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CHAPTER XXVI
Some Important Visitors to Colquitt County
WE WERE ONCE, for an hour or two, a guest at the home of the venerable J. B. Norman, Sr., at Norman Park. We took up part of the time in asking him about the past history of the county. Among other things, we asked for the names of noted men who had made public speeches at Moultrie. He said that Benj. H. Hill was the first man of any prominence to make a set political speech in the county. It was in his campaign for the governorship in 1856, when he was the nominee of the know-nothing, or American, party, against Superior Court Judge Joseph E. Brown, of the Blue Ridge Circuit, who was the nominee of the Democratic party. Mr. Hill was the special guest of Mr. Norman, who entertained him at his house overnight, brought him to Moultrie for his speech, and then carried him across the country in his buggy for a speech there.
"Did he make a good speech here?" I asked.
"Well, I thought he did," said he, with characteristic moderation.
"Did Joe Brown visit the county?" "No." "Who managed for Brown?" I asked.
"Henry Gay," answered my host.
"Who carried the county?" I wanted to know.
"Brown carried the county," he answered, with placid resig- nation.
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Bob Taylor, the celebrated lecturer, former Governor of Tennessee, United States Senator, and the hero of many a rough-and-tumble political campaign, once came to Moultrie for a paid lecture. We sat with him in the judge's stand at the courthouse, while we waited for his audience to assemble. Presently, he bent over and said to us, in a low tone of dis- tress:
"I am about dead of stage fright."
"Oh, you can't be in earnest!" we said, "with all your ex- perience, and before this little audience in this out-of-the- way place."
"Well, it's true," said he; "I am never free from it; and the attacks are more painful, as I grow older."
Woodrow Wilson, who did nothing in the way of a speech impromptu, suffered from the same malady; and it is said that he had to have medical treatment for an unusually severe attack, on the night he addressed the joint session of the Con- gress, recommending our entrance into the World War.
Sam Jones, the evangelist, lectured more than once in Moul- trie. His lecture delivered in the old brick warehouse, situ- ated on Ist Street, S. E., was an epochal deliverance, result- ing in the destruction of ten saloons, and a revolution in the habits and moral reactions of an entire town and county.
We heard Mrs. Gen. George Pickett deliver a paid lecture under the auspices of the Alkahest Lyceum Bureau, about 1920. It was under a tent, near where now stands the Bap- tist S. S. annex. She was a well-groomed, handsome woman; and her subject was "Pickett's Charge at Gettysburg." This military maneuver was the most conspicuous instance of dis- ciplined valor the modern world ever saw; and, a few years
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before, we had walked over the ground covered by Pickett's 18,000 veterans. Lordy, lordy, we'll never hear a speech more thrilling than this woman's description of that memo- rable event.
Some twenty years ago, we heard Dr. W. L. Pickard, at that time president of Mercer University, and always after maturity an able and scholarly Baptist minister, preach in Moultrie from the following text:
"Being found and fashioned as a man, He humbled Himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the Cross. Where- fore, God also hath highly exalted Him, and given Him a name which is above every name: That at the name of Jesus, every knee should bow of things in Heaven, of things in earth, and things under the earth, and that every tongue should confess Him Lord, to the glory of God the Father."
It was a great discourse made by the doctor, who had had only one child, and that a son, who died years before. Our "raised spirit" walked in glory with him during that hour; and the experience helped us to reach the permanent con- clusion that of all classes of public speakers, the Christian minister has the least excuse for being commonplace.
Woodrow Wilson was never in Colquitt; but he delivered an address at Albany, in 1912, in behalf of his campaign for the presidential nomination of the Democratic party. The Georgia Northern Railway sent up a special train. The speech was not up to his ancient form, we think, being too cautious. We were impressed, however, by the remark gen- eral on the train as we returned, "Why, he's a good man!"
None of us had any idea of the tremendous power he was to exert through the whole earth, within the next eight years.
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Mrs. Rebecca Felton, wife of the celebrated orator William H. Felton, of Cartersville, Ga., and the first woman ever to be sworn in as a senator of the United States spent one night in Moultrie. It was in the Spring of 1865, when she came into town from the south, whither she had refugeed with her boy in order to escape the attentions of Gen. Tecumseh Sher- man. She spent the night at the double-pen log house of Mr. and Mrs. Peter O. Wing, which stood on the present site of the Daniel drug store in the northwest corner of the inter- section of Main Street and Ist Avenue, South, and the next morning she proceeded by carriage to Albany.
William Jennings Bryan, soon after his retirement from Wilson's cabinet in 1916, made a paid lecture at Moultrie at 2 P. M. one afternoon. His subject was some modification of his great staple lecture, entitled "The Prince of Peace." He lectured on this subject three times in a single day-at Camilla, at 11 A. M .; at Moultrie at 2 P. M .; and at Thomas- ville at 8 P. M.
A few of us went out to Hartsfield to meet him on his way to Moultrie. We knew pretty well when to expect him at Hartsfield, and so stopped there; and we had waited only a few minutes when his car rolled swiftly down the slight eleva- tion just west of the stores. We waved him down, and he stopped, took a few steps in order to get to our car; and forthwith, Hartsfield was never to be the same place any more; such is the power of a great spirit over even inanimate things.
As we drove out toward Moultrie, Mr. W. C. Vereen called his attention to the fact that they both were delegates to the Baltimore Democratic Convention in 1912. "Ah, yes," said Mr. Bryan, "and do you remember my Morgan-Ryan Resolu- tion?"
"Oh, very well, of course," said Mr. Vereen.
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"Well," said Mr. Bryan, "I'll remember that scene as long as I remember anything-the rage into which the oppo- sition lashed itself. Upon the platform, Tom Taggart run- ning up and down. He looked as if he wanted to say some- thing, but didn't know what it was. His eyes were all bulged out."
Mr. Bryan was impressed by the farm land through which we passed, and said so. We are convinced now that we could have sold him a nice block of Colquitt real estate, had we tried. He kept admiring the land and asking about the rul- ing prices.
When we reached the Ochlochnee bridge, we were com- pelled to stop our car, so that a farmer might get off with his two-mule team.
"Who is that man?" said Mr. Bryan.
"Of what consequence can that be to you?" we asked. "You are not going to see him again."
"I am impressed with his face," said he. "Do you know him, and is he a good man?"
It was a good man; and we so told him. He was Mr. John Gay, grandson of Henry Gay, Colquitt's life-long pioneer Democrat. He now lives at Ellenton, in Colquitt County.
Mr. Bryan was running late when we reached Moultrie; and advanced swiftly at the head of his escort committee to the courthouse, where his crowd was waiting. There was a beggar-man sitting on the sidewalk, with his tin cup. The "Great Commoner" stopped, took out his bill fold, and peeled one of them off and dropped it in the cup. Then followed suit the members of the committee. It was a red letter day for the beggar-man.
After the lecture, Mr. Z. H. Clark, treasurer for the local lecture bureau, handed Mr. Bryan a check for his contract
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price. He demurred, saying, "I think you did not take in that much."
"Mr. Bryan, we keep our contracts down here in the South," said Mr. Clark.
"Well, we sometimes break ours up North," said Mr. Bryan, "and I am going to break this one, so you keep the check, and deduct all proper expenses, and send me the bal- ance. As a trained lecturer, I know that $200 is too much."
That night he gave $100 to a local campaign for the Y. M. C. A. at Thomasville.
CHAPTER XXVII Being More About the Women
IT HAS ALREADY been said, herein, that the pioneer women of Colquitt got a rather raw deal at the hands of Fate, when their menfolks brought them to the wilds of Colquitt. It has been seen how such men as Elder Crawf. Tucker carried their guns to their Saturday meetings, for the purpose of bringing down a deer or a wild turkey, which they might run across on their way home. And practically every man was a hunter, and worked at it. For instance, John Tucker, big land-owner and politician in a local way, killed, so it is still said, more deer than any man that was ever in the county, frequently hunting with Robert Bearden, his neighbor and friend.
Then the men went rather often to such market towns as Albany, Thomasville, St. Marks, Tallahassee and Columbus; but their women generally stayed at home with the children and "the stuff." Too, the men have been seen to have had some rather agreeable contacts with Judge Hansell and the visiting lawyers, twice a year at the "Big Court"; but from these the women were strictly barred. In fact, a real nice woman thought it grossly improper for a woman to go about the courthouse, when court was in session.
Then, from the time Bob Bearden and "Aunt Sallie" opened a general store at Moultrie, in the fifties, alcoholics were obtainable, at low prices, and practically all the men drank, more or less. But the women did not drink, for one reason that the men would not stand for it. The reason for this general objection was that they knew that prudence goes out, as liquor goes in; and they wanted no doubt to exist as to the matter of the fatherhood of the children.
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However, the women generally used snuff, or plumply chewed tobacco more or less on the sly, generally agreeing among themselves that "Terbacker shore is a heap of com- pany to a body." Then, too, as has already been observed, herein, while the monotony and the isolation of life to the housewives was terrible, a remedy was found in the average big family of the period. The women "raised their com- pany."
At all this, however, at the beginning of the present cen- tury, statistics showed a larger percentage of farmers' wives in the lunatic asylums of this nation than of any other class of our population, the reason being that the business of being a backwoods farmer's wife, and cooking his meals for forty or fifty years, three times per day, including leap years, is likely to become a bit wearing on the nerves. Anyhow, it is our firm opinion that, when the true historian comes along, he is going to decide to drop consideration of the doings of the men; and write several books about the farmers' wives of this land. So feeling, we are going to keep telling about these pioneer women of Colquitt right on to the end of this chapter, at least. Out of the hundreds of these women, we introduce just a few:
Susan A. Tucker, wife of John Tucker, and daughter-in- law of Patriarch Crawford Tucker, was before marriage Susan A. Stephenson, born near Raleigh, N. C., on Septem- ber 28, 1835, coming to Colquitt, soon after her birth, with her parents. Notwithstanding her handicaps, she reared a fine family of children. Of course, neither she nor her chil- dren had much education, as there were no schools within reach; but her pictures show her to have been modest and dignified. We also know all this from the fact that she gave to Colquitt a lot of fine girls. It was a good day's work for Colquitt when John Tucker went a sparking of her.
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The reader, if he has followed us closely, already knows how Susan Jane Tucker (alia dicta "Babe") stands with this historian. We have seen how John Tucker, her father, pitched the biggest wedding party for her that Colquitt ever saw-before or since. We have seen how Susan Jane took life as it came to her, staying by her man till his death, in 1896. John Tucker, before her marriage, boasted that she could run a straighter furrow than any man on the farm. It is still told how that when a colt fell into a well on the home place, she superintended getting it out, claimed it for herself in virtue of this accomplishment, and took it away as a part of her marriage portion; while, just the other day, a man told us that, on occasion, she would drive a two-horse team to Thomasville and back with her own hands, in order to ob- tain a load of supplies.
It will occasion no surprise, therefore, when the reader is told that, in the interval between the death of her husband, in 1896, and her own death, in 1932, no sheriff ever levied a paper on anything on her farm, and no mortgage ever en- cumbered any of her property. Best of all, she finished raising her eleven children in the years of her widowhood, and turned them all out into Colquitt's citizen-body, as credi- table members. She was born, in 1857, being the first-born of her parents; and during her last years was full of good works and alms-deeds. Having been called "Susan Jane" and "Aunt Babe" by scores of her relatives and neighbors, a whole country-side called her "Mammy," during several years next preceding her death. This tribute is paid to her memory, with all the gladness in the world.
Ruth Tillman Norman, the wife of James M. Norman, was born in South Carolina, on September 18, 1798, and died at the home of her daughter, Mrs. A. J. Strickland, in Colquitt County, on March 8, 1884, having survived her hus-
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band a full twenty years. She was the mother of the six Normans whose group picture is placed at the end of this chapter, and of a seventh son, John Tillman Norman, who reached adulthood, reared a family, and died in the year that Moultrie was incorporated. She also had five daughters, as follows: Emily Susannah (Mrs. John A. Alderman), Dica (Mrs. Burrell Baker), Hettie (Mrs. Henry Gay), Elizabeth M. (Mrs. A. J. Strickland), and Zilpha (spinster).
When it is considered that a woman in her day had only one career open to her-namely, looking after her household duties, and rearing children, and that this is still her highest work, Ruth Tillman Norman must in the light of her record as a mother be rated as one of Colquitt's great women. Her kindred have for nearly a century been builders in the coun- ty; and this applies to both her own descendants and to her brothers and sisters and their descendants. She was a sister to John Tillman and Joshua Tillman, both Colquitt pioneers, and she is therefore a great aunt of W. M. Tillman, the present Chairman of Colquitt's Board of County Commission- ers. She sleeps by the side of her husband, in the Pleasant Grove Primitive Baptist Cemetery, two miles from Moultrie, on the Adel road.
Sarah Ann Norman, born a Dukes, in 1825, was the wife of Jeremiah Bryant Norman, senior, who was the oldest son of pioneer James Mitchell Norman. This couple had chil- dren as follows: Ruth E., James T., Julia A., Susan L., Sarah Ann, Zilpha, Jeremiah Bryant, junior, John S., Matthew H., M. D., R. L., and V. F. All these children reached maturity and married off, except John and Matthew, both of whom died within a few days of each other, as young children, in 1860. All the surviving sons became leaders among the citizens of Colquitt County in finance, politics, and religious affairs. The four daughters married, and helped to train large fami-
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lies of children, as follows: Julia married G. F. Newton; Sarah Ann married George Clark; Zilpha married Jeremiah Tillman; Susan married Miles Monk, Sr., and Emily Susan- nah married John A. Alderman. It is safe to say that no woman has made a larger contribution to permanent values in Colquitt County that has Sarah Ann Dukes Norman. She was born in 1825, in what was then Irwin County, in territory that was soon afterwards incorporated in Lowndes. This writer saw her once in her home at Norman Park. It was not long before her death. She is buried by the side of her husband at Pleasant Grove Church, near Moultrie.
Julia Norman was the third child of Jeremiah B. Norman, Sr., and his wife Sarah Ann Norman, of whom we treat in the paragraph of this chapter next above. She was born in 1851, and after the close of the Civil War, she married George F. Newton, a young soldier, who went to the war from Brooks County, left an arm at Gettysburg, and came a-courtin' Julia when he got home.
We have hitherto held that the acid test of womanhood is her achievement in the way of "borning" and rearing chil- dren. In this regard, Julia A. Newton was not one whit be- hind her mother. Without any exception, her 10 children are blameless citizens of the communities in which they reside. Luckily for Colquitt, most of them reside within her limits.
Julia Ann Newton was a kind of Primitive Baptist saint. Luther Stallings, who lived in her house for more than a year, one time, says that she had the best controlled mind and nerves of any person he ever saw-that she never condoned wrong in any particular, but at the first signs of repentance, she began to make concessions to the wrong-doer, saying, "Well, we cannot tell the strength of the temptation," or "He
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might have been swept away when he was not on guard." A group of the contemporaries of her older children, speaking of her the other day, agreed, "Should we get to Heaven, we expect to find her, looking like she did for a generation of Sundays at Pleasant Grove Church; black dress, black poke bonnet, head slightly down on one side, looking intently over her specs at the Primitive Baptist preacher, as he was hold- ing forth."
From all accounts, practically the same thing can be said of her sister, Susan L. Norman, who was the second wife of Miles Monk, Jr., and of another sister, Sarah Ann Norman, who married Rev. G. F. Clark. Same type of children- same big families-same devotion to the cause of the Lord.
Mary McNeil was a native of Cheraw, S. C., being a daugh- ter of Major Neil Mckay McNeil and his wife, Jane Johnson Pegues. She married W. C. Vereen, a young business man of Cheraw, S. C., casting in her fortunes with his at a time when to be broke was the hallmark of South Carolina aris- tocracy. The fact that she went cheerfully along with her husband into the woods of first Douglas, then Montgomery, and finally Colquitt County, where for six years she shared the cares and anxieties of a turpentine operator with him, entitles her to a place in the list of Colquitt's Pioneer Women.
This historian came to Colquitt, June 2, 1898, just a few months before the death of Mrs. Vereen, so that he has no recollection of ever seeing her. He was asked to accompany Hon. M. J. Pearsall, a friend of the Vereens, to her funeral rites at the old Presbyterian Church. He did not understand all the circumstances, but enough got into his knowledge to impress him that this death was calculated to sweep the ten- derest emotions of the human heart. There is yet present in our memory pictures of seven children in various stages of immaturity, running down to infants in arms. Also, the in-
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dications of her popularity among the citizens of the town, who filled the church and its approaches. Also tender mem- ories of Mr. Pearsall, who was himself to meet a tragic death a few years later.
These noted women of Colquitt County have been picked out with some diffidence. A diffidence which grows out of our knowledge that there have been scores, and perhaps hundreds of other Colquitt women who in their backwoods homes have pursued the even tenor of their way, too much engrossed by the pressure of immediate duties to think of anything else, the majority of whom await the Resurrection of the Last Day in unmarked graves. But at that time they will be all right; for
"While Valour's haughty champions wait Till all their scars are known, Love walks unchallenged through the gate, And sits beside the Throne."
Six Sons of JAMES M. and RUTH TILLMAN NORMAN. Left to right: Sitting, JOE J., JOEL, BRYANT. Standing: RICHARD. MOSES C., W. H. H., JOHN T. NORMAN.
CHAPTER XXVIII Christian Churches in Colquitt
"Heaven and Earth shall pass away; But My Word shall not pass away." -JESUS THE LORD.
THE PILGRIM FATHERS, who settled New England, were not more prompt to provide for religious worship than the pioneer settlers of the Colquitt section, and, by the way, there is a remarkable resemblance between their theology. Only in case of the Colquitt pioneer, he was not called a Puritan, but a "Primitive Baptist." The Normans, the Tuckers, the Han- cocks, the Bakers, the Hires, the Tillmans-all these and practically all their neighbor settlers belonged to this "faith and order."
They had the congregational system of church govern- ment; but at that, practically all of them were loosely joined together in "associations."
Calvinists, they were, as much as the Puritans or the Scotch Covenanters. Once a month, their services were held, con-
*
Old Greenfield Church, 1936
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HISTORY OF COLQUITT COUNTY
sisting of two days each. On Saturdays all church business was attended to, and preaching was had at eleven A.M. Saturday morning. On Sunday morning, the rite of Bap- tism was performed at the nearest water convenient for im- mersion; then, back to the Church-house for a Sunday ser- mon. Listening to a sermon was called, in the minutes of these meetings, "sitting under the droppings of the Sanc- tuary." The audiences gave rapt attention, as the records show, and as tradition affirms, three generations after their preachers went into "the tongueless silence of the grave."
We are inclined to think that the "Baptist Church of if that cantis ml and after isting under the draping 7 the Dam twenty est came to gether iss conference first was tre benthien inter Churches to sents wett un 2 aferen a door for the reception of mene ) The reference was taken up and with vided to anew them Proceder to mixte thers of a supply for the present year www. Choice of brother Altus Higher us Christ, Sardis," is the first church building ever erect- ed to God in the Colquitt territory. From inspec- tion of early minutes of this church organization die te upornt. a Star. alimenter brother kulis. Happy to The now religiously kept by Mr. Lawrence Norman, Mother Church bethel and thatthe brother thank purchase in thethem for inspection on the menna di grecê Clerk of this church at te come to a blood present, we know that his great-grandfather Artex- erxes B. Norman was Clerk in the first years after its organization; and that his great-great-uncle, James M. Nor- man, was its second Clerk. The minutes of this organization, largely written by these Normans and John Tillman, consti- tute a very remarkable set of ancient documents. Here fol- lows a copy of the minutes of one of the regular monthly meetings:
"Jan. 24, 1835.
"The Church of Christ at Sardis met; and after sitting under the dropping of the Sanctuary-as we hope for the comfort of the
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people of God, and the alarming of sinners-by Rev. Joel Pate, then and after our beloved pastor, we came into conference.
"1. First invited visiting brethren to seats with us.
"2. Inquiry was made after absences.
"3. A door was opened for the reception of members. One came forward-Timothy Bryant-and was received by experience of Grace.
"4. On motion we agreed to come to a close. Done in order. "J. M. Norman C. C.
"Met Sabbath morning for the ordinance of Baptism. Then re- turned to the meeting house; and our beloved pastor spoke from Tim. 1:15 to an attentive congregation. J. M. N., C. C."
On September 27, 1837, the minutes of this congregation shows that two "letters of correspondence" were sent out- one to Bethany, and the other to Bethsaida. (Bridge Creek.) Henry C. Tucker and A. B. Norman were named messengers to convey the letter to Bethsaida; and Elijah Duke and H. C. Tucker were sent to Bethany. This minute record is also signed "James M. Norman, C. C." Here is found the first record that we have been able to find about the Bridge Creek Church. Tradition partly runs to the idea that Bridge Creek is the oldest church ever organized in the County. We think, however, that the weight of tradition favors Sardis for this honor. Anyhow, we know definitely from this rec- ord, that the church named Sardis was organized in July, 1834. The Sardis congregation celebrated the hundredth an- niversary of its founding in 1934.
A very large graveyard is maintained at this church-house. Possibly two hundred marked graves. A larger number ap- pears to be unmarked.
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