USA > Georgia > Fulton County > Atlanta > History of Atlanta, Georgia : with illustrations and biographical sketches of some of its prominent men and pioneers > Part 25
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him again. " I believe if this poor fellow lives to sundown to-morrow he will get well." And again leaving him not to death but with hope ; all night long these words fell into his heart as the dews fell from the stars upon his lips, "if he but lives till sundown, he will get well." He turned his weary head to the east and watched for the coming sun. At last the stars went out the east trembled with radiance, and the sun, slowly lifting above the horizon, tinged his pallid face with flame. He watched it inch by inch as it climbed slowly up the heavens. He thought of life, its hopes and ambitions, its sweetness and its raptures, and he fortified his soul against despair until the sun had reached high noon. It sloped down its slow descent, and his life was ebbing away and his heart was faltering and he needed stronger stimulants to make him stand the struggle until the end of the day had come. He thought of his far-off home, the blessed house resting in tranquil peace with the roses climbing to its door, and the trees whispering to its windows and dozing in the sunshine, the orchard and the little brook running like a silver thread through the forest.
" If I live till sundown I will see it again. I will walk down the shady lane; I will open the battered gate, and the mocking bird shall call to me from the orchard, and I will drink again at the old mossy spring." And he thought of the wife who had come from the neighboring farm- house and put her hand shyly in his and brought sweetness to his life and light to his home. " If I live till sundown I shall look once more into her deep and loving eyes and press her brown head once more to my aching breast." And he thought of the old father, patient in prayer, bending lower and lower every day under his load of sorrow and old age. " If I live till sundown I shall see him again and wind my strong arm about his feeble body, and his hands shall rest upon my head while the unspeakable healing of his blessing falls into my heart." And he thought of the little children that clambered on his knees and tangled their little hands into his heart strings, making to him such music as the world shall not equal or heaven sur- pass. " If I live till sundown they shall again find my parched lips with their warm mouths and their little fingers shall run once more over my face." And he then thought of his old mother, who gathered these children about her and breathed her old heart afresh in their brightness and attuned her old lips anew to their prattle that she might live till her big boy came home.
" If I live till sundown I will see her again and I will rest my head at my old place, on her knees, and weep away all memory of this desolate night." And the Son of God, who had died for men, bending from the stars, put the hand that had been nailed to the cross on ebbing life and held on the staunch until the sun went down and the stars came out and shone down in the brave man's heart, and blurred in his glistening eyes, and the lanterns of the surgeons came, and lie was taken from death to life.
The world is a battlefield strewn with the wrecks of government and institutions of theo- ries and of faiths that have gone down in the ravages of years. On this field lies the South, sown with her problems. Upon the field swings the lanterns of God. Amid the carnage walks the Great Physician. Over the South he bends. "If ye but live until to-morrow's sundown ye shall endure. my countrymen." Let us for her sake turn our faces to the east, and watch as the soldier watched for the coming sun. Let us staunch her wounds and hold steadfast. The sun mounts the skies, As it descends to us, minister to her and stand constant at her side for the sake of our children, and of generations unborn that shall suffer if she fails. And when the sun has gone down, and the day of her probation had ended, and the stars have failed her heart, the lanterns shall be swung over the field, and the Great Physician shall lead her up- from trouble into content ; from suffering into peace ; from death to life. Let every man here pledge himself in this high and ardent hour, as I pledge myself and the boy that shall follow me : every man himself and his son, hand to hand and heart to heart, that in death and earn- est loyalty, in patient painstaking and care, he shall watch her interest. advance her fortune, defend her fame and guard her honor as long as life shall last. Every man in the sound of my voice, under the deeper consecration he offers to the Union, will consecrate himself to the
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South. Have no ambition but to be first at her feet and last at her service. No hope, but after a long life of devotion, to sink to sleep in her bosom, and as a little child sleeps at his mother's breast, and rests untroubled in the light of her smile.
With such consecrated service what could we not accomplish ; what riches we should gather for her ; what glory and prosperity we should render to the Union ; what blessings we should gather unto the universal harvest of humanity. As I think of it, a vision of surpassing beauty unfolds to my eyes. I see a South, the home of fifty millions of people, who rise up every day to call from blessed cities vast hives of industry and of thrift, her country sides the treasures from which their resources are drawn ; her streams vocal with whirring spindles ; her valleys tranquil in the white and gold of the harvest ; her mountains showering down the music uf bells, as her slow moving flocks and herds go forth from their folds ; her rulers honest, and her people loving, and her homes happy and their hearthstones bright, and their waters still, and their pastures green, and her conscience clear ; her wealth diffused and poorhouses empty, her churches earnest and all creeds lost in the gospel. Peace and sobriety walking hand in hand through her borders; honor in her homes; uprightness in her midst; plenty in her fields ; straight and simple faith in the hearts of her sons and daughters ; her two races walk- ing together in peace and contentment ; sunshine everywhere and all the time, and night fall- ing on her generally as from the wings of the unseen dove.
All this my country, and more can we do for you. As I look the vision grows, the splen- dor deepens, the horizon falls back, the skies open their everlasting gates, and the glory of the Almighty God streams through us as he looks down on his people who have given themselves unto him, and leads them from one triumph to another until they have reached a glory un- speaking, and the whirling stars in their courses through Arcturus as they run to the Milky Way, shall not look down on a better people or happier land.
In the latter part of November of the same year Mr. Grady was invited to address the visiting legislatures of South Carolina and Georgia, at the Augusta National Exposition. Upon his arrival in the city at night the streets were crowded with thousands of people, all cheering and shouting for the orator of the coming day. The Augusta speech was generally pronounced equal to the Dallas and New England Society addresses. It was delivered before the law- makers of two States and a countless throng of people. The following ex- tracts are from the concluding portion of the speech :
Let me say here that I yield to no man in my love for this Union. I was taught from my cradle to love it, and my father loving it to the last, nevertheless gave his life for Georgia when she asked it at his hands. Loving the Union as he did, yet would I do unto Georgia even as he did. I said once in New York, and I repeat it here, honoring his memery as I do nothing else on this earth, I still thank God that the American conflict was adjudged hy higher wisdom than his or mine, that the honest purposes ot the South were crossed, her brave armies beaten, and the American Union saved from the storm of war. I love this Union because I am an American citizen. I love it because it stands in the light, while other nations are groping in the dark. I love it because here in this republic of a homogeneous people must be worked out the great problems that perplex the world, and establish the axioms that must uplift and re- generate humanity. I love it because it is my country, and my State stood by when its flag was first unfurled, and uplifted her stainless sword, and pledged "her life, her property and her sacred honor," and when the last star glittered from its silken folds, and with her precious blood wrote her loyalty in its crimson bars. I love it because I know that its flag, fluttering from the misty heights of the future, followed by a devoted people once estranged and thereby closer bound, shall blaze out the way, and make clear the path up which all the nations of the earth shall come in God's appointed time.
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The tide of immigration is already springing this way. Let us encourage it. But let us see that these immigrants come in well-ordered procession, and not pell-mell. That they come as friends and neighbors-to mingle their blood with ours, to build their homes on our fields, to plan their Christian faith on these red hills; and not seeking to plant strange heresies of gov- ernment and faith, but, honoring our constitution and reverencing our God, to confirm and not estrange the simple faith in which we have been reared, and which we should transmit unsul- lied to our children.
It may be that the last hope of saving the old-fashioned on this continent will be lodged in the South. Strange admixtures have brought strange results in the North. The anarchist and atheist walk abroad in the cities, and defying government deny God. Culture has refined for itself new and strange religions from the strong old creeds. The old-time South is fading from observance, and the mellow church bells that called the people to the temples of God, are being tabooed and silenced. Let us, my countrymen, here to-day-yet a homogeneous and God-fear- ing people-let us highly resolve that we will carry untainted, the straight and simple faith- that we will give ourselves to the saving of the old-fashioned, that we will wear in our hearts the prayers we learned at our mother's knee, and seek no better faith than that which fortified her life through adversity, and led her serene and smiling through the valley of the shadow.
Let us keep sacred the Sabbath of God in its purity, and have no city so great, or village so small, that every Sunday morning, shall not stream forth over towns and meadows the golden benediction of the bells, as they summon the people to the churches of their fathers, and ring out in praise of God and the power of His might. Though other people are led into the bitter- ness of unbelief or into the stagnation of apathy and neglect-let us keep these two States in the current of the sweet old fashioned, that the sweet rushing waters may lap their sides and everywhere, from their soil grow the tree, the leaf whereof shall not fade, and the fruit whereof shall not die, but the fruit whereof shall be meat, and the leaf whereof shall be healing.
In working out our civil, political and religious salvation everything depends on the union of our people. The man who seeks to divide them now in the hour of their trial, that man puts ambition above patriotism. A distinguished gentleman said that "certain upstarts and speculators were seeking to create a new South to the derision and disparagement of the old." and rebukes them for so doing. These are cruel and unjust words. It was Ben Hill-the music of whose voice hath not deepened, though now attuned to the symphonies of the skies -who said : "There was a South of secession and slavery-that South is dead ; there is a South of union and freedom-that South, thank God, is living, growing. every hour."
It was he who named the new South. One of the upstarts said in a speech in New York ; "In answering the toast to the new South, I accept that name in no disparagement to the old South. Dear to me, sir, is the home of my childhood and the traditions of my people, and not for the glories of all New England history from Plymouth Rock all the way, would 1 surrender the least of these. Never shall I do or say ought to dim the luster of the glory my ancestors won in peace and in war."
Where is the young man in the South who has spoken one word in disparagement of our past, or has worn lightly the sacred traditions of our fathers ? The world has not equaled the unquestioning reverence and undying loyalty of the young men of the South to the memory of their fathers. History has not equaled the cheerfulness and heroism with which they bestirred themselves amid the poverty that was their legacy, and holding the inspiration of their past to be better than rich acres and garnered wealth, went out to do their part in rebuilding the fallen fortunes of the South and restoring her fields to their pristine beauty. Wherever they have striven-in market place, putting youth against experience, poverty against capital-in the shop, earning in the light of their forges and the sweat of their faces the bread and meat for those dependent upon them-in the forum, eloquent by instinct, able though unlettered-on the farm, locking the sunshine in their harvests and spreading the showers on their fields-everywhere my heart has been with them, and 1 thank God that they are comrades and country men of
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mine. I have stood with them shoulder to shoulder as they met new conditions without sur- rendering old faiths-and I have been content to feel the grasp of their hands, and the throb of their hearts, and hear the music of their quick step as they marched unfearing into new and untried ways. If I should attempt to prostitute the generous enthusiasm of these, my com- rades, to my own ambition. I should be unworthy. If any man, enwrapping himself in the > ?- cred memories of the old South, should prostitute them to the hiding of his weakness or the strengthening of his failing fortunes, that man would be unworthy. If any man for his own advantage should seek to divide the old South from the new, or the new from the old-to sep- arate those that in love hath been joined together-to estrange the son from his father's grave. and turn her children from the monuments of our dead, to embitter the closing days of our vet- erans with suspicion of the sons who shall follow them-this man's words are unworthy and are spoken to the injury of his people.
Some one has said in derision that the old men of the South, sitting down amid their ruins, reminded him " of the Spanish hidalgos sitting in the porches of the Alhambra, and looking out to sea for the return of the lost armada. There is pathos hut no derision is this picture to me. These men were our fathers. Their lives were stainless. Their hands were daintily cast, and the civilization they builded in tender and engaging grace hath not been equaled. The scenes amid which they moved, as princes among men, have vanished forever. A grosser and mate- rial day has come, in which their gentle hands could garner but scantily, and their guileless hearts fend but feebly. Let them sit, therefore, in the dismantled porches of their homes into which dishonor hath never entered, to which discourtesy is a stranger-and gazc out to the sea, beyond the horizon of which their armada has drifted forever. And though the sea shall not render back to them the Arguses that went down in their ship, let us build for them in the land they love so well, a stately and enduring temple-its pillars founded in justice, its arches spring- ing to the skies, its treasuries filled with substance ; liberty walking in its corridors ; art adorning its walls ; religion filling its aisles with incense, and here let them rest in honorable peace and tranquility until God shall call them hence to " a house not made with hands, eter- nal in the heavens."
There are other things I wish to say to you to-day, my countrymen, but my voice forbids. I thank you for your courteous and patient attention. And I pray to God-who hath led us through. sorrow and travail-that on this day of universal thanksgiving, when every Christian heart in this audience is uplifted in praise, that He will open the gates of His glory, and bend down above us in mercy and love ! And that these people who have given themselves unto Him, and who wear His faith in their hearts, that He will lead them even as little children are led-that He will deepen their wisdom with the ambition of His words-that He will turn them from error with the touch of His almighty hand-that He will crown all their triumphs with the light of His approving smile, and into the heart of all of their troubles, whether of people or State that He will' pour the healing of His mercy and His grace.
Many times and in many quarters before the last Democratic nomination Mr. Grady was suggested for the second place on the national ticket, but noth- ing that was said on the subject by the leading papers of the Union caused him for a moment to turn aside from his chosen work among his own people. Quite recently a large number of the members of the Georgia Legislature urged him to allow his name to be balloted for when a United States senator was to be elected, and it is the confident belief of those best acquainted with the situation that his consent would have insured his election. But the jour- nalist never left his office. His thoughts were upon his newspaper work, and concerned with weighty matters involving the prosperity and progress of the mighty constituency reached through the columns of the Constitution. Hle
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courteously but positively declined to be a candidate, and that was the end of it.
In the great intellectual, political and business centers of the country such a man could hardly fail to rise to a position of the most commanding influence. Mr. Grady has been offered the editorship of more than one leading New York daily upon practically his own terms, but these temptations have not moved him. He lives and works to make an ideal newspaper, in the confident hope that his ideal Georgia with her ten millions of prosperous people will yet greet his eyes before the end of his career. Even if he should fail to realize this wide awake day dream, his willing work and winning words will not be forgot- ten by his fellow-men. His shining record is without a flaw, and his personal ambition, so far as it goes, has already been fully gratified.
H URT, JOEL. Among the younger men of Atlanta possessed of a high order of business ability, and who by their own efforts have achieved notable success, is the subject of this sketch. He was born in Olivet, Rus- sell county, Ala., July 31, 1850, and is one of four living children of Joel and Lucy A. Hurt. His father was born and reared on a plantation in Putnam county. Ga., and was the eldest of eight children of Henry Hurt, a planter and slave owner, who moved with his entire family to Russell county, Ala., about the year 1825. His mother is a daughter of Col. Nimrod W. Long, of Russell county, Alabama.
Joel Hurt was attending school when the war between the States began, but at the age of thirteen, his three older brothers having joined in the Confed- erate service, was taken from school to aid his mother in managing his father's estate. When the Confederacy fell, the bulk of the family property, which at the time consisted chiefly in slaves and Confederate bonds, was swept away. By these reverses young Hurt was confronted at this early period in life by a condition of affairs which made it necessary for him to earn the means to con- tinue his education. But he was self-reliant, and determined to pursue his studies. At the age of fifteen he entered Hurtsboro Academy, then taught by Prof. E. N. Brown, and by periods of work to pay for his tuition, he was ena- bled to finish his preparatory course. At the age of eighteen he entered the University of Georgia, and graduated with the degree of C. E., in 1871. After graduating, and just before leaving college, he received an appointment as assistant engineer under H. P. Blickensdoerfer, C. E., then engaged in running the preliminary line for the Atlantic and Pacific Railroad through the territory of Arizona. After completing this survey he was engaged on other roads as civil engineer until 1875, when, on account of the almost complete suspension of railroad building in the South, he located in Atlanta, and with his brother, E. F. Hurt, engaged in the real estate and insurance business.
In May, 1876, he was married to Miss Annie Bright Woodruff, daughter of George W. and Virginia Woodruff, of Columbus, Ga.
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In 1879 Mr. Hurt undertook to revive the Building and Loan Association in Atlanta. After visits to Philadelphia and other cities he obtained a charter for the Atlanta Building and Loan Association, of which he was secretary and treasurer until its charter expired, a period of over six years. Through it was invested in homes for working people about two hundred thousand dol- lars without the loss of a single dollar to the members Following the " At- lanta" were organized a number of other associations working on the same plan, among them the Home Building and Loan Association, of which Mr. Hurt is secretary and treasurer.
In 1882 Mr. Hurt enlisted the business men of Atlanta in the organization of the Atlanta Home Insurance Company, of which he was elected secretary. The care, zeal and efficient manner in which he discharged the duties of his position is well known and freely acknowledged by all intimately acquainted with the successful history of the company. Business was commenced with a capital of one hundred and twenty thousand dollars. During the first five years it has paid three annual dividends of ten per cent. each to policy hold- ers, and eighty thousand dollars to the company's stockholders, while the company has now a capital of two hundred thousand dollars, and a re-insur- ance reserve of fifty thousand dollars.
Probably the most beneficent service performed by Mr. Hurt toward enhancing the good of Atlanta was in behalf of opening Foster street, now Edgewood avenue. With the co-operation of Mr. S. M. Inman, he inaugurated the movement in 1886. The work was regarded by many as impossible, as it involved the opening of the street through three blocks for a distance of fif- teen hundred feet near the center of the city, and the widening of Foster street twenty feet for a distance of one and a quarter miles, besides the build- ing of an expensive viaduct over the Richmond and Danville Railroad 600 feet long. The opening of this magnificent avenue from the center of a great city like Atlanta was indeed a great undertaking worthy of the men who accom- plished it. It is the only street in the city upon which one can stand and see the entire distance of a mile and a half, and its benefits will ever increase with the growth of Atlanta.
In addition to his connection with the enterprises already named, Mr. Hurt is president of the East Atlanta Land Company, organized in May, 1887, with a capital of $600,000. This company owns valuable property in the city and eastern suburbs ; contributed liberally toward the opening of Foster street or Edgewood avenue, and has projected plans for doing much for the up-build- ing of Atlanta.
Mr. Hurt has illustrated by his career of continued success, what can be accomplished by one possessed of natural business aptitude, a high sense of honor, and animated by worthy motives. At an age when most men have merely laid the foundations of their plans, he has achieved important and far-
Ges. Winship
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reaching results. He has been a hard, persistent worker, a builder rather than a speculative dreamer-a man of action instead of wasting time on fine spun theories. Starting without resources beyond willing hands and a good, active, clear brain, he holds now a place of power and influence in the community. He has made right use of his opportunities, and wherever placed has acquitted himself admirably. His industry and energy are qualities suggested in his tone and bearing. He is deliberate in forming judgments and plans, but firm in executing plans once adopted. He has demonstrated in every position he has filled, and in all his undertakings, unusual tact and rare practical business sense, while confidence in his honesty and integrity has never been forfeited by a single act which had the shadow of wrong doing. These qualities place him as a leader among the younger business men of public spirit and progres- sive ideas in Atlanta, and give promise of continued usefulness and added honors in the years to come.
W TINSHIP, GEORGE, one of the leading manufacturers of Atlanta, was born in Clinton, Jones county, Ga., on December 20, 1835, and is a son of Joseph and Emily (Hutchings) Winship. His father, a native of Massachu- setts, was engaged in merchandising in Clinton for several years, and in 1853 removed with his family to Atlanta. Here he at first embarked in car build- ing, but soon after added a foundry and machine shop, which was the begin- ing of the present manufacturing concern of which his son is now president. He continued in this business until his son reached his majority, when he was taken in as a member of the firm, and continued to reside in this city up to the time of his death, in 1878, although he retired from business several years be- fore he died.
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