His condition was improving until the afternoon of January 5, 1938 when he was struck by a fatal heart attack. His body was escorted to its final resting place in Northview Cemetery by a large group of friends and professional associates, including former Georgia governor Clifford Walker.  

01-27

   

H.  DALE THOMPSON

A Son’s Eulogy 

          Daddy died on a Thursday, the fifth day of July, a day after which he  always proclaimed as  the hottest day of the year.  He was pulling a mess of corn.  For those of you who don’t know what a mess is, it is just a little bit more than you need.  In his last words to me and possibly  the last words he ever spoke, he said “ I better go on.  It might rain.”  He was going to Joe Hilbun’s corn field to pull a dozen ears for me and three dozen ears for my brother Henry, whom I was going to visit at his home in South Carolina the next day.  He stayed in the field for over an hour with the July sun heating the air upward toward one hundred degrees.  He pulled an extra fifty ears or so, just in case someone needed them.  Daddy loved giving away the bounty of the land.   I think he felt that it was one of the reasons that God put him on this Earth. He made it back to his house at his farm on the Old Savannah Road.  He carefully placed the bounty in blue plastic Walmart bags in the floor board of his Ford pickup.  He went inside, pulled his coveralls off, and sat down in a chair to rest.  His last act of kindness, his last act of giving, his last act of love done, God called him home to rest.  

Henry Dale Thompson was born in 1923 in Emanuel County on the old Carl Gillis, Sr. place off Highway 80, just beyond the bend after the highway crosses the Ohoopee River going toward Swainsboro.  I will always call him “Daddy.” His friends and clients called him Dale, Mr. Dale, or Colonel Thompson.  His schoolmates called him “Fireball”and other less flattering names.  His name should have been “Dole,” an error on his mother’s part in reading my grandfather’s letter.  My grandfather, Henry Thompson, was away from home when Daddy was born, working to make a living for his wife, the former Miss Claudie Mae Braswell.  Times were hard in the late twenties and early thirties, so Daddy and his family moved to Central Florida where his parents could make a living working for the railroad and the fruit company respectively.  With a sufficient sum of money in hand, the Thompsons returned to Emanuel County, where my grandfather bought the store of Mr. Gillis at Captain James’ well just past the river bridge next to the Nazarene Campground.   The family lived over the store for a few years until Dale, his father, friends, and family built a two bedroom home on the Meeks Road behind the store.   

It was in these sleepy communities of Adrian, Scott, Meeks, and Norristown that Daddy’s life was shaped - friendships which would last seven decades began in the “good old days” of the 1930s.  Daddy’s first public service came with his work with the CCC crews in and around Adrian.  He was a leader in the Agricultural and Industrial Arts clubs at Adrian High School.  Daddy loved to play baseball and basketball.   Some of his fondest moments came on the ball field with cousins Jack Key, Billy Key, and Verlon Watson (Most of the team were related to each other).  Daddy was vice president of his Adrian High School Class of 1940.  In the fall of 1940, he entered college at Georgia Teacher’s College at Statesboro.  Adrian High School never had a football team, but that didn’t stop Daddy.  Although he wasn’t a big man, Daddy played in the middle of Coach B.L. “Crook” Smith’s offensive line.  Daddy played in the last game of the last season of football at Teacher’s College.  War came in 1941, and football was over.  Georgia Teacher’s College became Georgia Southern University.  Four decades after the last football game, the first intra squad football game of Georgia Southern was played at the Shamrock Bowl in Dublin, just across the woods of Sandy Ford Creek and within earshot of Daddy’s home.  It was at Teacher’s College where Daddy met a whole new set of  friends, including J.W. Zetterower and Thomas Curry, who in a friendly act of hazing, helped shave Daddy’s head, except for a “T” shaped patch of hair which was left on his bald head. 

Daddy wanted to fly airplanes in the service of his country.  When the war started, he was working at Union Bag in Savannah.  He enlisted in the U.S. Navy in hopes of being a naval pilot.  A swift kick in his nose in a soccer match messed up his balance and ended any hopes of flying.  He  transferred to the regular navy as a Seaman First Class.  Daddy never talked too much about the war.  He loved to talk about the good times.  Following the death of his cousin Felix Powell a few years ago, Daddy told me something he had told no one in over fifty years.  Powell had been taken prisoner by the Japanese during the war.  While his ship, the LCS 66, was off the coast of Okinawa, rumors began to circulate among the crew that there were Americans on the island.  It was possible that Felix was there.  Daddy’s captain gave him and a buddy permission to go on to the island and look for him.  Something came up and Daddy never undertook the mission to find Felix, who was on the Japanese mainland at the time.  Daddy was a Twin 40 gunner.  His flotilla, Flotilla 4,  shot down more than one thousand Kamikazes.  He took no pride in that statistic, but after fifty six years he still felt the pain the Kamikazes inflicted on his friends.  After the war was over, Daddy got another chance to fly.  He trained at Corpus Christi Naval Air Station until he was accepted for admission to Mercer Law School.

At Mercer, Daddy found a new set a friends: Griffin Bell, former Attorney General of the United States; Buck Melton, former Mayor of Macon, and a host of Superior Court judges, including Dub Douglas of Dublin.  It was at Mercer where Daddy found his best friend, my mother, Jane Scott, who was the secretary to the Dean.  Many of his fellow students indicted him for dating my mother so that he could get  a better grade in his classes.  Daddy always said, “All I ever wanted to do was to practice law in Dublin, Georgia.”  On September 1, 1949, Daddy’s dream came true.  He opened his office in the Hicks building across from the courthouse.  A week before Christmas, he married my mother.  Their first home was  an apartment on Ramsey Street.  A common misconception is that all lawyers are rich.  Mama and Daddy had no car. They had to walk to work, to church, and to the grocery store.  Hamburgers and sandwiches were their daily diet. If Daddy took in one hundred and fifty dollars in a week, it was a good week.  

From the very beginning of his legal career in Dublin, Daddy began a career of serving the public.  He saw a duty in the practice of law - a duty to serve people.  Daddy became actively involved in the American Legion, serving as a baseball coach, Commander of the local Post No. 17, a district officer, and a state officer.   Daddy fought hard to build a county hospital in Dublin.  He was an ardent supporter of the VA Hospital and veterans in general.  He once turned down an offer to serve in a high position in the Georgia National Guard in favoring of remaining in Dublin.  Two decades later he turned down a position as a Federal Court judge which was offered to him by his former classmate, Griffin Bell.  You know about his nearly forty years of free service to the Development Authority, the five hundred or so Sunday school lessons gave, and all the favors and gifts to his friends.  You might not have known that he represented the last Laurens County man to be executed in the electric chair.  It was years later when I learned that it was he who was playing Santa Claus at our church Christmas Party.  I always wondered why he had to work on those nights. 

Daddy didn’t count his bank accounts as his most precious asset.  He had money, but it was there in case a member of our family needed it.  My favorite philosopher, Sir Winston Churchill, characterized what my father was all about when he said,” We make our living by what we earn.  We make our lives by what we give.”   That is lesson which we all should live by.  Over the last half century Daddy came to know a whole new and much larger set of friends.  He had friends.  He counted them by the thousands. They were his greatest assets.  One of those friends asked me, “Mr. Dale gave and gave and never got anything in return,” to which I disagree.  His friends were always there when he needed them.  Even after his death, they were there, just when my family needed them most.  They will always be there until the last one is gone.  

Daddy’s  life in Laurens County was a lesson,  a lesson which we have seen over and over again in our past.  Simply stated the reason is that “If you serve your community, your community will serve you.” My most precious inheritance is his love and respect  for those people who came before us, balanced with his  need to serve others to improve this world for those who will come after us.  Daddy knew that the most important part of our county’s heritage is the friendships we have made, and the most important part of our future are the  new friends, the ones we haven’t met yet.

P.S.  Daddy, when you finish working the cross word puzzle today, please read my column, I just wanted to say, I love you and on the day I see you at the farm again, please pull a few ears for me, not the sweet white kind, but my favorite, the yellow ones, the ones that are almost too hard to eat. A mess of peas would be nice too!

01-28

REV.   NATHANIEL WALLER PRIDGEON

The Minister Who Preached His Own Funeral

Yogi Berra, baseball legend and  human philosopher, once said, “Always go to other people’s funerals, otherwise they won’t go to yours.”  Rev. Nathaniel Waller Pridgeon, a former resident of Laurens County, did not subscribe to that theory.  He went to his own funeral.  He preached it, but in the end he wasn’t there when the last shovel of dirt was thrown on top of his coffin.

Nathaniel Waller Pridgeon was born in Montgomery County, North Carolina, on April 9, 1804.  Pridgeon’s family moved to Baldwin County, the seat of Georgia’s capital, in 1808.  Pridgeon’s father was known to have been a  mechanic and a somewhat of a squatter.  The family moved around from place to place looking for work.  Nathaniel Pridgeon graduated from medical college and began his practice of medicine in Laurens County.  Almost from the start of practice, Nathaniel began to have his doubts about his future as a physician. 

"You know I was a doctor then - a regular medicine doctor - and I cured folks all over Laurens County. I made up my mind I would go to farming, and quit practicing altogether, but do you know them folks just wouldn't let me do it. I would be a plowing in the fields, and here would come somebody a running to fetch me to see some ailing body, and of course I had to go. Yes, they just kept coming  and I could not make them stop. It was doctor this, and doctor that, doctor morning, evening and night. I knew if a stayed in old Laurens, I never could quit practicing, so I just pulled up stakes and lit out for Alabama,” said Dr. Pridgeon.  "I know it wasn't right. It wasn't Christian like. I ought to have stayed and physiced those people, cause it seemed like God's will. That worried me for four years, and at last I couldn't stand it, and I just left there and came right back to Georgia," Pridgeon regretfully told an Atlanta Constitution reporter.  Pridgeon was proud of the fact that he had lived in eleven states during his life.  He primarily lived in Morgan, Oconee, Clarke, and Laurens counties in Georgia and spend a short time in Alabama. “Well, I felt that God called me to new fields and new pastures, and I obeyed His call.  I disobeyed Him once, and that was when I went over to Alabama,”  Pridgeon said.

Dr. Pridgeon came back to Georgia and settled in Morgan County.  Pridgeon attended a church service  in Oconee County.  Pridgeon was so moved by the sermon that day that he was converted  and baptized. Dr. Pridgeon became Rev. Pridgeon when he was ordained as a minister in 1845. Rev. Pridgeon moved to Oconee County, where he made a good living of five silver dollars a month, much more than he needed.

Rev. Pridgeon married Polly Willoughby, daughter of William Willoughby, on December 12, 1824 in Athens.  One of their seven children, Alva Carter Pridgeon, married Eliza Gilleland, whose father, John Gilleland,  developed the famed “double-barrel” cannon of Athens, Georgia.  Gilleland designed his cannon to  shoot  two cannon balls connected by a long chain.  Gilleland theorized that the balls and the chain would create big gaps in Union army lines.  The invention never worked as it was intended to do.  The two cannon balls would never come out together. The first time it was fired, one ball left first and the second spun around killing a cow and knocking down a barn. It was used again when the Yankees tried to enter Athens, but the barrels were loaded with buck shot.  

It was a bright day in the early spring on April 7, 1888, two days before Rev. Pridgeon’s eighty fourth birthday.  The crowd began to gather early in Oconee County.  Rev. Pridgeon was going to preach his own funeral.    At eleven o’clock in the morning, the service began.  Nearly twenty three hundred curious onlookers crowded around the pulpit and the coffin.  Rev. Pridgeon invited a newspaper reporter to have an exclusive seat on top of his coffin. Pridgeon had  studied the “Bible” and had determined that funerals were the results of pagan worship.  His first wife had died a few years earlier.  She had no funeral.  His first memory of funeral was that of his father, more than a half century earlier, in which his father was buried with full Masonic honors.  The Reverend denounced the evils of money and liquor.  He challenged the crowd not to revel in the death of friends and loved ones. 

The Reverend began to sing.  He told the audience that he was going to Heaven.  He invited all of those who would listen to come with him to Christ and to serve God.   The last words of his sermon were “Ye pearly gates, fly open wide, make ready to receive the bride.  Hark and hear the herald’s cry!  Be heard, the bridegroom’s growing nigh!”   Pridgeon closed his eyes, stroked his beard, and looked at his memo book.  The funeral sermon was over.

The choir sang “Beulah Land.”  The reporter and a couple of gentlemen passed hats throughout the crowd as an offering for the beloved minister.  Rev. Pridgeon was grateful.  He had been wealthy in the past, but the last years had taken a toll on his finances.  The donations would allow him to spend his last days without want or need of money. 

Mrs. Pridgeon adamantly refused to allow the coffin to be taken back home.  It was stored at a neighbor’s office until the time came for the burial of her husband.  The newspaper reported touchingly described his last encounter with the man whom he had grown to admire; “ I left him standing so with the parting words still on his trembling lips, and his dull eyes still on the somber casket. When I turned to look again he was yet standing alone, but in his hands he held his cherished book, and he was whispering between its pages the story of his sermon. Another moment and I had left the weird old preacher, his mysterious companion and his dark and gruesome forever.”

Rev. Pridgeon lived awhile longer.  He had done something that not many ministers, or people for that matter, get to do.  He preached on his own funeral.   But his life had been his sermon.  He was healer of the body and a healer of the mind.  He was ready to enter the “pearly gates” of Heaven.

01-29

NINETEENTH CENTURY TALES OF DUBLIN AND LAURENS

One of the true legendary characters of mid 19th century Dublin was a merchant by the name of McBain.  McBain operated a trading post and warehouse on South Jefferson Street in the area where Central Office Suppliers is now located.  McBain was one of the more peculiar merchants of his day or any other day.  He kept his store locked at all times.  A customer had to knock on the door to alert McBain of his presence.  McBain would come to the door, take the order, lock the door, fill the order, bring it back to the door, take the money, and lock the door again.  McBain was also somewhat of a miser.  Legend has it that McBain buried his gold along the banks of Harrison's Branch, which crosses S. Jefferson Street at P.M. Watson & Co.. In 1839, a Katherine McBain purchased three acres along the western side of Franklin Street bounded on the north by the railroad and on the south by Harrison's Branch.  Many men tried and failed to find the gold.  The legend was strengthened by the fact that when workmen were constructing the Troup House, Dublin's premier hotel, on the site,  they found what was described as a bushel of silver pieces in the hearth of the trading post. Dublin Courier Herald, Jan. 25, 1921; Laurens County Legal Records, 1833-1857, by Allen Thomas 

Thomas Moore is generally credited with being the first physician in Laurens County.  He made his first appearance in the legal records in 1818 and married Elizabeth McCall, daughter of Surveyor General Thomas McCall in 1819.  Thomas Moore went on to serve as the third Clerk of Laurens Superior Court.  Thomas Moore's son by his first wife was James Seaborn Moore.  James Moore entered West Point Military Academy in 1825 and graduated in July of 1829.  James Moore was educated as a physician and resigned his commission later in the year.  He returned to Dublin to practice medicine.  He left Dublin and lived the last three decades of his life in Alabama, where he died on July 25, 1869.  Moore graduated forty second  in his class.  You might remember the number two man - a young Virginian, Robert E. Lee.  Another classmate was Gen. Joseph E. Johnston, C.S.A..  Graduating the year before Dr. Moore was a young Mississippi cadet by the name of Jefferson Davis. "Register of Graduates, U.S. Military Academy, 1962, p. 177."

In the summer of 1879, Milly Gibson was living in the Laurens County Almshouse.  Her physical condition was extremely perplexing.  Her skull bones had been for years gradually gaping open at both the longitudinal and the transverse sutures, leaving the brain unprotected save by the skin of the head.  One could place their  finger in the fissures and plainly feel the throbbing of her brain.  The old lady kept a kerchief bound tightly around her head, complaining of great pain and fearing and that her head would burst open when the band was removed for a short time.  In spite of all of her problems,  she was considered to be as cheerful and nimble as a cricket. Milly Gibson died at the age of eighty four  on September 11, 1880.  The cause of her death was not known.  She was characterized as a fifty year opium eater, a seventy three year inveterate smoker, and a seventy four year member of the Methodist Church. "Dublin Post, Sept. 10, 1879, September 15, 1880."

You may know that the cemetery in the yard of Gen. David Blackshear's home, Springfield, contains the remains of three soldiers of the American Revolution.  You may also know that Gen. David Blackshear served as a young soldier in the war and later served Washington and Laurens Counties in the Legislature.  Gen. Blackshear played a leading role with the Georgia Militia during the War of 1812.  But you may not know anything about the other two patriots. John Shine, a veteran of the war, was close to the General and visited him on a regular basis.  The other soldier  was Rev. Peter Calloway, a long time friend of Gen. Blackshear.  Rev. Calloway was with David Blackshear when  Blackshear's oldest brother was killed by Tories in North Carolina.  The death of Rev. Calloway's wife at a young age sent him into a severe depression.  Rev. Calloway came to Springfield to receive the comfort of an old friend.  He lived there until his death.  “Memoir of David Blackshear,” Stephen Miller.

In 1844, several of the prominent leaders of Laurens County were charged with participating in an illegal card game known as bluff.  Those presented to the Grand Jury for indictment included Charles B. Guyton (State Representative and later State Senator), Freeman H. Rowe (Sheriff and later Ordinary), Jeremiah H. Yopp (former State Representative), John W. Yopp (later Sheriff and State Representative), and Francis Thomas (Clerk of the Superior Court).  The court records do not disclose if the group was ever tried for the offense, or who was winning the game when they were busted. "Laurens County Legal Records, Superior Court, 1833-1857, Allen Thomas, 1993."

For a brief period during the second decade of the 19th century,  Dublin thrived as a river port.  Dublin lies on the northern end of the navigable portion of the Oconee River.  Before Macon became an established port on the Ocmulgee River,  Dublin became the most important inland trading center of Central Georgia.  George Gaines and Jonathan Sawyer had recognized the potential in this area a decade before.  Gaines established the first ferry in Dublin about the year 1806.  New York businessman Redolphus Bogert began purchasing some of the lands along the river in 1811.  Two years later,  he purchased 174 acres for the unheard of sum of seven thousand dollars.   In those days,  seven thousand dollars would be the cost of ten to fourteen thousand acres of undeveloped land.  Bogert sold the property to Gilbert Aspinwall in 1814 at a profit of three thousand dollars.   River boats began plying the waters of the Oconee about 1817.  In that same year,  a wealthy Savannah mercantile firm purchased all of land surrounding Gaines' Ferry for eight thousand dollars.  The firm established a store in Dublin which it operated until 1835.  The senior partner of firm was Andrew Low.  His nephew, a Savannah merchant of the same name, was a central figure in Eugenia Price's Savannah novels.  The younger Low's daughter-in-law, the former Miss Juliette Gordon, was the founder of the Girl Scouts.  Legal Records of Laurens County, 1807-1832, by Allen Thomas, pp. 86, 476, 477, and 836.

When the town of Dublin was being laid out in 1812, one of the first orders of business for the commissioners of the courthouse of Laurens County was to construct a jail.  The first jail was a made of huge pine logs. It doubled as a city barracks.  The commissioners hired Arthur Sheffield to build the jail which was probably located in the block north of the courthouse.  Sheffield obtained a large amount of homemade whiskey to celebrate the completion of the project.  He had a little too much and attempted to seize control of the town.  Justice prevailed as Sheffield became the first guest in the new jail. "A Brief History of Laurens County, the Superior Court, and Dublin, by T.B. Darley, 1920, p. 3."

Many judges often find it difficult not to nod on the bench during a tedious line of questioning.  Judge C.C. Kibbee was presiding at one 1887 term of Laurens Superior Court.  Judge Kibbee did something much worse than sleeping on the bench.  He drew the wrath of the entire county and was publicly rebuked by the Grand Jury for being drunk on the bench.  "A Brief History of Laurens County, the Superior Court, and Dublin, by T.B. Darley, 1920, p. 5."

01-30

LIEUTENANT COLONEL WILLIAM CLYDE STINSON

Duty, Honor, and Country

William Clyde Stinson performed his duty with the utmost honor for his beloved country, the United States of America.  In peace and war, Lieutenant Colonel Stinson, one of the cadets of the Long Gray Line of the United States Military Academy, earned the honor and respect of his superiors and his subordinates.  His life ended in the service of his men, who admired him as a soldier and as a man.

William Clyde Stinson, Jr. was born on the 8th day of September, 1928 in Dublin, Georgia.  His father, William C. Stinson, Sr. had served his country in World War I a decade before.  Stinson grew up in the depths of the depression.  The family’s faith got them through the hard times and taught William how to handle the difficult times to come.   Just after William’s eleventh birthday, World War II began in Europe.  During the early years of the war, William joined the Victory Corps at Dublin High School and took part in many activities to support the war effort.  He graduated from Dublin High School in 1944.  Stinson dreamed of being a physician.  He enrolled at Emory College at Covington in hopes of becoming a doctor.  His friends began to call him “Doc.”

“Doc” Stinson left Emory in 1946 to join the United States Army, but he would forever carry the brotherly nickname for the rest of his life.   Stinson began his military career as a staff sergeant of the 19th Infantry Regiment for a short term until he decided to return to Emory.  Still unsure of what he wanted to do with  his life, Stinson couldn’t get the military out of his system.  He re-enlisted in 1948 and sought an appointment to the United States Military Academy.  Stinson was assigned to the 1802nd Special Regiment, which was stationed at the Academy at West Point.

On July 2, 1949, Stinson was accepted to the freshman class at West Point.  He was officially a member of the Class of 1953.  Ray Battle, another young Dublin man, joined Stinson at West Point that year.  Almost immediately this amiable young man from the South was accepted by all who knew him.  Those who attended the Academy with “Doc” Stinson remembered him as one who gave meaning to the plebe system, encouragement to the cadets who were failing in their studies, and life to those whose souls were faltering.   In his class yearbook, the following lines are found beside his name: “When Army men gather we’ll no doubt find Doc spinning another yarn.  It’ll be a long time before we find anyone else with as much time set aside to spend with others.”

Second Lieutenant William Clyde Stinson graduated with his class on June 2, 1953.  Just hours after tossing his hat into the air, William married his sweetheart, Mildred Pierce, whose faith was just as strong as that of her husband.  His first assignment took him to Fort Campbell, Kentucky as a member of the 11th Airborne Division.  From Fort Campbell, the Stinsons moved to Ulm, Germany.  Stinson returned the United States for assignments at Fort Carson, Colorado with the 9th Infantry Division; at Fort Benning, Georgia with the Infantry Board; and Fort Leavenworth, Kansas with the Command and General Staff College.  Apart from his army life, Stinson was blessed with a fine family.  He was a devoted husband to Mildred and a loving father to his three daughters, Dawn, Leigh, and Katherine.  

In 1962, Stinson was among the first advisors sent to Vietnam, half way around the world.  He served a five-month stint and returned home after being wounded on a patrol in late November, 1962. During the ambush, Stinson was shot at least three times in his legs.  He carried the rounds in his legs for the rest of his life.  When he recovered, Stinson was assigned to the Office of Military Instruction  at West Point.  During his three years at the Academy, Stinson instilled the true spirit of the soldier in a time when many doubted the soundness of our country’s involvement in the war in Vietnam.  “Doc” left the Point in 1966 for an assignment as a staff officer at the headquarters of the Commander in Chief in Honolulu, Hawaii.    Stinson followed the events in Vietnam with particular concern.  Stinson, like the fictional “Mr. Roberts,” saw the war passing him by.  During the time he was desperately seeking a combat command, Stinson never missed an opportunity to show his compassion for those soldiers on  “R and R” in Hawaii.  

“Doc” Stinson got his wish.  In September 1968, Lt. Col. Stinson was given command of the 1st Battalion, 52nd Infantry Regiment, 198th Light Infantry Brigade of the famed 23rd “Americal” Division.  On March 3, 1969, A Company of the 1st Battalion engaged the North Vietnamese Army. Enemy small arms fire killed three Americans just before noon.  Stinson’s battalion was sent into Hau Duc in the Valley of Quang Tin Province to protect Vietnamese villagers and relieve the pressure on a Special Forces camp in the area.  The company commander requested a “dust off” from helicopter gun ships to relieve the situation (A Company had been cut off from the other two companies).  Incoming enemy mortar fire began enfilading A company’s position.  The dust off helicopter was shot down just after one o’clock. The enemy shot off the tail rotor of the first medivac copter sent in to remove the casualties.  Additional air strikes were called in.  

A lull in the fighting began just before three o’clock.  LTC Stinson borrowed the Command and Control Helicopter from Col. Tulley.  The helicopter was manned by the 1st Flight Platoon of the Company A, 123rd Aviation Battalion. Stinson, anxious about the condition of his men, took the copter in to bring out the dead and the dying. A second medivac copter was able to get out the wounded.   Stinson’s helicopter, with a fresh supply of ammunition,  landed without major incident.  2nd Lt. William Cox, commanding the third platoon of A Company, sloshed through the water to the edge of a rice paddy.  Cox and another man handed two dead men up to Col. Stinson, while the helicopter pilot hovered his craft (an easy target for enemy riflemen).  Lt. Cox was the last person to speak with Stinson as he gave him the thumbs up signal to take off.   As the ship ascended into the air for the quick trip to Landing Zone Baldy,  Stinson crouched next to the open door holding onto a lifeless body so that it wouldn’t fall out.  A single .51 cal MG shot rang out.  The only round to hit its mark struck the colonel in the leg.  The pilot radioed Cox that the round hit the colonel in the leg and exited through his neck.  The pilot reported “it didn’t look good.” The wound was mortal.  Stinson never made it to the landing zone.  

             This wasn’t the first time the Colonel had flown into lethal situations to rescue his men. On a prior occasion, Stinson was awarded the Silver Star, America’s third highest award for heroism and known as the “Soldier’s Medal,” for risking his life to save the lives of others. On many occasions, LTC Stinson guided his helicopter into close contact with the enemy. On  one occasion on New Year’s Eve on the last day of the tumultuous year of 1968.   He made the only kills on the regiment’s attack near LZ Professional.  For his valor on that fatal third day of March 1969,  LTC Stinson was posthumously awarded his second Silver Star.

Just like “Mr. Roberts,” “Doc” Stinson gave his life serving his country.  The men of his command, who thought the world of him, renamed their base camp, “Fire Support Base Stinson.”  The United States Army honored the memory of LTC Stinson by naming a guest house at Fort Gordon in his honor.  William Stinson was a “soldier’s soldier.”  A member of his command said after his death, “ I have met few men in my life that I had as much respect and admiration for... He was a fine man.”  Stinson’s former boss at West Point summed up his feelings for Doc upon his burial at the West Point Cemetery: “To pay honor to Doc as he comes home to the place which I guess next to God, his country,  and his family he loved best of all.  There was always something special about Doc - something that made him better.  I think perhaps it was a combination of gentle compassion, his quiet courage, and his deep and genuine concern for the feeling and well being of others.”  

Lt. Cox eulogized Stinson by commending his personal “hands on”style of leadership. “ I think as a matter of principle, he had a deeply held private conviction about what’s right that led this much experienced, decorated, and wounded senior warrior to share the risks of battle directly with the soldiers he commanded.  He was always a visible presence on our battlefields.  He demanded success when we met the enemy and he often demonstrated for us, over the battle zone and delivering supplies and extracting wounded, the courage needed to achieve success in our fights.”

 

01-31

VIVIAN LEE STANLEY

A Gentleman In A World of Villains

Vivian Lee Stanley was born into a world of gentle men and fair women.  Trained in the newspaper business and serving Dublin as her postmaster,  Stanley was appointed to oversee the evil lair of depravity, villainy, and roguery known as the Georgia penal system.  In the depths of the Great Depression, Vivian Stanley found himself embroiled in one of the utmost controversies  in the history of Georgia’s prison system.  The issue: the chain gang and the  alleged brutal treatment of those who were bound to it as punishment for their crimes against the people of Georgia.

Vivian Lee Stanley was born on January 5, 1870 in Laurens County.  His father, Capt. Rollin A. Stanley, served Georgia in the late war as captain of a company of local militia.  Capt. Stanley was  a well-respected attorney who became the first Solicitor General of the Oconee Circuit and Judge of the Laurens County Court of Ordinary.   His  families, the Stanleys, the Lowthers, the Moores, and the McCalls, were among the most prominent and successful in Laurens County.  At the age of fifteen, Stanley went to work as a “devil” in the printing office of The Dublin Post.  While still a minor at the age of sixteen, this highly intelligent boy was made editor of The Post, making him possibly the youngest editor of a weekly newspaper in the South.  

Two of Vivian Stanley’s older brothers, Ira and Frank, worked in the newspaper business.  Ira went to work as a “printer’s devil” with The Dublin Gazette in 1876.  Ira Stanley moved to Cochran where he established a newspaper.  He eventually wound up in Dallas, Texas.  He was one of the founders of The Dallas Evening Herald and worked in the newspaper business in Dallas for more than a half century.  Frank Stanley worked as a printer for The Dublin Gazette before removing to Gainesville where he worked for The Gainesville News.”  

In 1895, President Grover Cleveland  appointed Vivian Stanley as Postmaster of Dublin.   Stanley served throughout Cleveland’s administration and for two years of the McKinley/Roosevelt term. Stanley married Ella Mizell Martin of Sandersville on April 21, 1896.   Their children were: Martha Lowther Stanley Brown, Vivian Janet Stanley Garrett, Eleanor Stanley Martin Hodges, Rollin A. Stanley, and William Martin Stanley. After his term as postmaster ended, Stanley returned to the paper, then known as the The Dublin Courier. In 1899, in partnership with his brother, Hal Stanley, Vivian accomplished a merger with The Dublin Dispatch.  The merger resulted in the sole Dublin paper, The Dublin Courier Dispatch, which became a semi-weekly paper.  According to some sources, The Dispatch was the first of its kind in the South to use a linotype machine.  The Courier Dispatch merged with The Laurens County Herald in 1913.  The Courier Herald became a daily paper, the only one in the 12th Congressional District of Georgia.  Under the leadership of the Stanleys, who were the foremost proponents for prohibition of the sale of alcoholic beverages , the paper maintained a strong stand for temperance, refusing to accept any advertisements for the sale of the evil spirits in the daily or semi-weekly issues of the paper.   

Stanley served the city of Dublin as an alderman and Clerk of the City Council.  In 1913, President Woodrow Wilson re-named Stanley as postmaster of Dublin.  A year later, Stanley was one of the organizing directors who founded the Southern Exchange Bank of Dublin. The bank was located on the northwest corner of East Madison and South Franklin Streets across the street from Stanley’s office in the newly constructed post office and down the street from his newspaper office.  Vivian Stanley established his home at 204 Maiden Lane.  

Vivian Stanley was elected as the Secretary of the Georgia Prison Commission in 1924. Ella Stanley died on April 11, 1928.  A little more than a decade later, Stanley remarried.  His wife, Nena Turner Etheridge, was a daughter of Judge Paul C. Turner.  Following the death of Commissioner R.E. Davidson, Vivian Stanley was elected to a seat on the three-man Prison Commission on October 9, 1928.  The other two commissioners were George A. Johns of Warrenton and Eugene L. Rainey of Dawson.  The commissioners were elected statewide to six year terms on a staggered basis. The Prison Commission was established in 1897 to oversee the eclectic mix of county and city prisons throughout the state.  

Robert Burns was one of the most famous prisoners in Georgia history, if not in the history of the United States.  Spurned by a former employer, this veteran of World War I, took to the road to find what he was looking for.  His travels led him to Atlanta, where he became acquainted with two seedy characters who involved him in a robbery of a merchant.  Burns was apprehended and sentenced to ten years of hard labor on “the chain gang” of Campbell County, which later became a part of Fulton County.

Burns and other inmates were forced to work from sunup to sundown in arduous conditions, building roads and breaking rocks with sledge hammers.  In an act of sheer desperation, Burns persuaded a large black prisoner to break his leg shackles with his sledge hammer.  The gigantic man, it was said, never missed when he slammed his hammer down.  He didn’t miss when he hit the shackles on Burns’ ankles.  With his leg irons slightly bent, Burns managed to slip his feet through them and ran for his life toward freedom.  He made it to Chicago, which he thought was far enough away from Georgia.

In Chicago, Burns became a model citizen.  After a few unremarkable jobs, Burns became the editor and publisher of a trade magazine, “Greater Chicago.”  Burns’ success in Chicago, where he was known by another name, led to his recognition by the Chamber of Commerce.  Burns broke off his seven-year marriage with Emily Pacheo, who learned of his secret past and she reported it to the authorities in Georgia.  Burns was taken into custody by Chicago police based on Pacheo’s allegations and his escape.

The State of Georgia began extradition proceedings to return Burns to Georgia.  Friends and supporters of Burns organized an effort to keep him in Chicago and acquire his pardon.  Burns hired an attorney, whom he directed to begin negotiations with Georgia officials on the consequences of his voluntary return to Georgia.  His attorney hired William Schley Howard, a former Georgia congressman who was known as one of Georgia’s most able lawyers.  Howard, who first hung out his shingle in Wrightsville under the tutelage of Judge A.F. Daley, tried cases in Laurens County during Stanley’s first term as Dublin’s postmaster and  before joining the United States Army in the Spanish American War. Howard made the necessary arrangements: his fee, repayment of the state’s extradition expenses, and a brief return to the chain gang.

     Vivian Stanley traveled to Chicago to meet with Burns and Illinois officials, who had summoned him Chicago to pick up Burns, though Burns had not been given his day in court.  Stanley was greeted at La Salle Station by Burns, who took him to the Atlantic Hotel and eventually to his attorney’s office.  Stanley promised Burns that if he voluntarily returned to Georgia, paid all of the state’s costs, and had his influential friends to write letters on his behalf, that he, Burns, would be back in Chicago within forty five to ninety days.  Stanley further promised Burns that he would be designated as a trusty and would not be forced to return to the chain gang and road work.  Burns, who deemed Stanley to be sincere in his promises, decided on the spot to return to Georgia.

As a condition of his release to Stanley, Burns was given a hearing before a Chicago Superior Court judge to introduce Burns’ good character while in Chicago into the record being sent to the Georgia Prison Commission.  Before the hearing, Burns made arrangements and personally paid for Stanley to see the sights of Chicago.  On the following day, the hearing was opened with many of Burns’ supporters in the courtroom.  After the court determined that the Illinois charges against Burns were baseless, Judge David queried Stanley on what type of treatment Burns could expect upon his return to Georgia.  Stanley told the Judge just what he had previously told Burns, that he would not have to go back to road work with the chain gang.

On June 24, 1929, Burns bid adieu to Lillian Salo, the true love of his life, for what he thought was the last time.  Burns walked to his attorney’s office to meet with Stanley.  Stanley and Burns boarded an Illinois Central train bound for Atlanta.  Along their route, Stanley and Burns continued to talk about Burns’ future.  Burns was excited.  In a few months, he would be a free man.  Burns had no reason to doubt Stanley, whom he appeared to have great respect for.

Stanley and Burns arrived in Atlanta the next day.  Stanley, tired after a long trip, went home to rest.  Burns went to see his attorney, Schley Howard, who informed him that his stay in Georgia would be no longer than twelve months.  Burns slumped in despair.   Howard told Burns, “ You are now in Georgia and things will have to be handled from a Georgia viewpoint.”   Later in the day, Stanley came to Howard’s office with the Chairman of the Campbell County Commission.  Burns promptly presented a check to Campbell County for the extradition expenses, which amount to $350.00.  Reporters and photographers hovered outside of Howard’s office building hoping to get a scoop or a photograph of Burns.

Both Howard and Stanley advised Burns to return to the same Campbell County prison camp from which he had escaped.  Burns accompanied Chairman Redwine back to the camp, where he was assigned the same bunk he had once occupied more than seven years ago.  Stanley had kept his word.  Burns, just as Stanley had promised, was assigned to duty as a trusty.  Burns became somewhat of a celebrity in the camp.  Curiosity seekers peaked through the fence to get a glimpse of him.  After four weeks, Lillian Salo, in the company of Burns’ attorneys, was allowed to visit him. Burns later wrote that he had been treated “intelligently and fairly,” again just as Mr. Stanley had promised him.

Circumstances began to change.  Burns alleged that some members of the Prison Commission were demanding five hundred dollars to grant his parole.  Burns told his attorney that he obviously didn’t have the money with him, but could make arrangements to have it upon a definite assurance that it would lead to his release.  Burns surmised that when his attorney arrived in Atlanta without the money, Warden Hardy of Troup County was sent to take him to the prison camp near La Grange. 

Warden Harold Hardy was memorialized for his ability to handle and control the most hardened and unruly criminals.  The Troup County camp was known by many to have been the worst or the toughest depending on how you look at it, of the one hundred and forty or so camps in the state.  While Burns maintained that his treatment in Troup County was brutally horrific, he later recounted that his allegations had been exaggerated.

Burns’ brother, the Rev. Vincent Burns, continued to plea for his release.  He secured letters of introduction to the Prison Commission from several prominent people, including Gov. Franklin D. Roosevelt of New York.  Rev. Burns also brought letters from prominent Georgians seeking his brother’s immediate release.  Among those supporting Burns were Georgia Senator William J. Harris, the president of Georgia  Power Company, and legendary Georgia golfer, Bobby Jones.  The prison commission had turned down Burns in his first request for parole.

A second parole hearing was held on July 9, 1930.  Rev. Burns passionately plead his brother’s case for freedom.  For some unknown reason, Commissioner Stanley was not present.  Presiding at the hearing was Judge G.A. Jones, a personal friend of Warden Hardy.  Burns was distraught.  He was bitter.  His bitterness turned into anger.  His anger turned into despair.  On September 4, 1930, Burns escaped from the chain gang once again.  Nearly two years later, Burns was captured in New Jersey, where government officials blocked his second extradition to Georgia.  

Burns wrote of his experiences in a book which he called, “I Am A Fugitive From A Georgia Chain Gang.”  Warner Brothers adapted Burns’ story into a 1932 movie starring Paul Muni.  Because of the rapidly boiling controversy in Georgia, the movie’s producers dropped the word “Georgia” from the film’s title.   Burns set out in the book and the film, on which he served as a secret advisor, to destroy the chain gang system that nearly destroyed him.  While he admitted some of the allegations were exaggerated, he did so only after the movie’s release.  Warden Hardy of Troup County and Warden Phillips of Campbell County joined Commissioner Stanley in filing a law suit against Warner Brothers for its defamation of the characters in the movie.  Actually, the film portrays Stanley much as he was described in the book and not in a slanderous manner.  Following Warden Hardy’s death, the plaintiffs settled the case with the defendants for three to five thousand dollars each.  Burns had accomplished his goal.  The chain gang system began to change, but only slowly, taking about three decades before it was completely abolished. Burns was pardoned by Gov. Ellis Arnall in 1945. He died a decade later, a free man.

Following his re-election in 1934, Vivian Stanley was chosen by his fellow commissioners to serve as Vice Chairman of the Commission until March 4, 1938.  In response to the Burns controversy, the Georgia Legislature restructured the prison system in Georgia.  An act was passed on February 3, 1938, changing the name of the Prison Commission to the Prison and Parole Commission with Stanley serving as the new commission’s first chairman.  A year later, Clement E. Rainey was made chairman.  A new board, the Board of Penal Administration, was established to supervise prison operations throughout the state.  That board was renamed the Board of Corrections in 1939.  The Prison Commissioners retained control over pardons and paroles. Under the new system the incumbent commissioners were appointed for six year terms which ended in 1944.  Future commissioners would be appointed by the Governor and confirmed by the Senate, a process which ended the popular election of the commissioners.  From 1928 to 1938, Vivian Stanley and his brother, Hal Stanley, who was the elected Chairman of the Commerce and Labor Department, were known to have been the only pair of brothers to simultaneously serve in statewide elected offices in Georgia history. Vivian Stanley died on May 30, 1945 at his retirement home in Cocoa Beach, Florida.  He was buried in Northview Cemetery in Dublin.

01-32

WHAT CAN AMERICANS DO?

Look Into Our Past For Our Future

The events of September 11, 2001  will shape our lives and the lives of our children and grandchildren for centuries to come.  When we look forward to see how we can endure the tumult of that day and the turmoil to come, we should look back to see how we can overcome the brutal and vicious attack that shook, but did not topple, the foundation of our country. We all feel the need to something.  However small, however big, we ask ourselves,  what can we do?

In times of war, our citizens have done what it takes to survive.  During the American Revolution, our country’s first civil war, we fought and killed neighbors to preserve our freedom. While the men and boys of our country have always born the brunt to the fighting, there have always been women standing beside us.  They have provided comfort to the fallen.  They have provided food and clothing to the soldiers.  They have raised money for soldiers and relief efforts. In other words, they have done what needed to be done.

Carolyn Hall wanted to something to help her country win World War II.  She was unable to roll bandages or make clothing or do anything that the other women of Laurens County were doing to help the GIs.  When she was in school in Macon, Carolyn learned the art of knitting.   She became proficient at knitting, so much so that she was one of the most best knitters among the Laurens County’s women.  The chairman of the production committee considered her work to be nearly perfect.  Her speed was described as breathtaking.  Carolyn had a problem following a pattern.  You see, the school in which she learned to knit was the Georgia Academy for the Blind.  Carolyn, blind since birth, answered her country’s call with a heroic effort.

During World War II, young girls, hiding their tears and fears for their fathers, brothers, and boyfriends, put on their best dresses and went out and sold war bonds.  They did something.  Everybody did something.  It was the least they could do.  In some wars we didn’t do everything we could do, and it tore our country apart.  

One critical need is to involve our children.   In all our country’s crises, our children have done their part.  Whether it was raising money for war effort by picking up tin cans or newspapers, working in the victory corps, or just being there to reassure us that our future is of utmost importance, our children have served.  They will be looking to us for guidance in the days to come. 

The questions we all are asking are what are we going to do?  What can we do?  The answers are actually simple.  We do what we have done before.  Here are ten things we can do:  HOPE for peace on Earth. PRAY for those who suffer. SERVE wherever you can. DONATE your time and money.  COMFORT those who fear. SUPPORT your leaders. TRUST in God. WAVE our flag.  TELL your children that you love them. KEEP your faith.

If these are not enough, here are ten more:  Shake a law enforcement officer’s hand and tell him “thank you.”  Bake a cake or some cookies for the guys at the fire station.  Ask your councilman or commissioner to double the salaries of our public safety officers and emergency medical technicians.  Fear not, live your life in freedom.   Think of others.  Show a lot of kindness.  Unite as one.  Remove hate from your mind. Pray some more. 

And last, but not least, listen to the words of Sir Winston Churchill, who led the English people through more than two years of constant attacks on their country.  Churchill was invited to return to his boyhood school to speak to the students.  The day was hot.  The accolades heaped upon the British leader were many, long, and often redundant.  Churchill rose to speak.  He uttered one sentence before he returned to his seat.  His nine words were simple, but eloquent. As he wiped his brow he told the students, “Gentlemen, life is tough, but never, ever, give up!”

As you have probably surmised by now, I am a flag waver, pure and simple.  When I see the American flag, I see our small children making American flags.  I see our senior citizens, many of them in the last years of their lives, standing outside lighting candles in hopes of peace and mourning the loss of so many.  I hear Vietnam War veterans, even World War II veterans, wanting to serve their country again if necessary.  I see thousands of our citizens at the Shamrock Bowl singing “God Bless America,” giving standing ovations to our public safety officers, and crying and cheering to the soul-stirring rendition of “God Bless The U.S.A.” by members of the Dudley Baptist Choir.  I see our local firemen, who would go into a burning building to save us if we were attacked.  I see our folks in the military around the world who stand guard while we work, play, and sleep.  This is America.  

This is a time when there are no Republicans and Democrats, no blacks,  whites, or Latins,  no regional factionalism.   It is a time to unite.   We need to look for all of the good that  will come out of this tragedy.  You’ve probably noticed a change around you already.   Look along the streets.  See all of the flags.  People are scrambling to find their old flags, flying them for the first time in months or years.   For the first time in my life, there are no flags on the shelves or storerooms at Wal Mart and K-Mart.  People are wearing them on their clothes, tying them to their car antennas, and adorning their mailboxes with them.  Flashing signs, which once asked for your business, are now asking God to bless America.  Red, white, and blue ribbons are everywhere.  Now, maybe, we can realize that our true heroes are not wearing  brightly colored uniforms with numbers on their backs and fat wallets in their pockets.  Our real heroes are those men and women who are the public safety officers, the soldiers, the sailors, and the airmen, who serve their country and community not for the  money, but from a sense of duty and love.

September 11, 2001 was perhaps the darkest day in American history.  It was even more so than September 17, 1862 when twenty thousand Americans died on the rolling hills, creeks, and cornfields outside of Sharpsburg, Maryland during the Battle of Antietam.  We overcame that tragedy, and we will overcome this one.  It is important to realize that in the face of that horrific tragedy of September 11th, something great, something magnificent, something glorious is going on.   It makes me smile!  It makes me cry!  It makes me proud!    In the days, months, and years to come, it is up to us.  Our best days are yet to come. What can you do?  What can we do?    Love.  Hope.  Pray.  Serve.  Donate. Trust.  Support.  Comfort.  Do something, anything,  to help.  It’s just that simple.  As an American, it is the right thing to do.  It is the only thing to do.  It is the thing that we must do.

P.S. If the idiot who stole the flag from the home of Eric and Kay Jones reads this, please return to its rightful place.  Stealing a single flag may be a minor crime, but it is an insult to everything that the flag and this country stands for. 

01-33

IZOLA WARE CURRY

A Troubled Woman

Izola Ware Curry led a troubled life.  Born into a meager existence in Adrian, Georgia in 1916, Izola’s life was a series of troubles.  Her marriage was troubled.  Her life was troubled.  Her mind was troubled.    Her mind in turmoil, her reasoning gone, she took a letter opener and plunged it into to the breast of Dr. Martin Luther King.  She almost changed the face of America forever.

Izola Ware married James Curry.  The couple lived in Savannah until the late thirties when they separated.  Izola moved to New York City.  She lived on the top floor of a tenement house at 121 W. 122nd Street in Harlem.  She worked as a domestic, but in the fall of 1958, she was unemployed.  

Izola’s mind,  clouded with thoughts of fear, fear of a false enemy, began fail her.  For five years, Izola feared the N.A.A.C.P..  She believed that the members of the organization were all Communists. She believed that they were conspiring to keep her from getting and keeping a job. “ They were making scurrilous remarks about me,”  she confessed.  She couldn’t point to any specific person, but she was sure that they were after her.  Izola moved from place to place to avoid what she saw as persecution.  She believe that the N.A.A.C.P. and Dr. King were watching her every move.  When the fear became unbearable, she bought a  gun. 

Izola left her apartment on Friday night to go to the movies.  As she approached the intersection of 125th Street and 7th Avenue, Izola noticed a large crowd, which she described as a mob.  She walked around them.  She heard a band playing music.  Someone in the crowd told her it was “this King man.”  She didn’t even know his first name: “Arthur or Lucer or something like that.”   Izola continued on to the theater.  She saw a Tarzan movie that night.  Before returning home, Izola stopped by to see a friend she called “Smittie.”   Despite telling police officers that she had known him for twenty years, Izola couldn’t remember his last name or very little about him. 

Just before three o’clock on Saturday afternoon, September 20, 1958, Izola left her home.  She went out to do some shopping.   She wasn’t looking for anything in particular, just window shopping.  She went inside Blumstein’s Department Store in Harlem, about four blocks from her home.  She looked around for a while.  Then she saw a crowd gathered around Dr. King, who was doing a book signing at Blumstein’s.   His book, “Stride Toward Freedom,” was his account of the boycott he led of the Montgomery, Alabama bus system.   Dr. King had been arrested seventeen days before the book signing for failing to obey a police officer.  He was released a day later, when his fine was paid by the police commissioner.  

Izola told District Attorney Howard Jones, “ I walked up to him and I said to him, you have been annoying me a long time trying to get this children.  I have no objection of you getting them in the schools at all, but why torture me?  Why torture me? I’m no help to him by killing me.  Don’t mean after all Congress is signing anything. By torturing me, don’t mean Congress is going to sign.  I can still get a blood clot from this aggravation today.  After that day, Congress isn’t going to sign anything,  and I’m just dead.”  Her remarks reveal the irrational thoughts running through her mind.  When the D.A. asked Izola what Dr. King’s response was, she responded, “ I was drunk in my head, and I don’t know what he said.”

Dr. King remembered Izola asking “Are you Martin Luther King?”  “ I answered yes.  I was looking down writing and the next minute I felt something sharp forcefully into my chest,” he recalled.  Izola reached in her bag, took out a letter opener, closed her eyes, and plunged the opener into Dr. King’s chest.  When asked why, she told the D.A.  “because after all if it wasn’t him, it would have been me.  He was going to kill me,” Izola maintained. 

 

Police officers grabbed Izola.  Her bag and its contents fell out into the floor.  Besides the usual contents of her purse, Izola also had a white bone handle automatic Italian pistol.  She bought the gun in Daytona a year before for twenty-six dollars.  She bought it, loaded it,  and never took the gun out of her home until that day.  When asked why she took it out that day, Izola told the investigators, “I haven’t got a job and what in world I’m going to do for a living, with their pulling me off the job every day and I’m trying to work and they’re trying to force me to make me drop my head to drink either become a prostitute, and I’m not either one.  I was going to protect myself if some of these members attack me.  Because I know his members are you know, following him.”  She figured there would be trouble that day, that King or his followers would bother her as they had done before.  Mrs. Curry told investigators that she had been to the police precinct on six occasions and had reported her concerns to the F.B.I. and President Eisenhower.  She sought restraining orders against people whom she thought were out to get her.

Dr. Theodore Weiss and Dr. John H. Cassity, both qualified psychiatrists, examined Izola.  They found her to be a paranoid schizophrenic and consequently incapable of understanding the charges pending against her.  Most disturbing to the doctors were signs of confusion, giving irrelevant answers to direct questions.  The doctors reported that the patient fluctuated between occasional fairly logical thinking and very confused illogical thinking.  

Dr. King was rushed to Harlem Hospital.  From his hospital room three days after he was stabbed, Dr. King issued a statement which harbored no ill will against Mrs. Curry. He hoped that she would get help.  He thanked government officials, church leaders, and the thousands of people who sent flowers, cards, and letters.   King saw the event not as  an attack on one man, but as an attack of hatred.    Before doctors could remove the letter opener could be removed, surgeons studied their options.  The dagger had stopped on the surface of King’s aorta.  Doctor’s decided to open King’s chest to remove the weapon.  Any sneeze may have caused a cut in the aorta and endangered his life.  The operation was successful.

  

Dr. King recovered and went on the lead the Civil Rights Movement for nearly a decade.  Invariably the question arises: “What if?”  What if Izola had used her loaded pistol?  What if Izola had thrust her dagger a little harder?  What if Dr. King had died?  There would have no March on Washington, no “I Have a Dream” speech, no Selma to Montgomery march.  The speculations can be mind boggling.  Even Dr. King reflected back on the events of the day and wondered what might have not happened.  Izola Curry was committed to the Mattewaan Hospital for the criminally insane for the rest of her life.

01-34

WILEY MOORE

A Citizen Oilman

Wiley Moore was an oilman, an oilman who made a fortune in the first half of the Twentieth Century.  But he was no J.R. Ewing.  Moore was, in the simplest of terms, a citizen.  He gave back his time and his money to the community he loved and the causes he supported. This native of Wrightsville and one time resident of Dublin was considered Georgia’s preeminent oilmen in his time.

Wiley Lemuel Moore was born on October 25, 1888 in Wrightsville, Georgia.  His home was wherever his father, a house contractor, found stable work.  Moore attended the public schools of Tennille, Dublin, and Macon.  When he finished high school, he longed to be a train engineer.  He worked first for the Macon Iron Works and then as a machinist and substitute fireman for the Central of Georgia Railroad in Macon.  When it became apparent to Wiley that a newly instituted seniority system would seriously impair his goal of becoming an engineer, he quit the railroad.

In 1910, Wiley joined hands in marriage with Emma Coley.  The couple moved to her hometown of Cochran.  Moore’s thoughts turned toward the oil business.  Automobiles were becoming more and more popular.  Cars, like the machines Wiley worked on, need oil and gasoline to operate.  Moore returned to Macon, where he landed a job as a commission salesman for Southeastern Oil Company.  Expenses ate up his commissions in the first few months.  Moore used his skills as a machinist to repair non-operative automobiles, cotton gins, and saw mills during his travels.  More importantly, he was making friends and future customers.  His commissions skyrocketed.   Moore left Southeastern Oil when his boss became insecure about Wiley’s success.

Wiley began working at Globe Oil Company where he was equally successful.  The executives at Globe Oil saw Moore’s potential for success and promoted him to Southeastern sales manager for Globe.  Globe gave him the responsibility of supervising a six-state territory, instead of running him off like Mr. Kline at Southeastern Oil had done.  His days were long.  His days soon turned into nights.  He wasn’t at home as much as he should be.  Wiley knew that he could make it on his own.  So he set out to form his own oil company.

Moore formed Dixie Oil and Grease Company, which opened for its doors in Macon on New Year’s Day in 1917.  Moore contracted with a Texas company to supply his ever expanding market.  Five years later, Moore merged Dixie Oil with Wofford Oil Company of Alabama.  G.T. Wofford, the president of the new company, Wofford Oil Company of Georgia, assigned Moore to supervise the company’s operations in Georgia.  In just two years, the company’s monthly sales soared from sixty thousand gallons of gasoline to four million gallons.

Moore accepted Wofford’s offer to buy back the Georgia division.  Lacking the personal resources to buy his company back, Moore enlisted the aid of Pure Oil Company, who allowed Moore to remain as president.  While local economies were suffering in the decade following the devastation of the cotton crop by the boll weevil, the company prospered, and  Moore became the leading oil marketer in the Southeast.  Moore turned to Tennessee and the Carolinas to expand his markets.

Moore’s life was more than just selling gas, oil, and grease.  He served as a director of the Fulton National Bank, as well as a half dozen other organizations.  His most prestigious seat was on the board of the directors of Eastern Airlines, which was under the leadership of Captain Eddie Rickenbacker, the legendary air ace of World War II and the founder of the Indianapolis 500.

Moore involved himself in politics, but never sought out controversy and conflict.  He served six one-year terms on the Atlanta City Council from 1925 to 1930, the last three as Chairman of the Finance Committee.  He finished second in a three-man race for Mayor in 1930, losing by only three hundred votes to the victor, who invited him to chair the city’s bond commission.  Moore managed the United States senatorial campaign of Senator Walter F. George in 1938 and 1944.

Moore never turned down a chance to serve the public of Georgia.  In October 1943, he accepted a non compensated position offered to him by his friend, Gov. Ellis Arnall.  Gov. Arnall wanted a businessman to help organize the Georgia Department of Corrections.  The department, still in a state of controversy after years of attempts to reform the prison system, needed a man like Moore.  Moore called in a cadre of experts to help him.  In four months, his job done, Moore resigned in favor of a more qualified chairman.  

Moore served on several boards committed to the welfare of Georgia’s citizens.  He was there anytime the Georgia Baptist Hospital needed funds.  Other hospitals benefitted  from Moore’s service as President of the United Hospitals Service Association of Atlanta.  Moore served as president of the Atlanta Chamber of Commerce.

In the late 1930s, Moore bought two hundred acres of land ten miles northeast of downtown Atlanta.  He built a home for himself and his wife as well as homes for each of five children.  He built a large clubhouse with rooms named after his business associates and friends.  Moore named one of the streets in the area, Rickenbacker Drive, in honor of his friend and business associate.  The area where Moore built his home is now known as Buckhead.

Moore’s life was a story of a successful businessman, who was made more successful by the service he gave to his community.

01-35

ERNEST ROGERS

The Mayor of Peachtree Street

He was known as “ The Mayor of Peachtree Street.”  For the better part of five decades, Ernest Rogers was a popular radio voice and humorous columnist in the capital city of Georgia.  Rogers overcame infantile paralysis and adolescent insecurities to become one of Georgia’s most outstanding media personalities.  His newspaper career began with a short-lived stint with a Dublin, Georgia newspaper, which lasted only a little longer than he did.  Today he stands together with the most distinguished broadcast journalists in Georgia’s history.

Ernest “Ernie” Rogers was born in the Georgia hills at Blue Ridge on October 28,  1897.  His father, Dr. Wallace Rogers, was a highly respected Methodist minister. Polio paralyzed Ernie’s arms and legs when he was only two years old.  While Ernie regained the use of his arms, his legs wouldn’t allow him to stand.  His leg braces were too heavy, so his parents got him pair of crutches.  Ernie practiced and practiced and learned to walk on his hands.  His arms grew stronger and stronger.  When a kid called him “Crip,” Ernie beat up the kid.  After that, the kids called him “Red.”  Ernie  only wanted  to be one of the boys. He once climbed to the one thousand-foot high summit of Stone Mountain.  With the rubber tips worn off his crutches, Ernie began to slip and at times he fell on the granite ground.  He was offered no help by his friends, who increasingly began to admire him.  

Ernie couldn’t play sports.  He could keep score and did so for every school game.  Ernie was honored when his classmates elected him to be a cheerleader.  In the hoopla following his team’s winning touchdown, Ernie jumped from a platform only to break one of his knees.  Undaunted and feeling somewhat proud of his game injury, Ernie sucked up the pain and led the victory parade.  Despite his popularity, girls began to shun Ernie.  He soon shied away from the boys too.  Ernie sank into the depths of depression and insecurity.  

Ernie enrolled at Emory University.  He resented his disability.  His moods of insecurity continued until he decided that he could either go home as a failure or show everyone on campus just what kind of person he truly was.  His classmates elected him president of the student body, president of Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity, and secretary of the Pan-Hellenic council.  While at Emory, Ernie became interested in the newspaper business.  He founded and published a campus paper.  He sang in the glee club and was awarded the prestigious Phi Beta Kappa key.   He did it.  He rose to the top of his class, but something was lacking.  Ernie still felt an emptiness inside.

Ernie took a job with a newly-formed small town newspaper, The Dublin Tribune.  Dublin already had a newspaper, The Dublin Courier Herald, which was the descendant of nearly all of the various town papers which had preceded it over the past five decades.  Ernie stayed  for only three months.  He complained that the pay was too little.  Later in 1920, Ernie took a position with The Atlanta Journal.    While he was doing a fine job with the paper, his self confidence was still lacking.  He turned to the liquor bottle for solace.  His friends began to worry about him.  He couldn’t keep this up.

Ernie’s life changed forever on one Christmas in the early 1930s.  Ernie began to think about others like him.  Ernie announced over WSB radio a new program, a program to contribute to the Christmas cheer of the lonely, the sick, and the lame.  He called the program, “The Unorganized Cheerful Givers.”   Donations poured in by the thousands.  When donations slowed, Ernie would sing a song or tell a funny story as a prelude to a plea for more money.  It worked.  Donations began to flow again.  The charity and Ernie became a hit.  Ernie pleas came over the air for ten more Christmas radiothons.   Listeners asked the station’s owners to put him on the air on a regular basis.  Ernie proclaimed himself as “the world’s worst singer,” but his listeners enjoyed his songs.  One of his own songs, “Forgiveness” became a big hit.  He began his morning show in the early 1940s.    Back then, people didn’t listen to their radios when they were riding to work.  Despite this fact, Ernie’s audience grew into the millions.  The radio waves of the clear channel WSB were broadcast over the entire Southeast.    He read the news, but more than that he became to talk to his listeners.  He talked of hope, self respect, and courage.  He talked of victory in the war.  He never touched the bottle again.

Ernie wrote columns for the Atlanta Journal six times a week.  One of his most touching columns was one about Joe Kelley, a high school teacher who like Ernie was stricken with paralysis. Ernie invited his readers to send Joe a Christmas card with a dollar bill inside. More than four thousand people answered Ernie’s request.  Ernie told the good news.  He loved to tell tall tales, make puns, and attempt to write poetry.  He never stopped trying to promote lost causes.  He never missed an opportunity to expose hypocrisy when he saw it.  Before he began writing columns, Ernie worked as a copy editor, courthouse reporter, feature writer, and music and drama critic. 

Ernie ended each of his columns with a birthday wish to every reader celebrating a birthday that day.  His friends consulted with each other and thought it would only be appropriate that they throw a big birthday party for Ernie in 1953.   A hotel donated the use of a banquet hall.  A printing company donated a free eight-page program.  Area musicians formed an orchestra to play.  His friends charged themselves a fee to buy Ernie a watch.  The response was overwhelming.  They had enough money to buy him a Pontiac automobile.  On the eve of his birthday, the Chief of the Atlanta Police Department came to Ernie’s home, arrested him, placed him in handcuffs and lifted him into the back of the paddy wagon.  Soon the wagon came under the escort of six motorcycle cops.  Sirens were blaring.  The motorcade pulled up in front of the Dinkler Plaza Hotel.  When the doors to the ball room were flung open, seven hundred of Ernie’s friends burst into cheers.  A prominent lawyer put on a wig and robe.  Ernie was put in a prisoner’s chair and put on a mock trial.  He was charged with impersonation, creating disturbances, and stealing.  His lifelong friends testified.  Ernie was found guilty of creating a disturbance because crowds always seemed to follow him.  He was found guilty of impersonation because he was found to be so many wonderful persons rolled up into one.  He was found guilty of stealing, stealing the hearts of thousands of people.  Ernie and his wife drove off in their new car to the sounds of “Happy Birthday.”

Ernie Rogers compiled some of six  thousand or so columns into two books; “Peachtree Parade” and “The Old Hokum  Bucket.”  Ernest Rogers was featured on the panel of broadcasters at the 13th annual Georgia Radio and Television Institute in 1958.  Also featured on the panel was a young CBS television broadcaster, Walter Cronkite.  Ernie retired from “The Journal” in 1962, but continued to write three weekly columns.  When he died in the late 1960s, Ernie had accumulated one award after another for his contributions to the newspaper and radio business as well as his numerous acts of public service.  Ernest Rogers was inducted into the Georgia Newspaper Hall of Fame in 1972.  Rogers, Georgia’s first radio newscaster,  was honored by his colleagues when he inducted into the Georgia Broadcast Hall of Fame in 1998, making him the only Georgian to be inducted into both the print and media Halls of Fame.   On Sunday if he were alive, Ernie would be one hundred and four years old.  Happy Birthday, Ernie!

01-36

FATHER AND SON VETERANS

Willie T. and William “Tee” Holmes

They were both veterans.  They were both cut from the same cloth of one of Laurens County’s oldest families.  One was called “Willie T.,” the other simply, “Tee.” They were both lieutenants.  One fought on the islands of the Pacific.  The other hovered over the jungles of Vietnam.    One survived the war.  One didn’t.  They were Willie T. Holmes and his son, William T. “Tee” Holmes, father and son veterans.

Willie T. Holmes was born on Christmas Eve in 1919.  He joined Co. K of the 121st Infantry, Georgia National Guard before his 20th birthday.  Willie Holmes was transferred to the regular army, where he served in Co. K., 3rd Battalion, 307 Infantry Regiment of the 77th Division.  The division was heavily engaged in combat in the South Pacific. The division took  part in the siege of Guam and the deadly Battle of Leyte Gulf, where 1st Sergeant Holmes received a battlefield commission to 1st Lieutenant  for his heroic actions and transferred to Co. G., 2nd Battalion. 

The 77th Division was sent into Ie Shima on Okinawa Island to root out entrenched Japanese fortifications around Government House.  Two days earlier, the famous journalist, Ernie Pyle, was killed nearby.  About four thirty in the morning of April 21, 1945, Japanese soldiers counter attacked in mass.  Company G, holding the left wing of the battalion’s position in Ie Town,  was overrun.  The entire company was nearly wiped out.  Among the dead was Willie T. Holmes.  Several years later in the late 1940s, Willie’s body was brought home for burial in Northview Cemetery.  Willie’s brother took Willie’s son down to the depot to meet the train.  “I never knew my father,” said the boy.  “I knew it was a sad day.”

That young boy, born in the middle year of World War II, 1943, was William T. Holmes, known to all that know him  as “Tee.”  “Tee” grew up in the in the Fabulous Fifties, the last decade of American innocence.  He lived on the edge of downtown Dublin and knew every spot in town and the places to have fun.  “One of my friends threw a firecracker into what he thought was an empty drum at Laney’s Service Station,” “Tee” remembered.  “All of a sudden, it went ‘ka-boom!”  The empty drum was filled with something that exploded.  “We spent most of our Saturdays at the Martin Theater,” “Tee”  fondly remembered.   “There was always something to do downtown.”  Tee graduated from Dublin High School in 1961.  

“Tee” joined the Marine Corps and trained as a helicopter pilot at the Marine Aviation School Pensacola, Florida, Whiting Field, and New River, North Carolina.  In his book “Bonnie Sue, A Marine Corps Helicopter Squadron in Vietnam,” Marion Sturkey described “Tee” as  having a slow and nasal southern drawl, which no one could ever mistake as coming from a Yankee.  “ Tee loved to play his guitar and sing.  In times of real and perceived crises, he always wore his perpetual and impish grin,” Sturkey fondly remembered.  In early December 1965, “Tee” was sent to Vietnam.  When he arrived, he was told he would replace his friend Lt. Johnson, whom he had seen only eight days before back in the states.  “Tee” was devastated when he learned that his buddy had been killed in action in his first week in Vietnam.   “Tee” was assigned to HMM-64 to fly UH-34 helicopters.  Since “Tee” hadn’t flown a UH-34 in three and half months, he was told to wait and to go back to Okinawa for more training before he could fly any missions.  An operations officer came in the room looking for a copilot to fly on a “milk run” to Da Nang.  “Tee” felt comfortable in the UH-34, so he volunteered to go along for the experience, a decision he soon came to regret.

On the morning of December 8, 1965, the copter, with Capt. Jim Givan in command, took off for Da Nang.  It was raining.  Fog cut the visibility way down.  Givan and Holmes piloted the helicopter at a low altitude, just far enough off the coast as to avoid ground fire.  The weather took a turn for the worse.  While winds were gusting up to thirty-five knots, the flight to Da Nang was completed without any incident.  The crew unloaded their cargo, helicopter parts and equipment, and the necessary liquids, eighty cases of beer, before returning to their base.  The weather went from bad to worse.  Clouds had dropped down to two hundred feet above sea level.    While flying just above the wave tops with automatic controls, something went wrong, terribly wrong.

With no warning of any kind, the engine died.  Enemy fire from the beach riddled the air craft.  Being less than two hundred above the water level, there was no time to get out.  Within seconds, the UH-34 hit the water.  “Tee was the last one of the crew to safely exit the aircraft.    “I struggled for some time before I realized I had not released my seat belt and shoulder harness.  I was going to the bottom.  When I finally got out, it was a long way to the surface and it seemed an eternity to get there,” remembered Holmes.  The waves were eight feet high.  The salty ocean spray pommeled the four crew members.  The men were scattered and not able to see each other unless they were on the crest of wave at the same time.  The other ships in the flight returned to pick up their comrades.  The men in the water were in a dilemma.  If they waved their arms, they would alert the gunners on the beach.  If they didn’t, they might not be seen.  “It was an easy choice, I waved and splashed like a maniac!”  “Tee”, the captain, and the crew chief, Sgt. Glenn, were hoisted to safety.  Cpl. Corle, the gunner, didn’t make it. 

“Tee” had earned the unenviable distinction of being shot down in his very first mission. But he was lucky, he survived.    Not every mission was as dangerous and eventful as “Tee’s” first one.  Two months later, “Tee” was flying a mosquito spraying mission over the coastal plain south of Ky Ha.    “Tee” and his fellow pilot were flying two hundred feet in a grid pattern over the rice paddies, the insecticide billowing smoke from underneath their aircraft.  A marine pilot flying nearly eight thousand feet above them spotted the smoke.  He called in a distressed signal, “Mayday! Chopper on fire!”  “Tee” and his buddy, “Easy Ed” had their radio on and heard the call for help.  They began looking around the skies to spot the troubled helicopter.  They circled around and looked again, but to no avail.  “Tee” conversed with the marine pilot as to where the smoking aircraft was.  Finally, a light went off in “Tee’s”and Ed’s heads.  They were flying the smoking helicopter that the Marine pilot had mistakenly diagnosed as being on fire.  The copter crew were laughing when they went on the air to explain what had happened to the embarrassed pilot, who promptly and disgustedly took off for his home base. (“Easy Ed” was better known at Ed Seifort.  Seifort remained in the Marine Corps and retired as full colonel.  Seifort was a flight leader in the aborted attempt to rescue the hostages in Iran in April 1980.  Killed in that mission was Sgt. Dewey Johnson of Laurens County.  At Sgt. Johnson’s funeral, Lt. Col. Seifort presented Dewey Johnson’s widow Diane a Marine Defense Meritorious Service Medal and an American flag to Diane Johnson, along with six other flags to family members.)

“Tee” and the other helicopter pilots were heroes to the men on the ground.  One of the helicopter pilot’s primary missions were medivac flights to extract wounded men from intense battle field conditions.   Many times the helicopter crews would fire their guns into enemy positions to relieve tenuous situations.   

“Tee” survived his tour of duty in Vietnam.  Today, he is a successful sales representative of the Cram Map Company.   On this upcoming Veteran’s Day, let us take time to pause and thank all of the veterans of our country, who have served America with pride, distinction, and courage.  Thanks, “Willie T.” and “Tee.” 

01-37

THE TRIAL OF SIG LICHSTENSTEIN

Adrian Merchant Defended by Jewish Antagonist

Sigmund Lichstenstein was a peaceful man.  He was one of the many merchants of the Jewish faith who owned general merchandise stores in East Central Georgia in the early years of the Twentieth Century.  A scuffle with an irate customer led to his trial for the death of his attacker.  Lichstenstein was represented by a former Superior Court judge and by  Thomas E. Watson, one of Georgia’s most popular politicians.  However, Watson was a man who once  attacked the political and religious beliefs of Jewish people in the last years of his life.

Lichstenstein worked as a peddler for a Savannah firm before coming to the Tennille-Sandersville area, which was the center for Jewish merchants in East Central Georgia.  In 1898, he moved to Adrian, Georgia, which was experiencing rapid commercial development. Two railroads, the Wadley and Mt. Vernon and the Brewton and Pineora, were about to converge right in the middle of town.  Lichstenstein married Dora  Dawson, daughter of the Honorable Morris Dawson, himself a former Jewish merchant.  Dawson rose to prominence as an officer in the local company during the Civil War.  Dawson served as a State Senator in the 1880s and was one of the most respected men in western Emanuel County.

It was late in the morning on November 10, 1900.  It was a Saturday, a day in when there would be a lot of people in town.  The crops were out of the ground and the farmers had a little money in their pockets.  John Welch came in the store.  He wasn’t in his usual pleasant mood.  Carrie Dawson, Dora Lichstenstein’s sister, followed him in. Welch had been in a few days earlier to buy some dress material for his wife and shoes for his children, paid for in part through his poker winnings.  Welch’s luck ran out.  His winning hands turned to losing ones.  He needed more money to try to get back in a winning mode.

Welch demanded that Lichstenstein accept the return of the material and shoes.  The merchant politely refused to take back the cloth, which Mrs. Welch had already began to use.  He did take back the shoes.  Welch was begging Sig to take the cloth back.  Sig told Welch that he had already spent the money.  Welch was livid.  He stormed out the door pointing his finger at Sig and telling him that “No Jew was going to spend his winnings while his family went hungry.” Welch almost knocked Carrie down.  Carrie ran home.  She had never seen so much anger on a man’s face.

A few hours later, Sig was walking home.  He had a knife in his hand, not anticipating what was about to occur, merely as a tool to clean his fingernails.  When Lichstenstein was about one hundred yards from his home, he was accosted by Welch, who according to Carrie, had been drinking. Once again, Welch demanded that he get his money back.  Sig refused.  Welch slapped Sig.  Sig struck back, only to be knocked to the ground.  Welch pulled a pistol and fired it into Sig’s right thigh.  Dora and Carrie had been watching from the window of their home.  Dora screamed, “no!”  She pleaded for thirteen year old Carrie to run to find a doctor.  Welch pulled away from Sig, ran with a stagger, and fell.  During the scuffle Sig managed to stab Welch in the heart with his pocket knife.    Dora ran to help Sig.  When the doctor arrived, Sig pleaded for him to treat Welch first.  It was too late. Welch was already dead.  The doctor and Dora helped Sig to his feet and then into his house.  

Lichstenstein fell into unconsciousness. Someone in the crowd ran to tell Adrian mayor Will Curry, who was a brother-in-law of Welch.  Carrie saw the Mayor arrive, quizzing the crowd as to what had happened.  As the sun went down, an angry mob gathered outside the Lichstenstein home.  They demanded that Dr. Durden turn over the killer to them.  Sig’s condition remained critical.  Welch’s bullet was lodged about one-sixteenth of an inch from his femoral artery.  Dr. Durden came out of the house and ordered the angry crowd to leave.  Sunday was a quiet day.  Dora, Carrie, and the rest of the family and friends kept praying.   

Monday morning came ,and along with it, a warrant for Sig’s arrest.   Mayor Curry had secured a warrant from the local Justice of the Peace.  Curry led the fight to bring his brother in law’s killer to justice.  Carrie Dawson remembered that he began spreading lies and rumors about what had happened. Sig was still weak.  The bullet was still lodged dangerously close to his artery.  Dora and Doctor Durden pleaded with Emanuel County Sheriff, George Frederick Flanders, to allow Sig to remain in his home under the doctor’s treatment.  Just moving him could kill him.  Sheriff Flanders, who was an old friend of Morris Dawson, agreed and allowed Sig to stay home.  Curry, not satisfied, demanded that Flanders post a guard outside the home.  The sheriff refused.  Curry posted a family member at the house.  He went to Swainsboro to find a judge to set a bond in amount high enough to ensure that Sig would  not flee, something he could not have done even if he wanted to.

Dora  wished out loud that her father was there to help.  Dawson had died a few years earlier,  but among his survivors was a host of close and loyal friends.  One of the those friends was Capt. William B. Rice of Dublin.  Rice had come from the Adrian area to Dublin, where he became one of the most prominent businessmen and farmers in Laurens County.  Rice suggested that Mrs. Lichstenstein hire Judge Roger Gamble of Louisville to represent her husband.  Dora frantically contacted Judge Gamble by telegraph.  The judge, also a friend of Dawson, immediately responded by taking the case without pay.  A bond hearing was held on November 14 in the courthouse in Swainsboro.  Judge Beverly D. Evans, of Sandersville, refused the request of the state that Lichstenstein post a bond of twenty five-thousand dollars.  Instead, Judge Evans set bond in the amount of one thousand dollars, which Capt. Rice immediately posted.

At Judge Gamble’s insistence, Mrs. Lichstenstein hired Thomas E. Watson of Thomson, Georgia to assist him in Sig’s defense.  Tom Watson was a popular, but highly enigmatic figure in Georgia politics.  He was an unsuccessful candidate in the 1896 presidential election as a candidate of the Populist party, a party which he helped to bring to the forefront of national politics.  Retiring from politics following his bitter defeat, Watson turned to writing as a career. He wrote biographies of Thomas Jefferson and Napoleon Bonaparte.    In 1912, the Federal government indicted Watson’s pornographic language in his publication, which attacked the religious beliefs of non Protestants.  Leading the prosecution was Alex Ackerman, a former Dublin attorney, who served as the District Attorney of the Federal District Court.  When Woodrow Wilson, a Democrat, was elected president, he ended the prosecution of the case by appointing  a democratic district attorney.  

Watson was elected to represent the state of Georgia in the United States Senate in 1920.  He died in 1922 after only eighteen months in office.  Georgia governor, Thomas W. Hardwick, a future Dublin attorney and newspaper editor, filled Watson’s remaining term. He appointed Rebecca Latimer Felton, the first women to serve in the United States Senate.

With one of the best attorney duos in the state on board, the trial was ready to begin.  Mayor Curry and Solicitor B.T. Rawlings of Sandersville were anxious to try the case before Christmas or at least before summer came.  Some astute courtroom and political observers predicted that an acquittal was certain with Gamble and Watson in the case. Gamble and Watson delayed the trial date as long as possible, primarily to allow enough time for Lichstenstein to recover from his wounds, but also to quell the emotional fires which Curry had stirred up in the days and weeks following Welch’s death.  Gamble, a former judge of the court, knew how and when to schedule the trial of the case.  He chose a date at the end of the April term of 1902. The case was first on the trial calendar.   Gamble wanted to be first in the morning so that Judge Beverly D. Evans would begin the case in a good mood.

The case was called for trial on the morning of July 10, 1902 at the courthouse in Swainsboro.  It was hot!  The “Atlanta Journal” reported that a record heat wave was beating down on Georgia.  Dora worried about the crowd hovering around the hotel and the courthouse.  Were they there to support her husband or were they there to see ol’ Tom Watson in action?  Dora walked up to greet Watson.  Dora remembered that she expected a giant of a man, a perception based on his reputation.  Actually Watson was an ordinary man, “almost slovenly,” According to Dora, she began to doubt whether she had made the right decision to hire Watson.  Nothing could remove the nervous anticipation from her mind.

But then, that’s when it happened.  Tom Watson began to speak.  Little by little, word by word, Dora began to realize that she had made a wise choice in hiring the Populist orator.  She described him as a “charmer, a true southern gentleman,  . . .  there was a tender and reassuring air about him.”  

The courtroom was packed tight.  Those who couldn’t sit, stood.  Those who couldn’t get in peeked through the windows.  Those who couldn’t peek labored to hear any sound.  Some folks climbed the trees and looked inside.  They became the eyes of the crowd below.  With all of the hoopla surrounding the trial, the two Swainsboro newspapers, “The Forest” and “The Blade,” refused to carry the events of the trial, although they did express some moral support for the defendant.

B.T. Rawlings, the solicitor for the Middle District, believed that he could win the case by glorifying the victim and vilifying the defendant.  One witness after another came forward to testify to Welch’s good character.  Some of them managed to make disparaging, but inadmissable, remarks about the defendant.  Gamble, who was responsible for trying the case, cross examined each of the state’s witnesses and got many of them to admit that Welch had had a drinking and gambling problem at times.

While Judge Gamble was trying the case, it was Tom Watson’s responsibility to listen.  Dora looked over at the wily politician.  Watson sat in his chair, leaning back with his thumbs clinging to his suspenders.  His eyes were shut - a sight which infuriated Dora, so much so that she poked Gamble with her parasol to complain.  Watson showed little reaction, chuckling to himself.

Watson’s lack of emotion (or motion for that matter) was a part of his masterful plan.  When he heard something he didn’t like, he shook his head or frowned.  When he heard something favorable, he would smile.  Watson’s body language was his way of communicating with the judge, the spectators, and most importantly, the jury.

Gamble called a long line of character witnesses in favor of Sig.  He instructed Carrie Dawson to dress in a red checkered dress and put her hair into pig tails to lend credence to her testimony of the incident on November 10th.  Dora wondered to her self, “Why isn’t he writing anything down?”  Dora took the stand to recount her events of the day and how much her husband regretted what had happened.  With every sentence, the jurors became more sympathetic to her and her husband.  Tom Watson was still sitting there, motionless, his eyes closed.  The last witness was the defendant, himself. Sig couldn’t hold back his emotions.  He turned to the Welch family, told them it was an accident, and begged for their forgiveness as he sobbed.  Watson did not flinch.

Solicitor Rawlings denounced the self serving and biased testimonials of the defense witnesses.  Then, it was Tom Watson’s turn to speak.  Dora soon forgot about his inactivity during the trial.  Watson stood up and walked across the silent courtroom.  He turned to the jury and told them, “You all know who I am and that I am one of you.  I am not going to tell you anything that is not true.”  In stark contrast to Rawlings, Watson was quiet, “almost like he was having a conversation at the dinner table,” Carrie Dawson remembered.  Watson pointed to Sig, telling the jury to look at his face, stating that it was the face of a noble race, the race of Moses, David, and the prophets.  He reminded everyone of the defendant’s relationship to the late and beloved Morris Dawson.  He went through all of the proven facts, which he had been gathering and organizing in his mind, while everyone thought he was sleeping.  Watson finished his summation and walked to back to his table.  He stopped, hesitated and turned back to the jury.  He pointed his finger at the jury and told them in a quiet but firm voice, “No Jew can murder, and I am not telling you anything that is not true.  He returned to his seat and assumed the same position he had been in for most of the trial, sitting motionlessly with his eyes closed.  For a moment, there was silence.  The spectators exploded into a thunderous ovation.  

The jury went out to deliberate.  Lunch time came and there was no verdict.  Dora began to worry why one juror, Mr. Gruber, was holding out against an acquittal.  When questioned about his vote, Gruber explained that he saw the trial as a waste of time, and he wanted to at least get a free lunch out of the deal.  A.J. Youngblood, the jury foreman, stood and read the verdict aloud. “Not guilty!”  Supporters and well wishers descended upon Sig and the defense team.  Dora’s perception of the Gentile members of the community changed.  One man, an old friend of her father’s, told Dora that all of her daddy’s friends were there to support her and her husband.  Referring to Mr. Dawson the man said, “he was always kind and done right by us.”  Dora hugged the man and began to sob.  

Tom Watson had won another case.  He successfully defended a man of a race which he  attacked. To Watson, justice must have been more important.  The Lichstensteins realized that their continued presence in Adrian might become a perpetual source of conflict, so after spending a week in town, they moved away.  Some of the Dawson family remained. Eva  Dawson, a sister of Dora and Carrie, married Fitzhugh Kea.  They were the parents of long time Dublin attorney, Dawson Kea.

Source: No Jew Can Murder, Louis E. Schmier, Ga. Historical Quarterly, Fall, 1986.

01-38

THE YANKEES ARE COMING!

Recollections of A Nightmare

The Yankees were coming!  A sea of blue was marching down the roads from Macon.  They were sixty thousand strong.  Mass destruction was their mission.  Their goal was to make it to Savannah by Christmas, take everything they needed along the way, and destroy everything of value that they couldn’t eat or steal.  Forty three years after living through a nightmare, Susan Tillery of Dublin, formerly of Wilkinson County, wrote a letter to the editors of the “The Confederate Veteran.” She relived, in detail, the nightmare she suffered during General William Tecumseh Sherman’s “March to the Sea.”

Susan was born in Irwinton, Georgia.  When the war came, her family moved six miles out of town to her father’s farm.  Susan became friends with her next door neighbor Sallie Clay.  In nearby Gordon, Georgia, a home had been established to take care of the sick and wounded soldiers, who had been pouring in following the battles of Atlanta and Jonesboro in the summer instant.  The ladies and young girls of Wilkinson County took turns visiting the home taking baskets of food and goodies (though food and goodies were scant).  Susan and Sallie gathered up what they could find, put it in a basket, and headed for the soldiers’ home.  The girls arrived in Gordon on Tuesday morning.  Within an hour, frightening news came in.  The Yankees were invading Macon and headed down the Central of Georgia Railroad.  Susan and Sallie decided they should leave right away.  Luckily, they managed to catch an eastbound Macon train headed for Savannah.  The girls got off the train in Toomsboro and headed for home.  The four-mile walk didn’t bother them.  Fear overrode any thoughts of the long distance.  Along the way the girls warned anyone they saw that Sherman’s army was coming and destroying everything!

Panic was spreading throughout the community.  Susan’s father took his livestock down into the swamp to hide them from the thieving Yankees.   The next day he sent a Negro boy named “Bob” down to the swamp to tend to the animals.  Bob returned to report that the animals were okay.  Bob went back down into the swamp on Thursday morning.  He never returned.  Susan’s father went down to look for the young man.  He found the stock, but no Bob.  A neighbor told the family that Bob had gone to the Yankees.  Bob had been seen riding through Toomsboro on Mr. Clay’s fine gray horse, sitting on a saddle blanket made from one of Mrs. Clay’s quilts.  All along the march, freed and frightened slaves swarmed the tail end of the Yankees columns, looking for comfort, food, and freedom.  Several weeks later, long after the Yankees had gone, Susan and her family were sitting on the front porch of their home.  They spotted a man walking through the fields late in the afternoon.   It was Bob.  Susan’s father threatened to kill the young man.  He got his gun.  As the children began to cry and Susan’s mother began to beg for mercy, Susan’s father queried Bob as to the reason for his absence.  Bob said that he “wanted to go up to the big road” so he could “see the Yankees as they passed.”  Suddenly, two Yankees pounced on Bob and told him that they had been looking for him and they wanted Bob to go with them.  The “bluecoats” promised Bob that they would pay him ten silver dollars a month and give him a fine horse to ride.  He was going ride along General Sherman as a boy in waiting.  Bob eagerly accepted the offer.  The soldiers gave Bob Mr. Clay’s horse, which they had earlier stolen. Things then began to go wrong.  Bob was branded across his shoulders with the letters, “A.S.A..”  His horse was taken away, and he was forced to walk all the way to Savannah, where he managed to escape. Bob followed the railroad back home.  His master was still visibly upset, wishing the Yankees had killed Bob.  Bob, nearly naked in the remains of his shredded clothes, replied “they came very near doing that.  No more Yankees for me.  They made me burn bridges, build breastworks, and do all kinds of hard work.”  He turned his back to show Susan and her family the his brand.  Bob stayed with the family until the end of 1865, after which Susan never saw him again.

Susan had a nightmare of her own. Mr. Clay had taken his family’s most valuable possessions down into the swamp.  Mrs. Clay, overcome with fear of her husband’s safety, sent Sally to look for him.  Sally was afraid, so Susan agreed to go with her.  Susan’s father reluctantly agreed that she accompany Sally to look for Mr. Clay.  The girls secreted through the fields, the briars, and the bushes toward Mr. Clay’s camp.  Just as they arrived, the girls heard the sound of horses headed toward Mr. Clay’s position.  The girls rolled over into a thorny brier-filled gully, out of sight of the Yankees who were just a few yards away.  The girls froze.  The sound of their tense breaths was muted by the whoops of the triumphant plundering hoard. It was dusk.  The air was freezing.  The girls managed to climb out.  Their clothes torn, their skin cut and bleeding, and their hearts racing, Susan and Sally climbed a hill and saw Dr. Taylor’s flaming ginhouse, which only added to their fear.  The girls made it to Mrs. Lord’s home, which had just been ransacked and stripped of all its meat supply by the Yankees.  Mrs. Lord and two little Negro children escorted Susan and Sallie to their homes.   They made to the Clay house first - one more mile to go for Susan.  Before Susan could reach her home, she was met by her two younger sisters and her old cook, who had been desperately searching with a torchlight for Susan and Sallie.

Another incident which remained in Susan’s memory for decades involved old Judge Bower.  The judge, like most of the residents of Wilkinson County, sent his valuables into the swamps to hide them from the Yankee looters.  The Union soldiers found his belongings, ripped open his bedding, and burned his most prized belongings.  Bower’s fine carriage was stripped and modified into a dray.  The marauders shelled all of his corn, put it onto the dray, and took it with them along with Bower’s oxen, which they also confiscated.  Judge Bower managed to keep his old gun and his new overcoat.  On Saturday, the judge thought that the danger was over and went outside to sit on the front porch.  Fearing that he was still in danger, Judge Bower placed his gun under his overcoat and sat out on the porch, swearing vengeance against the invaders.  Just then, two straggling Yankees approached the Bower homestead.  The soldiers, desiring the warmth such a coat would bring them, took the garment right off the defenseless judge’s back and let him with nothing, not even his trusty gun.  All of this was too much was for the old man.  He didn’t live much longer after the end of war.

Susan Tillery remained grateful for the rest of her life for the mercy God had shown her in sparing her and Sallie’s families from harm.  The Yankees found Mr. Clay.  They took his livestock and other usable items.  They burned what they couldn’t use.  After the war, Susan married William H. Tillery, who had served as a private in Company F of the 3rd Georgia Infantry.  The Tillerys moved to Dublin.  William Tillery, a Dublin merchant,  served as Dublin’s first Fire Chief in 1878 and  Mayor of Dublin in the early 1880s.  While Tillery was elected on a pro-liquor ticket,  Susan Tillery was one of the leading opponents of the sale of alcoholic beverages in the city.  Susan Tillery died on February 26, 1920, more than a fifteen years after her husband, who is buried in the old City Cemetery.

01-39

CHARLES TENANT

A Sailor Who Saw the World

Charles Tenant loved the Navy.  He was good at what he did - making the ship go.  When Charles joined the Navy, he figured he might see a lot of the World.  He did.  But he saw a lot more than he expected.  He saw most of the great naval battles in the Pacific Ocean in World War II.  He saw a few other interesting sights in his travels.  A quirk of fate kept him from seeing the most important and cataclysmic event of the 20th Century, the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Hawaii sixty years ago this week.  That date, December 7th, 1941, along with other dates July 4, 1776, July 3, 1863, and September 11, 2001 are the dates we think of as the most important dates in the American centuries.  

Charles Tenant was born on December 19, 1916.  Growing up in Wedowe, Alabama, Charles always wanted to be a veterinarian. He didn’t have the money to go to school for that profession at nearby Auburn.  After finishing high school in 1935, Charles joined the Navy at the age of nineteen.  He was sent to Norfolk, Virginia for boot camp training.  In order to improve his discipline in marching, Charles was appointed to be the right guide.  His drill leader bore down on Charles and his fellow sailors.  It worked. After three months of intensive training, the group was nearly perfect in their marching skills.  Charles was assigned to the carrier the U.S.S. Chaumont, which transported military personnel  twice a year east to west from Pearl Harbor to the Philippines and thence to Hong Kong and Shanghai.  Tenant was assigned to the U.S.S. Portland, one of seventeen cruisers authorized in 1931 and 1932.  These ships and many others built in the early thirties were a boom to the depressed economy.  The ship was refurbished before traveling to Quantanamo, through the Panama Canal, and up to Long Beach and San Pedro, California.  While in California, the Portland and her crew took part in the dedication of the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco Bay in 1936.  Military spending was minimal, and there were little funds available for the ships to be able to move around very much.  In 1937 and 1938, Tenant participated in fleet exercises in and around Hawaii.  Hitler accelerated his build up of military forces in 1939, an act which caused the Portland to be assigned to North Atlantic.  Hitler interpreted  President Roosevelt’s move  as war like.  In the latter months of 1939, the Portland returned to the Pacific Ocean.

Charles Tenant’s fondest memory of being in the Navy was the ceremony that each sailor had to endure the first time he crossed the equator, a ceremony known as Neptunius Rex. The grand dragon oversaw the proceedings.  Charles and the other crew members were dubbed polywogs and were treated to serious hazing.  Charles was brought up on charges of trying to bribe a shell back and wearing mutilated clothing.  He particularly enjoyed the treatment of one of the first lieutenants aboard, who was a friend to no one.  They tied two rolls of toilet paper to his eyes to form a pair of binoculars. “Even the captain had to undergo it,” said Tenant, who still proudly displays his certificate of induction into the order of Neptunius Rex on the wall of his family room. During a perilous time aboard the ship, Charles ran to his locker to save the certificate. Another fond moment was a new suit of clothes that Chief Petty Officer Tenant acquired and saved from destruction.  He still has the suit, which he wore to a recent salute to veterans service at the First United Methodist Church   

In 1940, President Roosevelt ordered a force, known as the Hawaii detachment, to Pearl Harbor to deter and monitor Japanese activity in the area.  Tenant and most of the Navy in Hawaii couldn’t understand why they were there.  There were spies everywhere.  When a sailor or soldier had more than two drinks in a bar, he had to be removed in order not to compromise the security of the bases.  Admiral Richardson went back to Washington to ask Roosevelt to remove the Navy back to the West Coast.  The president disagreed and the admiral was relieved of his command.  The Portland was assigned to take a troop ship from Pearl Harbor to Manilla.  The Japanese were control of several islands of Micronesia. “Things were getting pretty bad,” Tenant remembered.  “We had to travel south of the Equator to Australia, New Guinea, and the East Indies.  We delivered five hundred people to Manilla and returned to Pearl Harbor to pick up supplies on December 4, 1941,” said Tenant.

The Portland pulled out of the harbor.  Captain Van Hook, a solid sailor of Dutch ancestry, told his crew that the war was about to begin and that it would begin as a sneak attack.   What most military officials knew was going to happen, did happen.  The Japanese launched what was deemed to be a surprise attack on the American forces in Hawaii.  When the attack was launched, the Portland was on her way back to the West Coast to be outfitted with more guns.  The Portland took a contingent of Marines to New Zealand and returned to Pearl Harbor.  After filing up on supplies and oil, the Portland moved out toward the Coral Sea, northwest of Australia.  Japan had taken over most of the islands in the area: Guam, the Philippines, and the Solomons.  They had been engaged in bitter fighting with the Chinese for three or four years.  Years before the Japanese sunk an American gunboat in the Yangzee River in China.  The Japanese government paid reparations to the American government to avoid a major incident.  

The Portland remained in the Coral Sea in a task force which included the carriers, the U.S.S. Yorktown and the U.S.S. Lexington, along with four to six other cruisers, a dozen or so destroyers, and a tanker.  The American navy claimed victory during the Battle of the Coral Sea because it was able to halt the advance of the Japanese navy throughout the Solomon Islands.  The navy suffered an horrific loss when one of its carriers, the Lexington, was sunk.  The Japanese had broken the American’s coded radio transmissions, which had to be changed every day.  After that incident,  Tenant and the crew of the Portland were told that the next contact with the enemy would be somewhere around the island of Midway. 

The American navy spotted the Japanese fleet, with six aircraft carriers,  coming down toward Midway from the north.  The Americans had an advantage with their planes based on Midway.  “We had four carriers and we were waiting for them.  We won hands down.” Tenant said.  The U.S. Navy was victorious when it managed to sink four of the six enemy carriers, but lost the magnificent carrier, the Yorktown, in the process.  The Portland pulled along side of the Yorktown to take on the survivors of the fatal attack.  

After one of the most decisive naval battles in history, the Portland returned to Pearl Harbor for a trip back to the Coral Sea. The Portland met troop transports, which were taking men into battle who had been taken to the Coral Sea by the Portland the January before.  The Portland took a contingent of Marines to Henderson Airfield at Guadalcanal in August of 1942.  “The Japanese really wanted that island,” Tenant remembered.  The navy made the effort to take all three of the islands in the area.  Admiral Grandy was replaced by Admiral Chester Nimitz, who had prime command of the Navy in the Pacific.  The crew of the Portland was optimistic. One fellow told Tenant, “Things are going to change now.”  Tenant replied, “I hope so.”  “Within ten days I knew what he was talking about,” said Tenant.  

The Japanese launched one night attack after another.  The Portland assembled with a task force off the coast of Australia at New Caledonia, where the French government had allowed the Americans to establish a base.  The force returned to the Solomon Islands, where the Navy had posted spotters with two-way radios.  One spotter radioed that a flight of thirty planes were coming in from the North headed South.   The Japanese radar was defective in the area.  “They didn’t see us, but we could see them coming.  Our gunners shot down twenty nine of those thirty planes, which I think was a pretty good score,” Tenant recalled.  “As the main Japanese fleet was approaching in two columns, the American fleet was ordered to go right up the middle and give them everything we had,” said Tenant.  Tenant remembered that they “couldn’t use our searchlights, because they would be spotted too easily.” Tenant was ordered to go to his battle station, an order to which he bewilderingly replied, “ I’ve been here for three days!”  The Helena kept going but was destroyed.  The legendary five Sullivan brothers were killed aboard the U.S.S. Juneau. The cruiser, the San Francisco, was crippled. Admiral Norman Scott was killed aboard the San Francisco.  Admiral Daniel Callaghan, former executive officer of the Portland,  was killed aboard the U.S.S. Atlanta.   

During the horrific battle, the Portland suffered severe damage to her starboard side about fifty feet from the stern.  The rudder was jammed, forcing the ship to travel only in circles.  Twenty eight men were lost.  The number three turret was forced out.  Damage crews hurried about the ship.  Tenant recalled, “our advantage was that the Japanese had bombardment shells, which exploded on the surface.  Our shells were armor piercing and would go well into their ships. That’s why we won.”  A tub came up to tow the Portland to safe haven on a local island.

The engineers aboard the Portland figured out that if they cut the rams loose and tied cables together, they could get underway.  It was on that island where Charles Tenant’s ship came across a group of PT boats. They were hidden by brush.  The Portland’s skipper told the PT crews to move out of there.  “We had air compressors aboard, and the boats needed their torpedoes pumped up.”  Tenant noticed a young long legged officer standing onboard one of the boats. He asked one of his buddies who the man with his shirt off was- a practice which was strictly against regulations especially on PT boats, when burns from powder could easily incapacitate a sailor instantly.  “Don’t you know,” said the man, “that’s the son of the Ambassador to the Court of Saint James.”  “I knew right then that he had something to do with England,” remembered Tenant.  What Tenant didn’t know then was that the officer was the commander of PT 109.  He, of course, was John F. Kennedy.

A tub took the Portland on an all too long seven hundred mile trip to Sydney, Australia.  Tenant was manning the headphones, relaying the signals from the bridge.  When he got to Sydney, Tenant was ready to go home.  He had been in the Navy for seven years.  He enjoyed the people of Australia, describing them as very friendly, like the people of the old South.  Tenant asked the Captain about liberty for the men. He guaranteed that all the men would return from liberty.  They did.  After  a few weeks in Australia, Charles would get his ticket back to the states.  The only problem was that it was aboard the Antares, a ship that only make six knots.  It took thirty one days to get back. 

Tenant returned to the states to train at the Diesel Engine School in Cleveland, Ohio.  Some of his old crew mates came with him.  After six weeks of training, he was sent to Miami, Florida to assemble a crew.  The crew trained in Norfolk, Virginia aboard the Destroyer Escort Thomas -102, an anti-submarine diesel electric ship.  The ship had a lot of teenagers on it, learning to run her diesel engines.  “They learned fast and many of them were great sailors,” Charles said.  The Thomas went on a shakedown cruise with a carrier, a destroyer, and a few other destroyer escorts to seek out German submarines.  The American ships were often targets of German torpedoes.  To counteract this menace, the Portland and the other ships towed a “clacker” about a hundred feet behind them to divert the sonic German torpedoes.  “The only problem was that every time they hit one, we would have to get another one out fast and hope we didn’t run out,” said Tenant.  Tenant was the oldest man on the ship with the exception of the skipper.  

While aboard the Thomas, Tenant experienced one of the most harrowing nights of his naval career.  The tossing of a heavy sea caused one of the gun mount shields to pull away from the deck.  Water poured in through the gap.  The ship was sinking.  Tenant, not a welder, found a nineteen year old kid named Himmell, who was a first generation German.  The water temperature was near freezing.  The waters of the North Atlantic are seldom kind.  Himmel had two years of training as a welder in the Chicago shipyards.  With waves smashing all around them, Himmel and Tenant managed to weld the gun mount in its rightful place and save the ship.  The ship’s doctor ordered the two heroes to take a medicinal drink.  At first, Tenant refused the prescription, but eventually he reluctantly took a sip.

Another frightening incident occurred when the ship lost all power, steerage, and lights.  The emergency generator wasn’t functioning properly.  There were no lights, only panic and confusion.  At that rate, the ship would last only twenty more minutes.  Tenant grabbed a flashlight and headed for the engine room.  He made the necessary adjustments and raised his head in prayer, “God, its in your hands now.”  The engine cranked.  Once again the ship was saved.

Charles returned to New York after six to eight months and returned to Miami to assemble yet another crew.  This crew traveled up the Atlantic Coast, and down the St. Lawrence Seaway to the Great Lakes.  From Bay City, Michigan, Tenant and his crew took a gunboat down the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers, stopping every night and changing pilots nearly every day.  The cruise ended in New Orleans, Louisiana, not too far from home.

  Tenant returned to Miami to  pick up yet  another crew.   The  crew  traveled  through the Panama Canal.  A couple of officers had to stay behind, victims of extreme sea sickness.  After leaving San Diego, Tenant’s ship traveled to Pearl Harbor and then to Pelilu Island.  Tenant and his crew members were always learning how to fix things.  Aboard their ship they had a nine foot long plywood dingy with two oars.  The wooden boat was used to transport personnel between ships.  It’s two oars were not really sufficient to propel the boat, so the clever sailors devised a better propulsion method.  The crew ingeniously devised a system with a fire hose and a pump to create a jet propelled boat.

Tenant’s ship took part in the Battle of Okinawa, the last battle of the war.  Tenant landed on Okinawa and was forced to hitch hike across the twenty mile or so wide island.  It took all day.  There was fighting still going on on the southern side of the island. Sometime around this time, General Buckner was shot and killed.  Tenant made it to the U.S.S. Vestal.  He told an officer that he was mighty hungry.  The officer obliged with a big dish of chicken fricasee. 

Tenant was later hurt in a dry dock accident.  He broke his ribs and spent ten days in a hospital before going to Hong Kong.  The executive officer told Charles to remain in the Navy for three or four more years.  But Charles was going home to the “old country,” not on a fast ship, but on a slow boat.  After a short stay, Charles returned to the Pacific with stops in the Philippines, Singapore, Calcutta, Yemen, and Tokyo.  After the war ended, Charles began to think about his future.  He loved the Navy, but he met his wife, Erbis, and decided to leave the life he loved.  A job opening in veterans hospitals came open in Atlanta, Montgomery, and Dublin.  Charles interviewed for the job in Tuscaloosa.  He chose Dublin, coming here in 1950 and working at the Vinson VA Hospital for thirty years until 1979.  

Charles Tenant is a prototypical World War II veteran.  He served his country in time of war.  He served his community in times of peace.  Charles served on the Dublin City Board of Education and has been an active member of First United Methodist Church for many years.  As we approach the sixtieth anniversaries of the monumental events of World War II, let us take the time to thank Charles Tenant and the others who remain of the tens of millions of young American men and women who served our country in its greatest crisis.

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INTERNET CLIPS 

Local History on the World Wide Web

The magic of the Internet has allowed researchers to search billions and billions of words looking for a single subject.  In this week’s column, here are glimpses of residents of East Central Georgia who have achieved some degree of success in Hollywood and other places in our country. 

Only one Laurens County resident, Bill McGowan, worked as an actor in the “Glory Days” of Hollywood.  McGowan, who also enjoyed moderate success as a boxer, worked primarily as a stuntman in Hollywood just as silent movies were on their way out and “talkies” were coming on our movie screens.  McGowan’s only credited screen role was a henchman in the 1930 movie, “The Lone Defender.”

   

One Laurens County resident, Ron O'Quinn,  worked in radio during the Golden Age of Rock N Roll music, including stations in KYA in San Francisco, WUBE in Cincinnati, and WFUN in Miami.   Ron played music over the most powerful radio station in the World, "Swingin' Radio England."  Ron also hosted a nationwide syndicated radio show, "Rock & Roll Reunion" and a regional oldies show out of Dublin, “Memories Unlimited.”   In 1966, Ron had the honor of traveling  with the Beatles during their 1966 tour of the United States.   He has emceed numerous concerts for such legendary groups as the Beach Boys, The Drifters, The Temptations, Simon and Garfunkel, The Righteous Brothers, The Rolling Stones, and many, many more rock and roll groups.   See Ron’s web site at www.memoriesunlimited.com.

Another Dubliner, Bishop Imagene B. Stewart, went to Washington, DC with  Dr. Martin Luther King and never came back to Dublin to live.  Bishop Stewart has hosted a radio talk show on WOL 1450 AM in Washington, D.C.   She has long been an advocate for social justice and women’s rights , serving on numerous committees and boards including the Millennium March and the Sudan Campaign.  Bishop Stewart was consecrated presiding Bishop of the African American Women's Clergy Association during a Women's History Month celebration March 2, 1996 at the Chapel of Hope, Shilo Baptist Church. She is a pastor of the Greater Pearly Gate Full Gospel Baptist Church.  Bishop Stewart was the first African-American minister elected National Chaplain to the American Legion Auxiliary.  Today, Bishop Stewart is National President of the African American Women’s Clergy Association.  The Association operates a privately funded shelter for battered and homeless women. Bishop Stewart, known as “The Georgia Peach,” also serves as the National Vice President of the Eastern Division of the American Legion Auxiliary.    In addressing the last convention of the American Legion, Bishop Stewart commented on the suggestion that blacks pledge allegiance to Africa and not the American flag. She brought forth a thunderous standing ovation  when she told the gathering of veterans, “Well, honey, I ain’t never been to Africa. . . I was born in the United States of America, very proudly.” 

           Herbert Jefferson, Jr. was born in Sandersville, Washington County, Georgia on September 28, 1946.   Jefferson graduated with honors from The American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York.  Primarily appearing as a television actor, Jefferson played a reporter in the 1995 Tom Hanks’ movie, “Apollo 13.”  His first role came in the drive-in classic, “Private Duty Nurses.”   Jefferson played Lt. Boomer in “Battlestar Galactica.”  Jefferson played character roles in such popular television series as “Dukes of Hazzard,” “T.J. Hooker,” “Knight Rider,” “Quincy,” “Cannon,” “Marcus Welby,” “Streets of San Francisco” and “the Partridge Family.” He debuted on television in 1970 with a minor role in the “Hunted” episode of “Mission Impossible.”   His latest television role was a Chief of Police in the NBC Soap Opera, “Sunset Beach.” Jefferson gives much of his time and money to Special Olympics, the USO, and Toys for Tots. 

          John Cliff, a western character actor of the 1940s and 1950s, was born on  November 26,  1918, Swainsboro, Emanuel County, Georgia.  Cliff’s first movie roles came in 1950 with uncredited appearances in “The Asphalt Jungle” and “Abbot and Costello in the Foreign Legion.”  John Cliff appeared in seven episodes of “The Lone Ranger,” along with appearances in many classic western television programs: “Maverick,” “Wanted, Dead or Alive,” “Bat Masterson,” “Cheyenne,” “Laramie,” “The Virginian,” “The Big Valley,” and “Wyatt Earp.”  Cliff also appeared in character guest roles in: “The Twilight Zone,” “Perry Mason,” “The Man from U.N.C.L.E.,” “The Beverly Hillbillies,” and “Petticoat Junction.”  His last credited appearances came in 1968 on the police TV drama, “Adam-12" and the movie “The Money Jungle.” 

Duke Hobbie was born on May 6, 1942 in Helena, Telfair County, Georgia. He debuted in motion pictures in 1965 with an uncredited role in the Lee Marvin classic western, “Cat Ballou.”  Hobbie had minor roles in such  popular western movies of the Sixties as “Alvarez Kelley” and “McKenna’s Gold.” His last movie role was as a Titan specialist in the 1969 movie, “Marooned.”  His one notable television appearance came in 1968 with an appearance as Dave Akins in the “Mr. Saml” episode of “Gunsmoke.” 

            Robert Burton, a native of Eastman, Georgia, first appeared in movies in 1952 at the age of fifty seven as General Roberts in “Above And Beyond.”  Among Burton’s seventy film appearances were roles in “Bird Man of Alcatraz,” “Sweet Bird of Youth,” “The Manchurian Candidate,” and “The Spirit of St. Louis.”  Before his death on September 29, 1962, Burton appeared in three dozen television shows, including “Gunsmoke,” “Rin Tin Tin,” “Perry Mason,” “Lone Ranger,” “The Rifleman,” and “The Twilight Zone.”

Another native of Eastman, Georgia changed her name to correspond with her profession. Annie Blanche Banks was born on Leap Day in 1928.  Annie Banks was one of the all time queens of Burlesque, performing under the name of “Tempest Storm.”  She appeared in several films in the 1950s primarily playing herself. 

Footnote:  Musical history was made in Swainsboro on March 22, 1958.  An eight year old son of an American musical legend gave his first public musical performance.  That boy, who mimicked his father’s unique style in singing his father’s songs,   was none another than Hank Williams,  Jr., who became a star in his own right. 

01-41

A GRAN CHRISTMAS

  Christmas Eve is my favorite day of the year.  It is day that I wait for all year long.  It is day to be with those you love and  to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ our Lord.  I wrote this poem, with all apologies to the poet, Robert Barrett Browning with whom I share a birthday (and that's about all).  The poem is in remembrance of the Christmas Eves I spent in Adrian, Georgia from the late 1950s to the late 1970s.  My grandfather, Henry "Gran" Thompson and my grandmother, Claudie "Gommie" Thompson, operated a country store on U.S. Highway 80 east of Adrian, just past the "Hoopee" River bridge and next to the Nazarene Campground. "Pig" was a man who lived across the road.  His real name was Hubert Hackle Moore.  Sometimes he couldn't hear it thunder, due to an injury he received during the war. 

Hurry up, it's off to Gommie and Gran's we go.

Get in the car and don't drive slow.

By the drive-in and the empty farms,

with loads of presents in our arms.

On through Scott and by the old tracks,

look over the hill, I see Aunt Jack's.

Blow the horn Daddy, waving as we went by,

As the sun's last rays scattered across the sky.

Adrian was settling down for the night,

'round the curve and up the hill, it's almost in sight.

Who could see it, with anticipation we almost burst.

"I see it," "No I do," " No I saw it first!"

Stop the car at the store, we'll be at the house soon,

through the 'Hoopee oaks peeked a near full moon.

Nehi's, Mary Janes, and strawberry Kits by the pack,

Tootsie rolls, peanuts, and crackers crammed in a little brown sack.

"Throwing rocks in the pond, I had no control.

Every once in a while I would hit that light pole."

Behind the counter was a friendly old man,

to many he was Henry, to us, just "Gran."

Always with a smile and chewing gum in his hand,

Oh!  How lucky, a grandfather who is a walking candy stand.

People stopped to get a drink, gas, or just to say, "hello."

The dim lights hung down with their special yellow glow.

On the bench sat old "Pig" with a story to tell,

"I'm thirsty." "Beat you to the well!"

Time to go the house, a three-way race,

One to win.  One to show. One to place.

An arch of Christmas lights over the door.

"Don't slam the screen!" I had heard it many times before.

The warmth of the gas heater just drew me in,

To a hug from Aunt Georgia and from Uncle Don, a grin.

"Hey Donna! Hey Damaris! Merry Christmas to All!"

"I'm starving and I've got no time to stall."

I'll always remember that wonderful smell,

Daphne, Jack, and Jane, fixin and fixin without a spell.

The family's giant little lady, Gommie, was our heart,

"Say the blessing y'all, it's time to start."

A stack of hot biscuits on a light blue plate,

Grab a couple and don't be late.

Corn, peas, dumplins, and pecan pie,

So good, they still bring a tear to my eye.

"You younguns go outside and play some more,

And don't you slam that screen door!"

Nicky is lighting Black Cat firecrackers, oh what a noise!

"Cut out the racket all you boys!"

"Jump the ditch," that was Ricky's bet,

"Oh that water was cold and it sure was wet!"

"Jane, it's a quarter to eight,

Let's gather up, before it gets late."

One last stop at the Alfonso Christmas tree,

Exchanging gifts, "I can't wait to see."

"So long everybody, we got to get going,

Cause it will soon be Christmas morning."

Gazing out the window of the old Mercury car,

to catch a glimpse of the wonderful Christmas star,

"If it's flashing, that is because,

it's the reindeer pulling Santa Claus."

Those gran' times seem so far away, 

but will remain in my heart to my very last day.

As you guessed, I never made it across that ditch, I hit the water every time. Cherish every day with your family, but especially these two days.   Christmas is and always will be a special part of my past and I suspect a special part of yours, too.   Merry Christmas, Gran!  Merry Christmas, Gommie!  Merry Christmas, Daddy!  And to you Aunt Daphne and Aunt Georgia!  Merry Christmas to all, on this Holy night!  

01-42

WILLIAM H. YOUNG

The Father of Cotton Manufacturing   In The South

William H. Young, a native born New York Yankee and a one time resident of Twiggs County, has been called the Father of Cotton Manufacturing in the South.  Young wound up in Columbus, Georgia, where he established the “Eagle Mills,” the first successful cotton mill in the South.

William Young was born in New York City on January 22 1807.   His father, James Young, was a cabinet maker of Scotch descent.  His mother, Christina Ridabock, was a daughter of German emigrants.  William grew up on Chambers Street in New York.  With a respectable business and literary education Young began his journey south to Georgia.  In the early 1820s, the town of Marion in Twiggs County  was the destination of those seeking a fortune in the rapidly expanding state of Georgia.  Marion was known as somewhat of a border town, until the state of Georgia acquired more land on the west side of the Ocmulgee River in 1823.   

Young took a position as a clerk in Ira Peck’s store in Marion in the spring of 1824.  He remained in Peck’s employment for a year until Edward B. Young, William’s elder brother, came down from New York. The brothers formed the partnership of Young and Young.  The business, a moderately successful proprietorship, closed after nine years of operation. Marion, although located in what would become the center of the state, couldn’t keep up with its neighbors, Macon and Hawkinsville, both of which fronted on the Ocmulgee River.  Edward removed to Eufala, Alabama, where he became a successful businessman on his own.  Edward founded the Eufala National Bank, and was elected its first president, a position which he held until his death.  

William returned home to New York.  He found an excellent position as a salesman and collector for a large jobbing house, which paid him an astronomical annual salary of ten thousand dollars.  A year later, a recession caused the failure of the New York jobbing houses and cut short his five-year contract.    Young decided it was time to return to the South, where he had been successful.

Young moved to the Gulf Coast town of Apalachicola, Florida in 1839.  Young formed a  prosperous partnership with Dr. Henry Lockhart in the commission business.   After ending  a decade long partnership with Dr. Lockhart, Young remained in Florida for five more years.  Young, who had then accumulated a large fortune, began to dream of building his own manufacturing business.

Young chose the city of Columbus, Georgia as the place where he would realize his dream. Young had been there before, three decades earlier while on a tour of the Indian country.  He remembered a spot on the Chattahoochee River where the river bluffs were high, totally devoid of swampy land.  The spot was the upper navigable limits of river.  Here the river fell over the rocks with a spray thrown so high, one could see a rainbow in it.   Unlimited water power and a countryside favorable for the cultivation of cotton made this the place where he would build his mill.  Young has tried to interest others in joining him in business in Columbus.  They refused, but Young would not let go of his dream.  He thought, “one day when I have the money, I want to build a mill here.”

The choice water lots in Columbus were owned by the Water Lot Company.  When Young arrived in Columbus, there were a variety of mills on these lots.  Young purchased a lot.  He convinced eleven investors to purchase half of the stock of his new company, The Eagle Mill.  Despite the hard times during the Civil War, the mill remained prosperous.  The Eagle Mill purchased all of the remaining lots of the Water Lot Company and the assets of the bankrupt Howard Manufacturing Company, its mill and precious water privileges.  Young was able to purchase the lots and buildings of several other failed and burned  businesses along the river.  Eagle Mills was able to acquire all of the original lots, except the lot of the Muscogee Manufacturing Company, a minor competitor.

Federal troops destroyed all of the factories in Columbus during the Civil War and  the last forty thousand bales of cotton in the city.  The loss to the Eagle Company alone was estimated at nearly one million dollars.    The company stockholders hired Young to salvage what he could from the ruins of the burned mill.  Young was able to return twice the original investment of each stockholder.  The remains of the company were sold at a public sale. It was purchased a new company, The Eagle & Phoenix Manufacturing Company, one which was organized by Young.  The mill became instantaneously successful.  A second mill was begun in 1869. It opened in 1871.  A third mill, as large as the first two combined, was put in full operation by 1879.  The three mills, with forty six thousand spindles, was the largest in the South.  

The city of Columbus, which was a wilderness fifty years earlier when Young made his first visit to the area, was a thriving city.  By the beginning of the Twentieth Century, Columbus had thirty thousand citizens.  The Eagle Mills processed sixteen thousand bales of cotton per year, slightly less than the amount produced by Laurens County.  Eighteen hundred people worked in the mill.  The workers and their families made up twenty percent of the city’s population.  The daily payroll was estimated at five thousand dollars.  

William Young had a dream.   Thirty years of dreaming came true.   Young’s business skills  and good luck led him to the pinnacle of the business world of the South, the new post war South.  His Eagle and Phoenix Manufacturing Company was known far and wide as the largest and most successful cotton manufacturing.  In the days when cotton was king, Young was the King of the Cotton Mills.

01-43

DUBLIN AND LAURENS COUNTY

1901

       

As we approach the final hours of the first year of the Twenty First Century, let us take a look back at the highlights, some important and some trivial, of the events of 1901, the first year of the Twentieth Century.   Laurens County went from fifty second in population in 1890 to fourteenth  in 1900, making it the third fastest growing county in the state.  The Dublin District’s tax digest had doubled since 1895.  The city and the county were rapidly becoming one of Georgia’s most important commercial and political centers.

Telephone service, which we take for granted and overly rely upon, was in its infancy.  Dublin, which had had the luxury of limited phone service since 1897, was connected to Wrightsville, giving that town its first telephone service.  A.I. Smith was granted a franchise to run a phone line from Dublin to Toomsboro to Irwinton.

The Central Railroad awarded the contract for the extension of the Brewton and Pineora railroad from Register to Statesboro, nine miles, to W.S. Wilson of Dothan, Ala., Wright Bros. of Montgomery, Nichols & Cook of Macon, J.M. Sullivan of Columbus and Barnes and Henderson of Macon.  On June 9th, the Brewton and Pineora Railroad was opened to passenger service from Brewton directly to Savannah, along a line  known as the Oconee Branch.   A train left Brewton daily, except Sunday, at 5:45 a.m. and arrived in Savannah at 11:30 a.m.  The return train left  Savannah at 3:00 p.m. and returned to Brewton at 8:45 p.m.   The new route  allowed the people of Laurens to go to and return from Savannah in one day with more time to spend on Sunday.    At the request of influential Dublin businessmen, the route was extended from Dublin to Brewton within a month.  By the end of the year, the second route to Savannah along the Macon, Dublin, and Savannah Railroad was nearly complete.  On the downside of train travel, complaints were raised about  trains coming  into Dublin from the west traveling in excess of the legal rate of twenty miles per hour.

In the category of strange and unusual happenings, The Courier Dispatch endeavored to move Gov. George Troup's remains to the Courthouse Square in Dublin.   The owners of the paper thought that Laurens County’s most famous citizen should lie in eternity in Laurens County and not in the remote region of Montgomery County, now Treutlen County.   Others thought that by having the grave located on the courthouse square, many people could pay their respects and teach the younger generation of the heroic life of the dear departed governor.  Dublin physicians vowed to exchange lists of non paying clients and agreed not to treat patients who have not paid their fellow physicians.  Taxes on billiard rooms were placed at $1000 per year per table. A.A. Cowart, a billiard parlor operator, was forced out of business.  L.A. Chapman, Dublin’s premier brick maker, began  delivery of  three million bricks, fifty thousand at a time, to the City of Jacksonville. Jacksonville had suffered an horrific fire that destroyed a large portion of the city.

W.H. Mobley, Jr. formerly of Laurens Hill, committed suicide in Houston, Texas on March 14 by taking morphine.  His father was an actor who was killed in an Atlanta theater.  His mother's brother was Hon. Charles Crisp, former Georgia Congressman and Speaker of the House of Representatives.  Mobley lived with the White family at Laurens Hill.  He went to Washington to be his uncle's private secretary.  There he met and married a daughter of Senator John H. Reagan of Texas.  He then moved to Palestine, Texas, where he practiced law.  He moved back to Cochran in 1892, where he remained for a few years before returning to Texas.  John H. Reagan was the Postmaster General of the Confederate States of America, who passed through Dublin during the escape of Pres. Jefferson Davis.

The annual state conference of the Royal Arcanum, a Masonic organization, was  held in Dublin early May.  J.A. Peacock, of Dublin, was the incumbent Grand Orator.  Visitors to Royal Arcanum were treated to a river boat ride on "The City of Dublin" down to Well Springs for a barbeque by T.D. Smith and L.M. Clarke.  Major Smith explained to the visitors how in the early part of the last century, a great peace had been made at the spring between Gov. Troup and Chief McIntosh. Mayor Smith told them and how after pipes had been smoked, Chief McIntosh then and there ceded millions and millions of square miles west of the Oconee River to the whites.  During the convention,  Peacock was elected Grand Vice Regent of the Royal Arcanum.

Within ten years of the completion of the river bridge, major improvements had to be made. The bridge was inaccessible from the east side of the river during the flooding season.  George Crafts of Atlanta, who built the bridge in 1891 and who should have been given the task of extending it in the beginning, was awarded the contract to bridge the gap up to the high ground in East Dublin.  The initial work was done under the supervision of Rev. George C. Thompson, a local minister, who worked during the week as an architect and engineer.

Entertainment, by today’s standards, was primitive - not even a single moving picture show was in town.  H.R. Lucas of Virginia presented a  stereopticon exhibition, a type of glorified slide show, at Courthouse. The exhibition included  scenes of Galveston storm, the Pied Piper of Hamelin, and Rip Van Winkle.    A band stand was built for biweekly concerts of the Dublin Military Band. The organizational meeting to establish the first Chautaugua Festival was held in August to lay the ground work for a decade of summer festivals that would feature  musical, educational, and political programs.   A State Confederate reunion, organized by Maj. T.D. Smith, was held at the pavilion near the river. The reunion, which featured a parade from Courthouse to Pavilion, brought two hundred and fifty veterans to the city.  

The top news headlines of the year included the murder trial of John Robinson, the last man ever publicly (and legally) hung in Laurens County.  The Dublin Academy burned to the ground in January.  Robert Wells, the school’s janitor, was accused, but never convicted of the fire. The fire led to the construction of the modern day brick school building, which is today occupied by City Hall. A bond issue to build a new school passed, but was overturned by the Georgia Supreme Court. The court ordered a new election, which was unanimously ratified by Dublin’s voters.   Alex Akerman, a Dublin attorney, was named Assistant District Attorney of the Southern District.  Akerman later became the Chief District Attorney for the Southern District.  The Dublin Guards, a local militia unit organized during the Spanish American War, disbanded due to a lack of interest.

What do you think historians will be writing about us one hundred years from now?  Go ahead and write it down so they won’t have to work too hard  or get it wrong.    May you all have a happy and healthy new year and thank you for all of your support during the last five years.  Your kind words of praise and appreciation are what keeps me going, trying to chronicle “The Pieces of Our Past.”

01-44

I WANT MY MTV

The Story of John Lack

John Lack was a teen-ager of the late ‘50s and early ‘60s.  He loved music, rock and roll in particular.  As a maturing adult of the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, John Lack was a smooth salesman and proponent of revolutionary cable television programming.  The brief sojourner in Dublin had an idea. John Lack thought that it would be a popular idea to combine his love for music with his passion to sell television programming.  The result was Music plus TV equals MTV.

John Lack was born in 1944 into a wealthy New York family.  He graduated from Boston University and earned a master’s degree in broadcast journalism from the prestigious Medill School at Northwestern University.  His first job was with Group W Cable. Lack was sent to Dublin to learn all he could about the cable television business. That was in the days when cable television was in its infancy in Dublin and most of the rest of the country as well. Clearview Cable Company came to Dublin in 1965.  Before then, antennas could pick up only four stations, five if you were lucky.  WMAZ of Macon, WRDW and WJBF of Augusta, along with WDCO (GPTV) out of Cochran were all that one could see.  The latter required a UHF antenna. If you were lucky and the clouds were just right, you might be able to see the low frequency, high power signal from WSB out of Atlanta.

“That was in the days when we sold cable television subscriptions for five dollars and ninety-five cents a month, said Judge Johnny Warren.  “I got to keep the first month’s payment as my commission,” said Warren, who remembered Lack as a “slick salesman type.”  John Lack married Susan Schildhouse, daughter of Sol Schildhouse, a Washington D.C. attorney, who while with the Federal Communications Commission, played an active role in the federal government’s regulation of the cable television industry.  Susan, during the couple’s brief stay in Dublin, worked with the Courier Herald as a headline writer.  Their stay in Dublin was so brief that the Lacks never made it into the phone book before their move to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. 

John Lack had a natural talent for broadcast journalism. John, who  was described as generous, charismatic and boyishly enthusiastic, had his moments, though not very frequent, of temperamental moods.  His friends knew that he had an uncommon ability to sell anyone on anything in a slow, rhythm-like reeling manner.

Lack took a job in 1970 as an account representative with CBS radio in New York.  At the age of 32, Lack had climbed the corporate ladder to the position of General Manager of WCBS-AM radio, CBS’s top network affiliate. The broadcast networks, both television and radio, were at their zenith, but Lack knew that the future of television would lie in a different field, cable television.

In 1979, Lack did the unthinkable.  He left the king of the networks for a position with Warner Communications, which was in its second year of a new cable service called Qube, which was being test marketed with its unheard of 36 channels in Columbus, Ohio.    The new system included for the first time, pay per view television channels.  When American Express bought into the venture, the company was split into two divisions.  Lack was chosen to work under his idol from his CBS days, Jack Schneider, to develop cable satellite programming.  Schneider and Lack revamped old Warner programming ideas and launched the Nickelodeon and The Movie channels.

Lack loved rock and roll music.  He loved to sneak away from school to hear black groups such as the Coasters peforming.  Michael Nesmith, who had gained superstardom as one of the Monkees, proposed an innovative idea to Lack.  Nesmith, who had been producing video clips of himself  lip synching his songs, worked with Lack in developing a series of these clips under the title of “Pop Clips.” When Nesmith stated that he thought the future of music videos was in video discs and Lack firmly believed that the music video would become an integral part of the future of cable television, the duo parted ways.

Music videos had been around for more three decades, but their distribution was minimal. John Lack had a vision: that people, especially young people, would watch an all-music network. After all, there was an all-sports network and all-news network, which were garnering new viewers every day.

Lack pushed his idea to a somewhat doubtful executive at Warner, who finally relented and gave John the go ahead.  HBO and USA networks were already on the air with single programs of videos.  On August 1, 1981, John Lack appeared before a television camera and launched his dream, MTV, by uttering those immortal words, “ Ladies and gentlemen, rock and roll.”  The first video shown on the new music channel was appropriately, ironically and purposely, “Video Killed the Radio Star.”  MTV in its first two decades of existence has become an American institution with teen-agers and the “X” Generation,” more popular than John Lack could have ever dreamed.

Lack left Warner to found ESPN-2. John went on to serve as CEO of Stream Telecom, Italy’s pay televison network. In November of 2000, John Lack was appointed President and CEO of i3 Mobile, a leading provider of wireless communication services.  Once again, John Lack is there on the forefront of the future, beyond the land line based communication industry which he helped to become an integral part of our lives today, working to provide America and the World with new and improved forms of communication and entertainment for the future.

John Lack has come a long way from the days when a few thousand Dubliners had cable television with less than a dozen channels and weather information, which was viewed by a moving camera and which moved back and forth filming dials showing temperature, relative humidity, time, and rainfall. The story makes you stop and think: What  is that young man in our schools or in your work place going to be doing twenty years from now. Who knows?

By the way, the story of John Lack came to me through the magic of Internet search engines. I typed in the words “Dublin Georgia doctor.”  Because Sol Schildhouse gave an oral history of the cable television industry, which was posted on the Internet, and because he mentioned “Dublin, Georgia” as a place where his daughter had lived and that another child of his had become a doctor, the revelation of this story has come to light. I will be at my computer surfing the Internet. If you get a busy signal late at night, that’s because I will be looking for more fascinating and interesting stories for “Pieces of Our Past.”