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.
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