USA > Georgia > Georgia's landmarks, memorials and legends, Volume I > Part 72
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Twiggs in the John Shine, a veteran of the War for
Revolution. Independence, died in Twiggs in 1832. He was a native of North Carolina.
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Though only a youth at the time, he served under General C'aswell and fought at the battle of Camden, S. C., in 1780. Says White: "His recollection of the battle was perfect almost to the last hour. The portly figure and animated countenance of Baron DeKalb, and the bleached locks and early flight of General Gates, were vividly retained in mind." With two other veterans of the war for inde- pendence, viz., William Duffel and Charles Raley, the old patriot was still living in 1825, when Lafayette visited America, and the trio was taken by the Lafayette Volun- teers to Milledgeville to participate in the reception to the great soldier. General Lafayette recognized Father Duffel as one who helped to carry him from the field of Brandywine.
Major James Gordon was at Braddock's defeat. He bore the name of King Corn Stalk. At the age of 91, he is said to have died in a state of delirium, abusing the enemy.
Henry Sapp, a soldier of the Revolution, died in Twiggs, October 29, 1829, aged 83. On the same day Remilson Sapp, his wife, died at 93. They were married several years previous to the Revolution and were spared to each other for a period of sixty-five years. They are said to have lived an ideally happy life and to have ex- pressed the wish that they might die together.
Arthur Fort was another veteran of Twiggs. He died in this county at the age of 85. The following sketch of Mr. Fort is preserved in White's Collections: "He was a resident and a citizen of Georgia for 75 years; a soldier and a statesman of the Revolution, a member of the Committee of Safety in the darkest hour of that struggle, when the whole of the powers of government rested in the hands of only three men; and afterwards for many years he was retained in honorable stations by the people. A fervid, patriotic zeal characterized his life to its latest hour. For nearly fifty years he led the life of a Christian and his death was truly the Christian's death."
Colonel Jolin Lawson died in April 1816, after an
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illness of only two days. He is said to have grown gray in the service of his country and to have taken an active part in the struggle for freedom. He lived a number of years after the close of hostilities, but the date of his death is unknown .
The Lafayette Says Major Stephen F. Miller :* "In Volunteers. March, 1825, while General Lafayette was a visitor to the United States, a company was formed called the Lafayette Volunteers, of which John G. Slappey was elected captain, T. M. Chamberlain, first-lieutenant, Hamilton R. Dupree, second-lieutenant, Francis W. Jobson, third -- lieutenant, and the author was appointed orderly-sergeant. The corps adopted a cheap uniform, and, with drum and fife, under a beautifully painted silk flag, presented by the ladies, it took up the line of march for Milledgeville, having as a much-venerated charge three Revolutionary soldiers, Fathers William Duffel, John Shine, and Charles Raley, in a conveyance provided for the occasion. When the troops reached Marion from Tarversville, they halted an hour or two, during which time the orderly-sergeant availed himself of the courtesy of a friend to obtain a sword, to render him more worthy of respect in his official character. It belonged to Major William Croker. The Lafayette Volunteers had reached a hill near Fishing Creek, within sight of Milledgeville, when the roar of cannon an- nounced the arrival of General Lafayette. An express was sent to tender our command to the marshal in the ceremonies of reception. The reply came that the great review was to occur on the next day, at 10 o'clock."
Original Settlers. As given by White, the original set- tlers of Twiggs were: Arthur Fort, E. Wimberly, William Perry, Henry Wall, William
* Stephen F. Miller in Bench and Bar of Georgia, Vol. I.
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Crocker, General Tarver, Ira Peck, John Fulton, John Everitt, D. Williams, Joel Denson, S. Jones, Willis Hod- gins, Milton Wilder, Josiah Murphy, Davis Lowery, C. Johnson, C. A. Thorpe, John Davis, C. W. Melton, B. Ray, S. Harrell, T. Harrington, and H. Sullivan.
During the month of November, 1811, the first session of the Superior Court was held in Twiggs, Hon. Peter Early presiding. The following citizens qualified as Grand Jurors : Francis Powell, N. Bugby, A. Wood, Wil- liam Ford, John Welkinson, Thomas C. Heidleburge, B. Joiner, S. Batbaree, William Herrishill, T. Pearce, Wil- liam Carr, William Grimes, Robins Andrews, William Cloud, John Matthews, John Young, Arthur Fort, Jr., John Hawthorn, Ashley Wood, S. Dick and John Evans.
Distinguished Resi- Somewhat lengthy is the honor-roll
dents of Twiggs. of distinguished men who have lived in Twiggs. The celebrated Colonel James W. Fannin, a martyr to the cause of Texan inde- pendence, who perished at Goliad, in 1836, spent his boy- hood days on a plantation near Marion. He was a natural son of Dr. Isham Fannin, a wealthy planter, who gave him parental adoption .* At the age of fifteen, he was sent to West Point, but on the eve of graduation he was drawn into a duel over some insult to the South and, leaving the institution clandestinely, he returned home. He afterwards married in Georgia ; but the restless spirit of adventure impelled him westward and he removed to Texas, where the outbreak of the Revolution found him among the very first to enlist.
Thaddeus Oliver, a lawyer by profession and a poet by divine gift, was a resident of Twiggs. In the opinion
* Authority: Letter to the author, from a relative of Col. Fannin. The name of the writer is withheld for obvious reasons, but the statement therein contained is an absolute fact.
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of some of the foremost literary critics, he was the real author of the famous war poem whose origin has long been a fruitful source of contention-"All's Quiet Along the Potomac Tonight."2
Gen Hartwell H. Tarver, a wealthy planter, who mar- ried the widow Colquitt and became step-father to the great jurist, was a resident of Twiggs. The list includes also Major Robert Augustus Beall and Judge Thaddeus G. Holt, who formed a partnership at Marion for the practice of law; Gen. Ezekiel Wimberly, a planter, who became the head of the State militia; and Gen. L. L. Griffin, for whom the town of Griffin was named, later a resident of Monroe County and the first president of the old Monroe Road.
Robert L. Perryman, a talented lawyer, who wrote a biography of General Andrew Jackson, practiced his pro- fession at Marion ; but unhappily his free use of the pen led to a quarrel in which he was fatally stabbed in the abdomen. Robert A. Everett was a gifted but erratic genius of the same local bar, equally ready for the sake of argument to uphold religion or to defend atheism. Here lived the noted Stephen F. Miller, whose "Bench and Bar of Georgia" is a most important work of history on the ante-bellum period; and here lived the once famous William Crocker, who, according to Major Miller, was on one side or the other of more than four hundred cases tried in the Superior Court of Twiggs.
Other distinguished Georgians born in the county were: Governor James M. Smith, afterwards a resident of Columbus; Judge A. T. MacIntyre, who became a resi- dent of Thomasville, a lawyer of note and a member of Congress ; Dr. James E. Dickey, president of Emory Col- lege; Gen. Philip Cook, Secretary of State, Congressman, and veteran of the Civil War; besides a number of others. Hon. Dudley M. Hughes, a member of the present Geor- gia delegation in Congress, is a resident of Danville, in the neighborhood of which he owns an extensive planta- tion.
2 Library of Southern Literature, Vol. XIV, p. 6083, Atlanta, 1910.
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UNION
Created by Legislative Act, December 3, 1832, from Cherokee County. Named to denote the strong feeling of attachment toward the Federal government which existed among the mountain dwellers in this region of the State, at a time when nullification, a popular doctrine in the South, was beginning to threaten disunion. Blairsville, the county-seat, named for Francis P. Blair, Sr., of Kentucky, a vigorous supporter of Henry Clay for President, until the controversy between John C. Calhoun and Andrew Jackson, on the question of the tariff, brought him to the latter's side and resulted in his removal to Washington, D. C., where he edited an adminis- tration newspaper. Mr. Blair became a Republican, on the issue of slavery, and presided over the first national convention of the party, at Pittsburg, in 1856. He lived to be an octogenarian. Toward the close of the Civil War he made an unofficial visit to Richmond with a proposition of peace, on the basis of a joint campaign by Northern and Southern armies against Emperor Maximilian of Mexico. His son, Francis P. Blair, Jr., of Missouri, became a noted Democrat, after the close of the struggle, notwithstanding the somewhat dramatic part taken by him to prevent Missouri from joining he Confederate States. He became a candidate for Vice-President of the United States, in 1868, on the national Democratic ticket, with Horatio Seymour, of New York.
Adieu to Judge Emory Speer thus portrays the cir- Gaddistown. cumstances under which one of Georgia's most illustrious sons left his mountain home at Gaddistown to begin the battle of life: "It was the year 1840. The wooded summits of the Blue Ridge had put on their autumnal colors. These romantic mountains, coming down from the lofty altitudes of the Appalachian range and penetrating the northeastern section of Geor- gia, have an occasional depression. These a poet might term the mountain passes, but the mountaineer calls them the "gaps." One, threaded by a rugged trail, con- necting the county of Union on the north with Lumpkin on the south, is known as the Woody Gap. At an early hour of the day of which I speak, a slender and sinewy lad came steadily through this gap and down the Indian trail. In front of him, yoked together, he drove a pair of young steers. Presently there followed another and younger boy. He was mounted on a small horse, whose well-defined muscles and obvious ribs did not suggest a life of inglorious ease.
"In mountain solitudes there is little change. Now as then, looking southward from the Woody Gap, the trav-
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eler may behold successive and lower ranges of billowy mountains, which together approach the sublime, and far beyond, in shimmering loveliness, stretches apparently to the infinite "the ocean view"-that Piedmont country of Georgia, some day to afford sustenance to millions of happy freemen. To the northward a more precipitous slope seems to terminate in a lovely mountain vale. Glancing through its luxuriant crops and by its simple homes, the silvery waters of the Toccoa make their way to the far distant Mississippi. The valley, like the moun- tain, is also little changed. Its homes have the same unpretentious character, its people the primitive virtues of the old American stock. The shriek of the locomotive and the roar of the railway train, to this day, have not penetrated the sylvan settlement. No village is there. The valley, like many another locality in our mountains, after the fashion of the Cherokees, is called a town. There is Brasstown, and Fightingtown and across the Tennessee Mountains, Ducktown. This is Gaddistown, and thence, from a rude log cabin, that day had departed the boy who was driving the steers, to become the only man who, in all the history of our State, was for four successive terms its Governor, a State Senator, a Judge of its Superior Court, a Chief-Justice of its Supreme Court, and twice its representative in the Senate of the United States. That boy was Joseph Emerson Brown .*
On Notely River, in the immediate neighborhood of the present county-seat, there once occurred a battle be- tween the Cherokee and the Creek Indians, over a dis- puted boundary line. Track Rock, a famous locality, in a gap of the Enchanted Mountain, seven miles to the east of Blairsville, is so called because here, at the head- waters of Brass Town Creek, where a soapstone forma- tion predominates, is marked by peculiar tracks. These
* Judge Emory Speer, in a lecture on the Life and Times of Joseph E. Brown, delivered at Mercer and Yale Universities.
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represent the feet of various animals, including deer, horses, bears, and turkeys. In addition, there are also a number of impressions which seem to represent the foot-prints of Indians. The supposition is that these images were made to commemorate the famous battle which took place near the site of Blairsville between the Creeks and the Cherokees.
James Rideau, a private in the Revolution, who was granted a Federal pension in 1849, died in Union.
Two of the highest peaks of the Blue Ridge are in Union County : Ball and Round Top.
Original Settlers. The original settlers of Union, as given by White, were: John B. Chastain, John Butt, J. P. Wellborn, Moses Anderson, Elisha Hunt, Lewis Van Zant, J. M. Greer, George W. Gaddis, James Gaddis, Sr., Martin England, J. Birch, Jesse Osborn, Josiah Carter, P. D. Maroney, Colonel John Hudgens, William Matthews, John West, John Heddrick, John Norton, James Crow, and Edward Chastain.
UPSON
Created by Legislative Act, December 15, 1824, from Crawford and Pike Counties. Named for Hon. Stephen Upson, of Lexington, Ga., a dis- tinguished lawyer and legislator of the early ante-bellum period. Thomaston, the county-seat, named for Gen. Jett Thomas, an officer of the State milltia and a soldier of the War of 1812.
Stephen Upson, an eminent jurist and legislator of the ante-bellum period, was a native of Waterbury, Conn.,
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where he was born in 1785. Leaving Yale with a high reputation for scholarship, he studied law at Litchfield, Conn., under the famous Judge Reeve. On account of a constitution somewhat frail he came to Georgia to escape the rigorous climate of New England. Stopping for a while in Virginia he formed the acquaintance of a gentleman who gave him letters of introduction to the great William H. Crawford, upon whom he called at Woodlawn, the latter's home, near Lexington, immedi- ately upon his arrival. This was the beginning of an intimate association which lasted through life, much to the advantage of both. Settling in Lexington, in 1808, Mr. Upson became one of the foremost lawyers of Geor- gia, accumulating a fortune from his professional prac- tice. For profound knowledge of the law, for broad culture, and for skill in handling the most difficult cases, he encountered scarcely a rival in the Northern Circuit, which was literally an arena of giants. Mr. Crawford on more than one occasion paid tribute to his talents. He served with distinction in the Georgia Legislature and seemed to be set apart for the highest civic honors, when death terminated his brilliant career at the youthful age of thirty-nine. Mr. Upson married a daughter of the celebrated Dr. Francis Cummins. It is said of Mr. Upson that he was so neat in his person that dust could not adhere to his clothes. Erect in stature, he was some- what florid in complexion and seldom laughed, though he lacked none of the amiabilities which belong to the most attractive character.
Thundering Thundering Springs, one of the natural Springs. curiosities of Upson, is located in the north- west part of the county, two miles from the Flint River and twenty miles from Thomaston. The name is derived from the peculiar intonations which for- merly proceeded from the springs, the sound of which was not unlike the noise of distant thunder. The dis-
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continuance of this strange manifestation may be due to rocks which have fallen into the water. The spring is located at the base of a hill. It is twelve feet in diameter, circular in shape, and reaches to an unknown depth. The water of the spring was believed by the Indians to possess certain medicinal virtues. Says White, in his Collections of Georgia : "Its warm and pleasant temperature renders it a delightful bath at all seasons and the buoyancy is such that bathers cannot sink below the armpits, the motion of the water having a tendency to throw light bodies to the surface."
Pine Mountain begins on the east side of the Flint River, in the northern part of Upson. The highest sum- mit of the ridge is 800 feet above the river. There is an old Indian burial ground on top of the mountain.
Robert E. Lee Institute, a local academy of high grade, under the direction of Prof. F. F. Rowe, at Thomaston, is one of the best-known schools in the State, equipped with a superb building and an up-to-date plant.
Soldiers of the William Carraway, a soldier of the Revo-
Revolution. lution, is buried in Glenwood cemetery, at Thomaston. He enlisted at Cambridge, S. C., and was the sergeant of a company commanded by Capt. Moore. At the time of his discharge, in 1780, it was commanded by Capt. Smith. For a short while be- fore his death, which occurred in 1833, he drew a pension from the United States government.
Capt. Henry Kendall is buried in Upson. James Walker, a veteran of the first war with England, died in this county, aged 98, and was buried at Hootensville,
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with military honors. There is also a Mr. Garland, a patriot of '76, buried somewhere in Upson. Hiram Chal- finch, a musician in the Revolutionary ranks, who was granted a Federal pension in 1822, spent his last days in this county, near the present town of Thomaston.
Original Settlers. White gives the original settlers of Upson as follows: John Persons, James Hightower, Sr., Solomon Stevens, George Powell, Robert Collier, Peter Hollaway, Edward Hollaway, E. Bass, Mark Jackson, R. Jackson, E. Robinson, Josiah A. Christie, William Worthy, William Robinson, John Robinson, Thomas Fluellin, James Walker, Henry Hunt, E. Wamble, John Goode, L. Matthews, John Bransford, M. W. Stamper, John Turner, J. Cooper, Thomas Nelson, William Trice, A. F. Edwards, James Harwell, George M. Petty, D. B. Greene, Dr. Alexander Hawkins, Dr. James W. Stinson, Abner McCoy, H. H. Smith, Andrew Hood, H. Garland, Lee Trammell, Casper Howell, Wil- liam Traylor, Thomas W. Goode, F. Myrick, Thomas Parham, William Gibson, R. Graham, Moses Duke, James Boyd, Moses Reynolds, and James Rogers.
To the foregoing list of early settlers may be added : Peter Tillman Lewis, Wyatt Blassingame, George P. Swift, Washington Peacock, Rev. Zachariah H. Gordon, and N. F. Walker, a veteran of the War of 1912.
Distinguished Resi- The most illustrious soldier in Lee's dent's of Upson. army, of Georgia birth, a distin- guished Governor of the State, a Senator in Congress, a peerless orator, and for fourteen years commander-in-chief of the United Confederate
-
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Veterans, was a native of Upson: Lieutenant-General John B. Gordon. Hon. George Carey, a former member of Congress, spent the last years of his life in Upson; and here Hon. Charles S. Barrett, the official head of the American farmers, married, taught school, and began to farm.
WALKER
Created by Legislative Act, December 18, 1833, from Murray County, originally Cherokce. Named for Major Freeman Walker, of Augusta, a distinguished lawyer, who represented Georgia in the United States Senate. Lafayette, the county-seat, named for the illustrious Palladin of Liberty, who, though a nobleman of France, espoused the cause of American inde- pendence: the Marquis de la Fayette. When first organized in 1833, Walker embraced Catoosa and Dade, and a part of Chattooga.
Major Freeman Walker was the first mayor of Augusta, Ga., an office which he relinquished in 1819 to succeed John Forsyth in the Senate of the United States. He was a native of Charles City, Va., where he was born, October 25, 1780, and where he spent his boyhood days, until reaching the age of sixteen. Coming to Georgia, he settled in Augusta, where he put himself under the care of an elder brother, who had married into the family of Governor Matthew Talbot. He studied law, rose to an eminent position at the bar, served in both branches of the State Legislature, became the first mayor of Au- gusta, and then, by an extraordinary leap, entered the United States Senate, where he assumed the toga of Georgia's foremost orator. Resigning his seat in 1821, he resumed the practice of law. But the remainder of his life was brief and, on September 23, 1827, having contracted a cold which developed into pulmonary com- plaint, he breathed his last at the age of forty-seven. His grave in the Walker burial ground, near the old arsenal, is marked by a horizontal slab of marble, raised some distance from the ground, on which is lettered a graceful inscription from the pen of Richard Henry Wilde, Geor- gia's poet-statesman.
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Isaac B. Nichols, a sergeant in the patriot army, died in Walker. He was granted a Federal pension in 1849.
Rossville: The Old Home of an Indian Chief. Volume II.
The Battle of Chickamauga. Page 201.
Says Mooney: "In 1777 the more hostile portion of the Cherokees withdrew from the rest of the tribe and established here a large settlement from which they re- moved about five years later, in consequence of the devas- tation wrought by Sevier and Campbell, to settle on the Tennessee in what were known as the Chickamauga towns, viz .: Running Water, Nickajack, Long Island, Crow Town, and Lookout Mountain Town. Here they remained a constant thorn in the side of Tennessee until the towns were destroyed in 1794.
The Battle of Lafayette, the county-seat of Walker, was Lafayette. the scene of a desperate engagement fought here on Friday, June 24, 1864, be- tween a Federal force under General Gideon J. Pillow, and two detached columns of Confederate troops. Only in comparison with the bloody carnival of death at Chickamauga is it overshadowed in point of interest. There were between four and five thousand men engaged in the battle. The Confederates were overpowered by heavy odds and fell back after a hard fight, but the Federals were too exhausted to give pursuit.
In May, 1900, a handsome monument was unveiled in Lafayette to the Confederate dead. Perhaps the most
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historic land-mark of the town is the famous Bragg Oak, under which General Braxton Bragg assembled his staff on the eve of the battle of Chickamauga. Near by stands the brick academy in which General John B. Gordon, when a boy, attended school.
Fort Oglethorpe is the name given to the military garrison located at Chickamauga.
Dogwood was an Indian town situated on the head- waters of Chickamauga Creek. The principal chief was Charles Hicks, a man of vigorous mind, who embraced the Moravian faith. Elijah Hicks was his son. It is said of him that he would not disgrace any circle, either in appearance, manner, or conversation.
Wilson's Cave. Wilson's Cave, near Lafayette, is one of the natural curiosities of Walker. It con- tains a flight of stairs leading into spacious underground apartments, richly adorned with stalactites. Some of these resemble animals, others inanimate objects like pyramids, altars, tables, candle-stands, and so forth. The interior of the cavern has been described at some length by a writer in "Sear's Wonders of the World."
There is a pond in Chattooga Valley called the Round Pond. It covers four or five acres in extent, is forty-eight feet deep in the middle, and is sea green in color. There is no apparent outlet to the huge basin, but the water never becomes stagnant.
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Original Settlers. According to White, the first comers into Walker were: X. G. McFarland, T. G. McFarland, John Spradlin, Mr. Allman, J. R. Brooks, General Daniel Newnan, Mr. Acock, S. Marsh, S. Farris, Jesse Land, J. T. Story, Robert Boyle, B. McCutchins, A. Hughes, S. Dunn, Lawson Black, William Harden, James Park, John Caldwell, John Caldwell, John Wicker, and Joseph P. McCulloch.
The McFarlands, Xanders G. and Thomas G., to whom White refers, were surveyors, who came from Mount Vernon, Ga., to this locality in 1832, under a commission from the State of Georgia to survey the lands; and they located in the upper part of the county, near Rossville, on the removal of the Indians to the west.
Spencer Marsh was the pioneer merchant of Lafay- ette. In association with A. P. Allgood and William K. Briars, he afterwards built one of the first cotton mills in this section. It was located in Chattooga valley and called Trion Factory after the owners who were three in number.
The Gordons were also among the earliest settlers of Walker-James, Thomas, and Charles. They came in 1836 and settled at Crawfish Spring, on adjoining tracts of land. James Gordon owned the spring, near which he built the old original Gordon home. It was not until some time in the fifties that he built the substantial brick residence which is today owned by his grandson, James Gordon Lee.
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