THE PHILLIP KETTERER STORY
Dr. Phillip Ketterer came to Dublin to practice medicine. In the short time that he was here, Ketterer left a long-lasting mark on the town, which still remains today.
Dr. Ketterer was born to Phillipe and Eve Elisabeth Müllemann Ketterer in 1820 in Bretchdorf, a prolific pottery manufacturing center in the 1700s. The Ketterers lived in the Alsace region of northeastern France along the 280-mile-long, winding Franco-German border. which followed the legendary Rhine River. Nearly a century after Ketterer’s birth, his homeland of Alsace was indiscriminately ravaged by four years of constant, brutal fighting during World War I.
At the age of fifteen, Phillip booked passage on an ocean-going, west-bound ship out of Le Havre, France for America. His ship arrived in New York Harbor on June 10, 1835. Ten days before Christmas, the teenager watched one of New York’s most disastrous fires that destroyed as many as seven hundred buildings.
Still a minor at seventeen, Ketterer decided to serve his new country by traveling to Washington, D.C., where he enlisted in the United States Army on October 6, 1837. The grey-eyed, sandy-haired, fresh-faced kid soldier was sent to Illinois, where he served in the aftermath of the Black Hawk War a half-decade before.
Eventually, the 24-year-old immigrant finally became a naturalized American citizen in 1844. Almost immediately, Phillip left the largest city in the country for a new home and new life in Central Georgia. He married Sarah Ann Wright, some seven years his junior, on January 16, 1848, probably in Madison, Georgia, where he began a career as a printer with the town newspaper, “The Madisonian.”
Phillip Ketterer wanted more out of a place and an occupation that would support a large family. Ketterer and his wife moved to Macon, where he enrolled in the Southern Botanica Medical College in 1848. Ketterer rapidly obtained his certification of being a doctor and moved to Dublin, Georgia, to begin his practice.
On August 14, 1848, Ketterer was chosen to serve as the first Grand Master of Laurens Lodge, No. 75, Dublin’s first fraternal lodge, which is still organized today.
The initial cadre of officers was Phillip Ketterer, Worshipful Master, W.B. Steel, Senior Warden, Jacob Coen, Junior Warden; R.H. Horne, Secretary-Treasurer, J.M. Shepherd, John W. Yopp, and John M. Dasher, Tyler. Later that December, Ketterer was re-elected.
The Ketterers moved to Holmesville, the county seat of Appling County in Southeast Georgia, between July 1851 and July 1852, when Dr. Ketterer led the Appling County delegation and hosted Georgia’s First Congressional Convention.
A post office called Holmesville was established in 1831 and remained in operation until 1889. The county seat was located at Holmesville from 1828 until 1874, when it was transferred to Baxley. Dr. Ketterer was appointed by the President of the United States as Postmaster of Holmesville on multiple occasions, including June 6, 1853, February 17, 1858, and November 15, 1865.
In the year 1864, when it became readily apparent that Georgia was being invaded by Gen. William T. Sherman’s 120,000-man army, the State of Georgia called for the organization of reserve units in every county. The members of the reserves were generally under age and over age, as well as those who may have some partial disabilities.
Dr. and Postmaster Ketterer, at the age of 43 years and ten months, enlisted as a Private in Company C of Mayer’s Cavalry Regiment of Appling County’s 457th Georgia Militia District. A year after the end of the war, Ketterer was pardoned along with many other public officials across the South by President Andrew Johnson and Secretary of State William Seward.
The Georgia General Assembly incorporated the place as the Town of Holmesville in 1854.. Continuing criticism over the matter led the legislature in August 1872 to call for an election the next month in which Appling County voters would decide whether to move the county seat. In the event that a majority of voters favored removal.
After the end of the War, the Ketterers’ farm and lives were devastated along with almost everyone in Appling County.
Dr. Phillip Ketterer eventually moved to Baxley after it became the county seat. He died in 1878, although the details of the location of his grave are in doubt.
The Ketterers had six children, Louisia, who died in Dublin at the age of two, Frederick Wright Ketterer, who was their last child born in Dublin on June 30, 1951 and lived in Jacksonville, Florida until his death on May 26,1921, James Quiri, the first child born in Appling County in 1853 and died there in 1911, Phillipina, born in 1857 and died in 1899, Ada, who was born in 1860, and Augusta “Gussie, who was born in 1863, and died as the last surviving child in 1923.
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