USA > Georgia > Georgia's landmarks, memorials and legends, Volume I > Part 70
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"From a monetary standpoint, I may not be doing the wise thing, but I will gain in health what I lose in money, by going to Roswell. You will get rich, but I will live longer."
There was an irony of fate in this parting interview between the brothers. What happened was just the reverse. General Andrew J. Hansell, in the course of time, became president of the great industrial plant which Roswell King had founded. He accumulated a fortune, built a beautiful old Colonial home, and dispensed a royal hospitality to his guests ; but he died in middle life, when his splendid sun was at the zenith. Judge Augustus H.
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Hansell continued to reside where the climate was thought to be unwholesome but where the prospect of earning a fortune was far brighter than among the hills. He failed to gather gear to any great extent. Money did not come his way in quantities large enough to cause him any embarrassment. But he lived to be more than eighty- five years of age; he occupied a seat on the Superior Court Bench for more than half a century, barring a few short intervals of retirement; his mind was clear and vigorous to the very last ; and he left at death a record for continuous service which has never been paralleled and which will doubtless never be surpassed in the history of the commonwealth.
It was in the neighborhood of Thomasville that the famous LeConte pear was first cultivated for the market. See Volume II.
Edward Blackshear, one of the earliest pioneers to settle in the belt of woods from which the county of Thomas was afterwards formed, was a brother of the famous Indian fighter, General David Blackshear, whose home was in Laurens. Both were natives of North Caro- lina. Edward Blackshear married Emily G. Mitchell, and from this union sprang General Thomas E. Blackshear, an officer of note in the State militia. There was no finer family in Georgia during the ante-bellum period than the Blackshears.
Hon. Moses Fort, Judge of the Southern Circuit, held the first session of the Superior Court in Thomas, in 1826. Two Indians were convicted at this time for the offense of murder. The famous William H. Torrence was appointed by the Court to defend the prisoners, but the prejudice of a jury was a difficult thing to combat in those days when an Indian was the defendant at the bar.
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One of the earliest tragedies in Thomas was the kill- ing of Hon. John K. Campbell, United States District At- torney for the Middle District of Florida, by George Hamlin, a prominent Florida merchant. The shooting oc- curred on the streets of Thomasville. Within a very short while thereafter, Hamlin died; and according to the doctors his death was caused by sheer distress of mind. It was not unusual in those days for members of the Florida bar to practice law in the courts of Southern Georgia.
On July 15, 1836, a severe engagement took place in Thomas between a party of Creek Indians en route to Florida and a force of volunteer soldiers under Major Young. Two of the companies were from Thomas, com- manded by Captain James A. Newsome and Captain Tucker. One was from Lowndes commanded by Captain Pike. The Indians were repulsed with great slaughter. Says White: "Never did a braver little crew march into an enemy's field"-a mixed metaphor but doubtless a real fact. Captain Hamilton W. Sharp also commanded a company in this engagement. It was probably from Lowndes.
Original Settlers. As given by White, the original set- tlers of Thomas were : John Paramore, C. Atkinson, E. Blackshear, N. R. Mitchell, and John Hillbryan.
To the foregoing meagre list may be added the names of a few pioneer residents who were prominent in 1830, viz .: General Thomas E. Blackshear, James J. Black- shear, Thomas Jones, Mitchell Jones, William H. Rey- nolds, Thomas Wyche, Michael Young, E. R. Young, Duncan Ray, Lucien H. Jones, Thomas Mitchell, Captain Thomas Johnson, Colonel Richard Mitchell, Nathaniel Mitchell, and others.
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Distinguished Resi- Some of the foremost public men of dent's of Thomas. Georgia have been residents of Thomasville. Here lived the gener- ous Remer Young, a wealthy financier, who endowed a school with his large means; the gallant Thomas E. Blackshear, a soldier of wide reputation, who earned a Brigadier-General's commission during the Indian wars; the noted Paul Coalson, a lawyer of brilliant gifts, who married Elizabeth, a daughter of the old pioneer settler, Edward Blackshear; and the morose, erratic, and morbid John Walker.
Thomasville was also the home of Dr. Peter E. Love, a physician of rare attainments, who relinquished medi- cine to study law. Within four years thereafter, he be- came solicitor of the Southern Circuit. Two years later, he entered the State Senate; in 1853, he was elevated to the Superior Court Bench; and in 1859 he was elected to Congress. He was serving his first term in the National House when Georgia seceded in 1861.
James L. Seward was another ante-bellum Congress- man who lived in Thomasville.
Colonel A. T. MacIntyre, a distinguished lawyer, who was one of the first Democrats elected to Congress after the days of Reconstruction, lived here. Wedded to his profession, he accepted the nomination with great reluc- tance. It was solely for the purpose of redeeming his district from the incumbus of carpet-bag rule, that he assumed the trust. Colonel MaeIntyre was a nephew of Major-General William Irwin, of the United States Army, and a cousin of Governor David Irwin, a famous Chief-Executive of Georgia; and he was also a scion of one of the oldest clans in the Scottish highlands. His father, Archibald MacIntyre, was born on ship-board while the family was en route to America. Colonel Mc- Intyre was for years a trustee of the University of Georgia, an institution to which he was strongly attached. He was both a man and a citizen of the very highest type.
Here lived Judge Augustus H. Hansell, long the revered Nestor of the Georgia Beneh. He first assum-
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ed the Superior Court ermine in 1843; and when the twentieth century was well under way he still continued to hold the scales of justice with an impartial hand. Here lived Judge J. R. Alexander, a jurist of note in South Georgia ; and here lived two gallant officers in the late Civil War: Colonel William J. Young and Colonel Wil- liam D. Mitchell. This was also the home of the well- known banker and lawyer, A. P. Wright. The list of present-day residents of Thomasville includes : Judge S. A. Roddenberry, a representative in Congress from the second district and one of the strongest members of the Georgia delegation; Judge R. G. Mitchell, a distinguished former President of the Senate of Georgia; Hon. Guyton Mcclendon, at one time a member of the State Railroad Commission ; Hon. Charles P. Hansell and Hon. W. H. Merrill, both widely known lawyers; besides a number of others.
TIFT
Created by Legislative Act, August 17, 1905, from Worth and Berrien Counties. Named for Hon. Nelson Tift, one of the pioneers of South-West Georgia and a distinguished member of Congress. Tifton, the county-seat, named also for Colonel Tift.
Nelson Tift was the pathfinder of Southwest Georgia. He founded the city of Albany, on the Flint River; estab- lished the first newspaper in the wire-grass region; be- came a Colonel in the State militia ; purchased vast tracts of timber land, on which he developed the saw mill in- dustry; and besides supplying home demands, exported large quantities of lumber to foreign markets. In asso- ciation with his brother, Asa F. Tift, formerly of Key West, Fla., he furnished supplies to the Confederate gov- ernment by means of factories and warehouses; and con- structed the famous ram "Mississippi," under the ap- proval of the Secretary of the Confederate Navy, Stephen R. Mallory. This vessel was afterwards fired to prevent it from falling into the hands of the Federal fleet under Admiral Farragut, at the storming of New
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Orleans. Later the Tifts transformed a merchant vessel into a gunboat called the "Atlanta." With the close of hostilities, Mr. Tift became one of the most powerful factors in the rehabilitation of the South. Resourceful, tireless, energetic, he turned his attention to railway building and lived to complete four distinct lines. In 1877 he was a delegate to the famous Constitutional Con- vention which witnessed the last great public service of Robert Toombs. Mr. Tift was a native of Groton, Conn., where he was born in 1810. The family name was origi- nally spelt Tefft, which indicates that it may possibly have been of Welsh origin and there is little reason to doubt that the late chief magistrate of the United States, Mr. Taft, sprang originally from the same vigor- ous stock. Coming South at the age of twenty-one, Mr. Tift first settled in Charleston, S. C., but in 1835 he crossed into Georgia to begin his real life's work in an unbroken primaeval forest of pines. The city of Albany which he founded became his home for fifty-six years. and here, on November 21, 1891, he breathed his last. When the Legislature, in 1905, created new counties, one of these, carved from the territory which furnished the theatre of his pioneer labors, was named in his honor, nor is there today a town more progressive than Tifton, the wideawake county-seat of the county of Tift.
Tifton. Tifton was founded by Captain H. H. Tift, who named the city for his uncle, Colonel Nelson Tift of Albany, from whom he bought the land on which the first tree was cut for his saw mill. Captain Tift was born in Mystic, Conn., in 1841, and came to Georgia in 1869. He removed from Albany to what is now Tifton in 1872 and located a saw mill at this point. For years there was not even a railroad station here and it was with difficulty that Captain Tift secured a siding on the old B. & W. railroad, now known as the A. C. L. Some few years after Captain Tift settled here he was
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joined by Mr. W. O. Tift; and later by Mr. Edward H. Tift, both of them his brothers.
Mr. W. O. Tift engaged in a mercantile business, known as the "Commissary for the Mill." He was ap- pointed Postmaster in 1880 and served until the time of his death, in 1909, excepting a period of ten or twelve years. The first telegraph office was in the Commissary and Mr. W. W. Pace was the first operator. But the real growth of the town dates from the time when the Geor- gia Southern & Florida Ry. began operating schedule trains to this point in 1887. Tifton was incorporated as a city by act of the Legislature, approved December 29tlı, 1890. Mr. W. H. Love was the first Mayor; and Messrs. H. H. Tift, M. A. Sexton, J. I. Clements, J. C. Goodman, E. P. Bowen, and John Pope constituted the first Board of Aldermen. Captain Tift owned all the land in the vicinity and had it surveyed and platted for a city. One of the restrictions was that no negro could own a foot of land in the city limits, a prohibitive measure which still holds good. The first building of consequence was the Hotel Sadie, erected by Capt. John A. Phillips ; the next a Methodist church with Rev, J. W. Foster as pastor; and in 1890 the Baptist church was erected through the influ- ence of Dr. Chas. M. Irwin, employed by the State Mission Board. Mr. C. A. Williams erected the first brick build- ing. The first High School was opened in 1888, with Mr. Jason Scarboro as principal. The first newspaper was the present Tifton Gazette, established in April 1891 by Mr. Ben T. Allen. The business portion of the town was destroyed by fire in 1901, another disastrous conflagration occurred in 1904, destroying the Bowen Bank, Hotel Sadie, and other important buildings. The burned build- ings were promptly replaced by more substantial struc- tures.
Original Settlers. Some of the representative pioneer citizens of the county of Tift may be enumerated as follows : Capt. H. H. Tift, W. O. Tift, Ed-
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ward H. Tift, W. W. Pace, W. H. Love, M. A. Sexton, J. 1. Clements, J. C. Goodman, E. P. Bowen, John Pope, C'apt. John A. Phillips, Rev. J. W. Foster, Rev. Charles M. Irwin, C. A. Williams, Ben. T. Allen and Prof. Jason Scarboro. See also Worth and Berrien Counties from which Tift was formed.
TOOMBS
Created by Legislative Act, August 17, 1905, from parts of three counties: Tattnall, Montgomery, and Emanuel. Named for one of Georgia's most illustrious sons, General Robert Toombs: a member of Congress, a Senator of the United States, a dominant figure in the great Secession Convention at Milledgeville, a Secretary of State in the Cabinet of Mr. Davis, a Brigadier-General in the field, an orator of unsurpassed eloquence, and a proud aristocrat of kindly mien, who, refusing to accept amnesty at the hands of the Federal government, carried the brand of outlawry to his grave, over which he asked for no better epitaph than this: "Here lies an unpardoned Rebel." Lyons, the county-seat.
Anecdotes of Gen. Toombs.
Volume IT.
Original Settlers. See Tattnall and Montgomery, from which counties Toombs was formed.
Malcolm MeMillan settled about the year 1800 in what was then Montgomery County, pitching his camp near an oak tree on the site of the present town of Vidalia. In the same neighborhood he built his pioneer home. He also erected a Presbyterian house of worship to the pastorate of which his cousin, Rev. Murphey Mc- Millan, was called.
Among the prominent residents of Toombs at the time the new county was organized were: Judge G. T. Mason, Hon. Enoch J. Giles, Hon. Silas B. Meadows, W. T. Jenkins, John W. Powe, Dr. E. P. Bomar, Dr. Geo. T. Gray, V. M. Womack, Dr. J. M. Meadows, Sr., Dr. J. M. Meadows, Jr., P. S. Hagan, J. B Cone, Dr. Thomas C.
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Thompson, D. W. Thompson, L. B. Odom, Dr. D. P. Odom, Dr. W. W. Odom, J. E. Thomson, Grover C. Blantley, T. R. Lee, T. J. Parrish, W. T. China, G. W. Lankford, G. T. Mason, C. W. Brazell, W. C. Oliver, and others.
TOWNS
Created by Legislative Act, March 6, 1856, from Union and Rabun Counties. Named for Governor George W. Towns, a noted Chief-Executive of Georgia and a distinguished member of Congress. Hiawassee, the county- seat, named for the river which here rises among the Blue Ridge Mountains. The term was coined in the beautiful linguistic molds of the Cherokee Indians.
George Washington Towns was a native of Wilkes County, Ga., where he was born, May 4, 1801, of good Revolutionary stock. He began the study of medicine under Dr. Branham, of Eatonton, but while on a visit to his parents, who were then living in Morgan County, he was thrown from his horse against the stump of a tree, sustaining grave injuries in the chest. He thereupon relinquished the thought of medicine. Later he began the study of law in Montgomery, Ala., after which he settled at Talbotton, Ga., where he remained for several years and became a Colonel in the State militia. He served with distinction in both branches of the General Assemb- ly, represented his district in Congress at different times, covering a period of several years, and, in 1847, defeated General Duncan L. Clinch, for Governor, an office to which he was re-elected two years later. The first wife of Governor Towns died within six months after her mar- riage to the future statesman. While a member of Con- gress, long afterwards, he wooed and won the daughter of Hon. John W. Jones, of Virginia, Speaker of the national House of Representatives. Governor Towns · was an orator in the most restricted sense of the term. There seemed to be still higher honors in store for him; but not long after retiring from the executive office he
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died at his home in Macon, Ga., on July 15, 1854, in the meridian of his powers. The grave of Governor Towns, in Rose Hill Cemetery, is unmarked by any sort of monu- ment, but an iron fence surrounds the lot, on the gate to which is the name of "George W. Towns."
Hiawassee or Hiwassee was the name given by the Cherokees to a stream rising among the mountain springs of Towns. It was also the name bestowed upon a settle- ment. The Cherokee form of the word is A-yu-wa-si, meaning a savanna. According to Mooney, the legend preserved by White in his Collections of Georgia is a pure myth for which there is no basis whatever in the traditions of the Cherokees. (See Vol. II. The Legends of Hiawassee). Here a large number of Cherokees embark- ed for the west, making the trip by water.
Young Harris College, a high grade institution, co- educational in character, under the control of the North Georgia Methodist Conference, is located at Young Har- ris. It was founded in 1888 by the great philanthropist and Christian gentleman, whose name it bears; and the first exercises of graduation were held in 1891. Two of the best known legislators in Georgia are graduates of Young Harris, Hon. H. J. Fullbright, of Waynesboro, and Hon. W. S. Mann, of McRae, both of whom were members of the same class.
Two of the most noted Chiefs of the Cherokees, the Ridges, father and son, lived in Towns. Major Ridge and John Ridge, both advocated the treaty, under which the nation relinquished the Cherokee lands in Georgia, a cause for which they sufferel death, on the removal of the tribes to the West.
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Original Settlers. See Union and Rabun, from which the county of Towns was formed.
To the list may be added John Corn and Elijah Kinsey who represented Towns in the Secession Convention at Milledgeville. The old established families of the county include also the Mathesons, the Allens, the Bur- rells, the Kirbys, the Johnsons, the Suttons, and others.
TROUP
Created by Legislative Act, December 11, 1826. Named for Governor George M. Troup, one of Georgia's most illustrious Chief-Magistrates, whose defiance of the Federal Government, in his great controversy with President Adams, caused him to be styled "the Hercules of State Rights". The county of Troup was formed from a part of the land acquired by the State of Georgia, under the treaty of Indian Springs, in 1825, from the Creek Indians. It was by order of Governor Troup that the first survey was made, out of which grew the clash between State and Federal authorities; and he was also a first cousin of General William McIntosh, chief of the Lower Creeks, who was murdered for the part taken by him in ceding the Creek lands to the whites. Consequently it was most fitting that a county, carved from this newly acquired area, should bear his name. Governor Troup was still in life when he was made the recipient of this honor by the State of Georgia, and he survived the compliment by more than thirty years. LaGrange, the county-seat, was named for the ancestral home in France of the illustrious nobleman, who came to the aid of Washington in the Revolution: the Marquis de la Fayette. When organized in 1826, Troup embraced Meriwether and in part Heard, Talbot and Harris.
George M. Troup was the Hercules of State Rights. More than thirty years before the great departure of 1861 he sounded the tocsin of war in the ears of John Quincy Adams, then President of the United States. For the Chief Executive of a State, single-handed, thus to defy the power of the Federal government, was boldness personified. But Governor Troup won. The issue be- tween them concerned the lands of the Creek Indians and the principle of State sovereignty was involved. Growing out of the treaty of Indian Springs, Governor Troup ordered a survey of the Creek lands; but when the hostile or Upper Creeks complained to the United States government, due largely to the meddlesome inter- ference of an Indian agent named Crowell, another so- called treaty was made with the savages in Washington,
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D. C., under which the national government ordered the lands to be re-surveyed. Thus the gage of battle was joined. But Governor Troup was not to be intimidated. He gave the President of the United States to under- stand that the sovereign statehood of Georgia was not to be violated, even though the trespasser were the Fed- eral government itself. The blast which he sounded was unquestionably defiant. Moreover, it came from good stout lungs in which there was no hint of tuberculosis. It was the cry of 1825 to 1861. At one time the result seemed to be in grave doubt. Then it was that Governor Troup sent to the Legislature his famous war message, in which he used this bold language: "The argument is exhausted. You must stand by your arms!" But, as the sequel shows, there was no occasion for bloodshed. The Federal government receded. Georgia's Chief-Magis- trate refused to yield one foot of ground; but, confronted the power of the United States government like an old fortress, whose iron mortars were firmly mounted upon granite walls and whose unconquered flag rippled serenely above the battlements.
Governor Troup was born at McIntosh Bluff, on the Tombigbee River, in what is now the State of Alabama, on September 8, 1780. His father was an English naval officer and his mother a member of the famous Scotch clan of McIntosh. He received his collegiate education at Princeton, where he became associated in undergradu- ate studies with Forsyth and Berrien-two Georgians who were destined to reach the heights of eminence both in oratory and in statesmanship. Beginning the study of law in the office of Governor James Jackson, in Savan- nah, he declined a proffered seat in the Georgia Legis- lature before he was twenty-one; but the next year he entered the General Assembly, making a record in the lower house which, in 1806, sent him to Congress, where, after serving for four years, he was elected to the Senate of the United States. Resigning the toga in 1823 he became Governor of Georgia; and again, in 1825, as the result of the first popular election ever held in Georgia
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for State House officers, he was triumphantly re-elected. due largely to his vigorous policy in dealing with the Indian problem. On retiring from the Governorship, he expected to devote the remainder of his life to leisure employment; but with one voice the people of Georgia voted to place him again in the United States Senate and in 1852 he was nominated for President of the United States on the secession ticket presented to the country by the extreme advocates of State Rights. Governor Troup died on his plantation in Montgomery County, Ga., on April 26, 1856, of hemorrhage of the lungs, leav- ing to Georgia a legacy of honor which time has not dimmed nor distance lessened.
Recollections of Governor Troup. Volume II.
The Legend of Burnt Village. Volume TT.
Two Historic Two of the best known institutions of Schools. learning in the land for the higher education of women are located in LaGrange, a town which for more than half a century has been a recognized seat of culture. The LaGrange Female College, an institution of the Methodist church was the outgrowth of a school established here in 1833 by Thomas Stanley, a noted pioneer educator in Georgia. The school was afterwards chartered as a college in 1846. It has been a powerful factor in the educational life of the State, and on the alumnae rolls may be found the names of many brilliant women. The Southern Female College, an institution under the control of the Georgia Baptists, was founded by Rev. Milton E. Bacon. Chartered in 1845 as the LaGrange Female Seminary, it became in 1854 the Southern Female College. It enjoys the dis- tinction of being the second institution of learning in the
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State for women to be granted a charter. The career of the school has been one of marked growth and of uni- formly high standards of scholarship.
Fort Tyler. Wilson's famous cavalry raid into Georgia was the last military event of any importance east of the Mississippi River. It occurred in the spring of 1865. The leader of this dramatic exploit, General James H. Wilson, is still in life, a gentleman of very great polish, who has succeeded in winning the respect of many of his former foes. He was quite a youthful officer when he made his eventful visit to Georgia on this occasion-less than 28-but in the record of devastation left by the hoofs of his horses he fairly rivalled the prowess of Attilla, the Hun. It was also reserved for him to effect the capture of Jefferson Davis, a feat which in no wise taxed his resources as a strategist, since Mr. Davis was travelling leisurely through the State, accom- panied by only a small retinue of followers; but the arrest of the feeble old ex-President gave his captor a halo a fame in the eyes of the North. But to return to General Wilson's raid into Georgia. Says Prof. Joseph T. Derry: "He left Chickasaw, Ala., March 22, with about 10,000 men, and after defeating and capturing a large part of what was left of General Forrest's cavalry at Selma, entered Georgia. Upton's division marched through Tuskegee toward Columbus, and Colonel La- Grange, with three regiments, advanced on West Point, by way of Opelika. Colonel LaGrange found a garrison of 265 devoted Confederates under Gen. Robert C. Tyler, in possession of a small fort at West Point. The earth work was 35 feet square, surrounded by a ditch, supplied with four cannon and situated on an eminence command- ing the Chattahoochee bridge at that point. One assault was repelled by the garrison, but in the second the Fed- eral soldiers swarmed over the little fort and captured the entire command of Tyler, who was killed with 18 of
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