USA > Georgia > Colquitt County > History of Colquitt County > Part 14
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Swift & Company officials believe the Southeast will develop live stock production many times greater than at present and that eventually the Southeast will produce as much beef and pork as is consumed in Southeastern States.
The Swift Moultrie Plant has always made an effort to popularize Peanut Hams and other cuts from peanut fed hogs, considering Peanut Pork superior in quality.
Present Plant of Swift & Co., Moultrie
Swill&Company
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CHAPTER XXXVIII
Crime in Colquitt
UPON A REVIEW of this History, as we are on the point of bringing it to a close, we find that little has been written about crime and criminals. And, since the space agreed upon by us with the publishers has been about taken up already, there seems little that can be done about it; and, after all, this may be just as well.
There is nothing alluring about accounts of crime, espe- cially about crimes of violence.
There are no court records in existence covering Colquitt's history from 1856 to 1881. The fire which burned up the court-house in that year disposed of all court records, and tradition gives us no account of any major crimes during that period.
From 1881 to 1901 was the period of lawlessness in the county's history. This was the beginning of the naval stores and lumber industry. The pay-rolls were comparatively large. There was an influx of Negro labor; and there were from four to eleven saloons. And, as is always the case, the easy access to alcoholic stimulants developed crimes of vio- lence.
But there is nothing of the heroic about crime based on liquor consumption; and nothing is gained, and no useful end is served by chronicling such matters. It is sufficient, we think, to register the fact that when Colquitt County banned the sale of intoxicants in 1902 crimes of violence commenced to decrease; and that they have, by this time, decreased one thousand per cent. In other words, the dockets of the criminal courts show that present Colquitt, with forty
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thousand population, has less than a third as many crimes of violence as the Colquitt of 1900 with ten thousand in- habitants.
At all and everything, however, Colquitt's statistical records as to crime do not show up so bad by comparison with other sections.
There has never been a white person executed for crime in the county. Three Negro men were hanged at separate times by the sheriff at the old brick jail, carrying out the sentences of the law and two Negro men have suffered electrocu- tion at Milledgeville in accordance with the law. Four men -all Negroes-have been lynched in the county. There has
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Moultrie Municipal Building
been only one white person-Henry Harris-convicted and sentenced to death in the history of the county. At the fall term, 1897, of Colquitt Superior Court, Harris was convicted of murdering Henry NeSmith. It was family trouble. The Harris boy had married NeSmith's daughter. The menfolk of both families were in Moultrie one Saturday afternoon. Henry Harris and his son, Bob, went to Finch's bar, on the present site of Henderson Furniture Store, and bought 45
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HISTORY OF COLQUITT COUNTY
cents worth of whisky, and from there to W. B. Duke's store, on the present site of the Friedlander stores, and bought two cartridges afterwards. The Harrisses drove up to the Ne- Smiths-father and son-and killed the father.
After the trial the wife of Harris carried a big dose of strychnine to her husband's cell and passed it to him and watched him die in tremendous spasms. We saw her in the fall of 1898, walking with her son, Robert; she had just been discharged from prison. She had a complexion like yellow- tanned rawhide-a result of years of field work. Henry NeSmith lies in a marked grave in the "Old Greenfield Church," near the Moultrie and Tallokas road.
CHAPTER XXXIX Colquitt Weather
IN OCTOBER, 1898, at the regular term of the Superior Court, we sat at a table in the dining room of the old "Fish Hotel," in Moultrie. Near us sat Judge Augustin H. Hansell, the venerable judge of the Southern Circuit of Georgia, and a circuit riding Methodist preacher. Judge Hansell had been riding the Southern Circuit a matter of fifty years; and the preacher had been riding preaching circuits during the same length of time. They were discussing the climate of this section of Georgia; and they agreed that they had never known a crop failure on account of weather conditions.
This statement was made some thirty-eight years ago; and during this time we have been familiar with this section. And we have never heard or seen a crop failure in Colquitt County. Which comes pretty close to setting up a record of a hundred years. And we believe the record is unique. Let us analyze our weather:
We are at such a distance from the North Polar sections that any blizzard gets out of heart before it reaches our latitude. We are close enough to the Atlantic and the Gulf as that direct winds are sufficiently cool to render the average summer night cool enough to render a little "kiver" agree- able; while we are at such a distance away that we have never been reached by what might be called direct-blowing storms. And, for a century the rainfall has been ample to mature crops of all kinds, and so distributed through the year that it is possible to make an average of two crops on the same land each year. And the Charleston Earthquake of August, 1886, was not even felt in this County.
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In the interest of perfect truth it ought to be said that two destructive storms have come through the County in the past ninety years. "Cyclones," storms like these two are called in Georgia. They play along the face of the country, like an inverted spinning-top, capable of blowing everything off the face of the earth over a strip rarely wider than two or three hundred yards. They were really "whirlwinds" on a big scale, which carry a velocity of four or five hundred miles to the hour in their spinning motion, as they advance along the country to the northeast at a rate of thirty or forty miles per hour.
The first of the two storms of this kind to strike Colquitt came along out of the southwest, at about three o'clock of the afternoon of the second day of March, 1877; and, like all such storms, moved along towards the northeast. It came along between Ochlochnee and Meigs in Thomas County, coming along to the southeast of what is now Funston in Colquitt, and struck the double-pen log residence of Elder Henry Crawford Tucker, a matter of one and one-half miles north of the Moultrie and Camilla paved road. It was going good, too, having thrown prone on the ground thousands of acres of some of the finest yellow-pine timber in Georgia, after it had entered Colquitt. It struck the Tucker double- pen amidships, buckled down a little, and slapped every pound of power it had into the contest. It was a case of the "irresistible force coming in contact with an immovable ob- ject," about which we have heard; but when the brief struggle was over, the cyclone went roaring into the Ochlochnee swamp, with every outhouse and tree about the Elder's place prostrate, and most of them in the swamp. But the "Double- Pen" was there-not on account of the fact that the "Elder" had founded it on a rock; but because it was necessary for it to be moved as it stood, if it was to be moved at all. All the logs were joined together by wooden corner pins.
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Sheriff Davied Murphy lived some distance south of the Tucker place; and we have heard his sons Henry and Aaron tell how they were called out on the porch of their resi- dence to see this cyclone pass. And how they went with their father the next day to help Elder Tucker gather up the con- tents of his smokehouse out of the Ochlochnee swamp-hams, shoulders, heads, jowls and sides. For sixty years, this storm has been called by the settlers along its route the "Tucker Hairycane." It was a honey; but it is rather discouraging for a "hairycane" to run into a forest of virgin yellow pines, with residences averaging four or five miles apart, and double-pens, when reached. This one, after crossing the Ochlochnee, proceeded to blow things around on the farm of Isaac Royal. Next, it tackled the farm of Daniel Highsmith. After that, it jumped down on the farm of the Widow Bulloch; and our last accounts trace it to the house of Joe Weeks, and possibly to the premises of Flournoy Clark.
The only other such storm, since the first settlement of this County passed over Moultrie, one morning, some twenty years ago. No one was injured, and only two or three small buildings were blown down. This cyclone was a terrible looking thing; but it was traveling rather high. However, when the next one comes along, it will pass through a denser population, and so may do much harm. Witness the damage worked at Cordele and Gainesville, during March of the present year (1936). And so it would be the part of the highest prudence for each residence to have a storm cellar; and similar precautions taken to protect the children as- sembled in our ever-increasing school buildings.
WM. HENRY BARBER
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HISTORY OF COLQUITT COUNTY
William Henry Barber
W. H. BARBER, one of the most important among the original developers of Colquitt County, was born near Catharine Lake, Onslow County, N. C., on April 8, 1862. His parents, Thomas R. Barber and Alavana (Groves) Barber, were both born in the State of North Carolina, the former near Catharine Lake, February 15, 1826, and the latter at Hamilton, Martin County, February 15, 1833.
Mr. Barber's great-grandfathers, Joseph Barber and Hil- lary Brinson, were soldiers in the American Army during the Revolutionary War. The Barbers are of Irish extraction, the Brinsons are Scotch, and the Groves family is of English descent.
Thomas R. Barber enlisted in March, 1863, as a private in Company H, Third North Carolina Cavalry, and partici- pated in the engagements at Hanover Court House, Rona Mills, Munk's Neck, Drewry's Bluff and Franklin, Va., and in the military operations around Richmond, remaining in the Confederate service until the close of the conflict. His regiment was a part of W. H. Lee's division of Stuart's Cavalry Corps.
The marriage of Thomas R. Barber and Alavana, the daughter of Wm. E. and Matilda (Kiell) Groves, occurred on February 8, 1857. They became the parents of nine chil- dren, five sons and four daughters.
Wm. H. Barber's boyhood was passed during the trou- blous years following the Civil War, so that his opportunities to acquire an education were rather limited. He remained on his father's farm until August, 1879, when he went to Bertie County, N. C., where he clerked in a country store for about two years. He then went to Kinston, N. C., and
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worked in a store for one year, and at the end of that time he returned to the old farm home, near Catharine Lake, and attended school for five months. For the next six years he was in the employ of a merchant named M. T. Horne, at Chinquapin, N. C .; and in January, 1889, he came to Worth County, Ga., where he worked on Mr. Horne's turpentine farm for about one year, and at the end of this time he formed a co-partnership with Mr. K. W. Horne for the manufacture of naval stores in Colquitt County, Ga., in which line of in- dustry he remained practically to his death, and in which he achieved phenomenal success.
In 1899, the Citizens Bank was organized at Moultrie, with Mr. Barber as vice-president. Three years later, Mr. Barber was promoted to the position of president of this institution, and held this position to the date of his death. He was one of the original promoters of the Moultrie Telephone Ex- change, of the Moultrie Ice and Cold Storage Company, the Moultrie Cotton Mills, and the Colquitt County Cooperage Company. Later in life he acquired enormous interests in the naval stores industry in the State of Florida. In co- operation with a few other daring spirits he undertook an entirely new development in Colquitt County, when a pack- ing plant for the processing of meats was built at Moultrie. This enterprise was perhaps the most important one that was ever started in Colquitt County and was epochal in the in- dustrial history of South Georgia. In the ages to come, there- fore, tribute will be paid without stint to Mr. Barber and his associate promoters of this enterprise.
Mr. Barber was married in March, 1892, to Miss Florence F. Parrish, daughter of W. W. Parrish and Roseline Juhan Parrish, of Berrien County, Ga. To this union six children were born, as follows:
LeRoy Barber, Moultrie, Ga. Myrtle Barber, Moultrie, Ga.
W. H. Barber, Jr., Moultrie, Ga.
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Elizabeth Barber (Mrs. R. O. Watson), Tallahassee, Fla. Lucy Barber (Mrs. Wilbur Boozer), Tallahassee, Fla.
Florence Barber (Mrs. Foreman Dismuke), Columbus, Ga.
Mr. Barber died suddenly at his home in Moultrie, Ga., on November 12, 1923. Mr. Barber was a life-long member of the Missionary Baptist denomination. He was active in the erection of the present imposing building of the First Baptist Church at Moultrie. For years immediately preceding his death, he served as a member of the Board of Deacons of this church, and as the teacher of the Men's Bible Class in the Sunday School.
This historian was for some years the legal adviser of Mr. Barber, and appends a few anecdotes of a personal nature which will serve to illustrate what he thought of his duties as a member of society:
Once a friend of the writer-an elderly man of somewhat limited means-came to the office of the writer, and asked him how he might raise two or three hundred dollars to pay for a course in pedagogy for his young daughter, who wanted to qualify herself for teaching. "Go to Mr. Henry Barber," we said, "he'll let you have it." "But I have a past-due note at his bank already," said our friend. "All the same," we answered, "go over and see right now-he'll let you have it." A matter of two hours afterwards, we met the two men coming down the sidewalk, arm-in-arm, and looking as friendly as one could wish. "Well, Judge," said our friend, "I got it just like you said." "Yes," said Mr. Barber, "when I first came to this country, and was hired as a turpentine woods-rider, 'The Major' (I always called him 'The Major,' since he was a soldier in the Confederate War) let me run a little open account at his store. Yes, and I always try to take care of 'The Major,' and besides all that his daughter is a very deserving child, and she'll pay me the loan."
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At another time, a few of us friends of Mr. Barber-being a little younger than he was-were ragging him a little about being close with his money. He laughed good-naturedly, and said, finally, "Boys, I know that you know I enjoy this kind of conversation as much as you do; but I feel that I ought not to let the occasion pass without telling you for your own good that this very quality of being 'saving' has enabled me during the past week to extend from my personal funds as- sistance to more than 50 distressed farmers who could get no help from the banks." (This happened during the so-called Hoke Smith panic, in 1908, when the banks suspended pay- ments. )
This writer had an option on a piece of farm property and asked Mr. Barber to find a purchaser, offering him half of his commission. He sold the property, but when it came to making papers, he said the purchaser was Mr. D. N. Horne, and that his past relations with him were such that he could not afford to take his part of the commission, and so asked that it be turned over to Mr. Horne.
In a recent conversation with us, Hon. W. C. Vereen paid very high tribute to the courage of Mr. Barber, as displayed in more than one financial venture in which they both were interested. Mr. Vereen especially remembers Mr. Barber's stubborn courage when things did not look so good as to the future of the Moultrie Packing Co., of which they were both founders and directors. At one time, he says there seemed to be some transfer of holdings of some of the stockholders but not a movement that indicated demoralization on the part of W. H. Barber was ever made by him.
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HISTORY OF COLQUITT COUNTY
Frank Jarvis Bivins
THIS CITIZEN OF COLQUITT COUNTY for many years was born near Pineville, Ga., in the County of Marion. He was edu- cated in the common schools of Marion County and was graduated from the Alabama Polytechnic Institute, at Au- burn, Ala. Occupation, real estate broker. Profession, civil engineer. At one time cashier of a bank. Independent Democrat. Episcopalian. Kappa Alpha college fraternity. Author of "Dead Horse In the Spring Branch."
He was a captain in the Officers' Training Camp at college. He was mayor of Cordele, Ga., about 1896. His father was Martin Luther Bivins, a native of Wilkes County, Ga., who was married on June 1, 1860, and who died in 1879. Martin L. Bivins was a Justice of the Inferior Court in Marion County, fought in the Battle of Atlanta in 1864, and freed his slaves on his own motion as an act of justice. Mother of F. J. Bivins was Marthena Caroline Cox, who was born in 1879, and who was a sister of the founder of Cox College.
Martin Luther Bivins, Sr., was a son of William Bivins, and Miss Hall. William Bivins was a soldier of the Revolution. When LaFayette came to the United States in his old age, about 1825, William Bivins journeyed to Wash- ington, Ga., for the purpose of shaking the hand of his dis- tinguished comrade, which he did.
Frank J. Bivins married Bonnell Strozier in Meriwether County, Ga. She was born in 1879, and still survives. She was graduated from LaGrange Female College. She is a daughter of John Lucillius Strozier, a captain in the Confed- erate Army, a native of Meriwether County, and a resident there until his death in 1912.
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HISTORY OF COLQUITT COUNTY
Mother of Bonnell Strozier Bivins was Sarah Carolina Robertson, born in 1845, in Meriwether County, Ga. She was a first-honor graduate of Wesleyan Female College, and now resides at Glennville, Ga., in the full possession of all her mental and physical powers.
Names of the children of F. J. Bivins and Bonnell Strozier Bivins:
Bonnell Bivins, born in 1899.
Martin Luther Bivins, born in 1902. Jas. McAlpin Bivins, born in 1908.
Frank J. Bivins and his family moved to Moultrie in 1900 and resided there until the date of his death, 1932. He was engaged in the real estate business, and life and fire insur- ance, and finally in loans. With G. A. Horkan, he organized the "Angelus Mutual Insurance Company" about the year 1910.
Wesley Futrell Blasingame
THE SUBJECT OF THIS SKETCH was born on April 7, 1869, in Crawford County, Ga. His education was obtained in the common schools and in the dental department of the Southern Medical College in Atlanta. The date of his diploma was 1890. He immediately entered into the practice of dental surgery, and has been in such practice until now.
He is a Methodist, a Democrat, a K. of P., and an Odd Fellow.
The name of the father of W. F. Blasingame was John Wesley Blasingame, born in 1840, in Monroe, Ga. He mar- ried in Crawford County, Ga., and died, 1905, at Moultrie. He was first a farmer, then a school teacher, and then a mer- chant. His wife was Eliz. Vashti Futrell, born in Monroe, and died in 1896 in Yatesville, Upson County, Ga. Her
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education was derived in the common schools and she de- voted much time to uplift and betterment of the "forgotten people" in the community where she lived.
The name of the paternal grandfather of W. F. Blasingame was Powell Blasingame. He was born in Monroe, Ga., he being the son of a French Huguenot immigrant.
The name of the maternal grandfather of W. F. Blasin- game was Cicero Futrell, born in Crawford County in 1823; married, 1869; died, 1906, in Crawford County. He was a farmer, and the name of his wife, the mother of W. F. Blasin- game, was Rebecca Smith, native of Crawford County, Ga.
W. F. Blasingame was married in October, 1891, in Craw- ford County. The maiden name of his wife was Lena Rivers Jack, born February 22, 1870, in Upson County, Ga., and died July 8, 1936, in Moultrie. The name of her father was J. W. Jack, born in Upson County, where he was married about 1867. He is now dead. He was a farmer for a great part of his life, but for twenty-five years before his death he was Clerk of Superior Court of Crawford County. The maiden name of the mother-in-law of W. F. Blasingame was Lydia Grace, of Crawford County, who died in 1905.
The children of W. F. Blasingame and his wife, Lena Rivers Jack Blasingame, are as follows:
W. A. Blasingame, born June 27, 1891. Willie Mae Blasingame, born March 4, 1893. Chas. Guy Blasingame, born May 10, 1895.
W. A. Blasingame married Miss Mary Sims, daughter of Dr. Sims, of Barnesville, Ga., a dentist. They have the following children: Marilyn, 9; Elizabeth Ann, 6.
Willie Mae Blasingame married W. C. Mather, of Holly- wood, Fla., an attorney. This couple have two children: Mae, 14; Jean, 12.
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HISTORY OF COLQUITT COUNTY
Chas. Guy Blasingame married Miss Ruby Parks, of Meansville, Ga., and this couple has one child: Guy, Jr., 3.
W. A. Blasingame is a well-established business man, a resident of Moultrie, having a flourishing drug business and extensive farming interests.
Guy Blasingame also owns and operates a flourishing drug business here.
James William Coleman
J. W. COLEMAN, the subject of this sketch, was born on June 15, 1871, at Swainsboro, in Emanuel County, in the State of Georgia. He was educated in the common schools of that county. During his life, he has been extensively engaged in farming, practical mechanics and in construction work, doing well in all.
He is a Primitive Baptist by profession of religious faith, and is a Democrat in politics.
Mr. Coleman invented an animal self-feeder, and received a patent in January, 1924.
He was a District Road Overseer in 1896-1898. He was a District Road Commissioner in 1898-1900. He was a mem- ber of the Board of Education of Colquitt County, 1900 to 1906. He was Chairman of the Board of Commissioners of Roads and Revenues from 1906 to 1912. He was a member of the City Council of Moultrie in 1910-1912.
The father of J. W. Coleman was James Elsie Coleman, born on November 18, 1846, in Emanuel County, Ga .; mar- ried in May, 1870, in Emanuel County, Ga., and died on April 12, 1928, in Emanuel County, Ga. He was a farmer by profession, and did service in the Confederate army in
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JAMES WILLIAM COLEMAN
1864 and 1865. He invented the "Coleman Long-Staple Gin" in February, 1895.
The maiden name of mother of J. W. Coleman was Lavina Lanier, and she was born on April 11, 1852, in Emanuel County, Ga., and died on April 27, 1932, in Emanuel County, Ga. She was the mother of eight sons and four daughters, of whom seven sons and three daughters are living.
Name of paternal grandfather of J. W. Coleman was Wil- liam Coleman, born August 10, 1819, in Emanuel County, Ga .; married in 1840, and died on November 7, 1898. He was a successful farmer and mechanic, and a Confederate soldier during the whole of the Civil War. The maiden name of the paternal grandmother of J. W. Coleman was Sarah Sutton, born in Emanuel County, Ga., in 1821, and died in the same county in 1877.
The maternal grandfather of J. W. Coleman was Wm. Lanier, born September 26, 1825; married in 1849, and died on September 24, 1910; all of which events happened in Emanuel County. . He was a Confederate soldier from 1863 to 1865. Maiden name of the maternal grandmother of J. W. Coleman was Sallie Clifton, born November 22, 1822, in Bulloch County, Ga., and died on August 9, 1885, in Emanuel County, Ga.
J. W. Coleman was married on January 21, 1894, in Bul- loch County, Ga., to Miss Sallie Elizabeth Temples, who was born on February 2, 1871, in Wilkinson County, Ga., and is still living in Colquitt County, Ga. She was a daughter of Hudson Temples, who was born March 15, 1843, in Wilkin- son County, Ga., and married on September 13, 1864, in Wilkinson County, Ga. He was a minister of the Gospel for more than 50 years. Maiden name of mother-in-law of J. W. Coleman was Mariah Carr, born in 1844 in Wilkinson
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County, Ga., and died January 25, 1876, in Wilkinson County, Ga.
There is now in life one child, the issue of the marriage of J. W. Coleman and Sallie Elizabeth Temples, a daughter named Vista, who was born on April 1, 1899, in Colquitt County, and who is now the wife of Ray S. Hall, prominent citizen of Baker County, Ga. This couple has two children, William Calvin Hall and Bettie Temples Hall.
J. W. Coleman, the subject of this sketch, moved with his wife to Colquitt County in January, 1894; purchased a farm three miles north of Moultrie, and lived on it till 1905. First engaged in farming, and then in lumber manufacturing business, moving to Moultrie in 1905. In 1908 built and operated the first modern cotton ginnery in Colquitt County. He built and operated the first fertilizer mixing plant in the county. Built and operated the first modern cotton and stor- age warehouse in the county. And generally assisted in the county's development.
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