USA > Georgia > Tift County > History of Tift County > Part 4
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"A band is playing "Dixie," as Company A, the first company of soldiers from Irwin, the Irwin County Cowboys, with J. Y. McDuffie, captain ; George Willcox, first lieutenant; J. J. Henderson, second lieutenant ; Wil-
1. "Saturday Night Sketches"-Herring.
2. History of Irwin County-J. B. Clements, p. 117.
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HISTORY OF TIFT COUNTY
liam Mathis, orderly sergeant, and Jacob Clemens, corporal, are marching off to battle. Women are waving their handkerchiefs with one hand and drying their tears with the other. Looking into the group of seventy soldiers, Nancy spots her husband, who bravely marches with the colors, and waves as long as she can see him.
1865. Weeds have grown high in the field, near the log cabin while Nancy has struggled with a garden to keep her children from starving. A little spot of butterbeans, potatoes, and cabbage is almost parched. Green corn stalks have lost their vigor and turned a dead brown. A weary Con- federate soldier limps slowly up a winding path, almost closed by weeds. Dog fennels and wiregrass have grown in the yard, where flowers used to bloom. Nancy peeks through the shutters and glimpses her husband. She leaps to the front door and rushes to meet him. He grabs Nancy and takes her in his arms.
CHAPTER IV FOUNDING OF TIFTON
A two-story building, formidable for its time, a commissary, where the clerk sold everything from fertilizer to earbobs, or "yearbobs," as the na- tives called them, stood at a little piney-woods flag station in the north- western corner of Berrien County. It was the day of all days-Saturday. In oxcarts men and women with their children had ridden miles to sell produce, trade at the commissary, which was as important to them as At- lanta stores are to us now, and listen to the buzz of the sawmill, a curiosity in this community. Another attraction for the traders was the thrilling sight of an engine, puffing down the Brunswick and Albany Railroad nearby.
The two siren voices of the mill village were the train and mill whistles, which proclaimed the achievement of Tifton in the seventies. The latter whistle was the community clock, which regulated the habits of the popula- tion : folk awoke, ate, and slept by its sound.
The train whistle was an oddity, announcing an important arrival, so alluring that the entire community followed the signal and met the train. The crew, under no modern strain, leisurely stepped from the cars, en- joyed greeting the spectators, delivered or received packages, discussed crops or the weather, and exchanged "yarns." During the summer the train crew frequently stopped long enough for a watermelon cutting. Disregarding time tables, these men were in no hurry to leave Tifton.
The Brunswick and Albany was the first train many people in the wiregrass ever saw. It was Mr. Elias Branch's introduction to passenger and freight cars. When a little boy he came to Tifton from Chula and climbed a post to view the train. The engine puffing near his retreat frightened him so that he fell off the post.
To return to the pioneer traders, women dipping snuff and men chewing tobacco, sat on the front porch of the commissary, their rendezvous, be- tween spells of trading, and gossiped. These families were identified by their patterns of calico, which previously had been bought in bolts for raiment. Babies in swadd ing clothes, old women, and girls of the court- ing age were alike true to the calico scheme.
Between tobacco and snuff expectoration, the old folks from different families exchanged tales about "the good old days" and later ate their lunches of cheese, crackers, and sardines. Suddenly during their gossiping the buzz of voices ceased. The captain, owner of commissary and sawmill, was approaching. All classes, no matter how rough, held in high esteem this quiet. dignified man, who courteously recognized them, but who, like the Spectator, had little to say to anyone. Everybody stretched his neck to glimpse Captain Tift; this title was not only an expression of respect, but was an echo of the days when he piloted a Flint-River boat.
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HISTORY OF TIFT COUNTY
Commissary which Henry Harding Tift built in 1872
The captain had appeared and disappeared ; the rural folk had exchanged their produce, traded, seen the train, listened to the sawmill and eaten their lunches. It was time to leave. Men untied oxen, which had waited under trees, and filled the carts with packages and families. Then the long jour- neys through the piney woods! These people would reach home before dark to escape the turpentine negroes, who were under the influence of "moon- shine."
Tifton with its sawmill, commissary, and railroad was to the Wire Grass "Georgia Crackers" a cynosure. For days before and after the trip, they would discuss the mill village. "A happy woman, like a happy nation, has no history." Even in the seventies Tifton had made history. According to tradition, this tract of land had been traded for a shotgun ; at another time, for a saddle, then for an ox. There is no tradition, however, about the fact that Tifton is located in the Sixth District of what was originally Irwin County and on parts of land numbers 290-291-308-309. The original Irwin County, from which Berrien was made, was surveyed into districts ap- proximately twenty-three square miles, and the districts then were sub- divided into lots seven eighths of one mile square, or 529 of such lots to the district. The lots were disposed of by the state by means of drawing, and a small grant fee exacted from the drawer.
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HISTORY OF TIFT COUNTY
It is certain that a man with some capital and a dream of a vast for- tune, Abbott H. Brisbane, of Irwin County, after the original drawers had failed to pay the grant fees, paid them and took title to lots covering a vast territory, including the land where Tifton now stands. In 1840 Jones Lee, a resident of the Flint-River section, organized a company with the intention of attempting to build a railroad from Mobley's Bluff, then head of navigation on the Ocmulgee, to Albany, on the Flint.
"This company," according to U. B. Phillips in History of Transpor- tation in the Eastern Cotton Belt pp. 273-274, "is notable chiefly for its irresponsible character and its experience with a gang of Irish laborers. A. H. Brisbane, its engineer agent, and later its president and general factotum, was a personage worthy of a place in literature. In some way, whether by service, courtesy, or presumption he had acquired the title of general. He had a peculiar gift of plausibility, a talent for oratory, and a passion for eulogizing all men and affairs with which he was associated. The climate of Irwin County, then in portions oppressively hot and malari- ous in actuality, was bracing and healthful in his description and sure to attract people over his railroad to summer resorts on the route. The gangs of Irish immigrants, which by some hook or crook he had enticed into the piney woods wilderness to grade his moneyless railroad were in his words 'several parties of the choicest white laborers'."
Late in 1841 when the grading of the road was two-thirds complete, the directors of the Ocmulgee and Flint River Railroad managed to save themselves from complete bankruptcy by borrowing five thousand dollars from the city of Savannah. "Brisbane now hit upon a new idea. He ap- pealed to the Catholic prelates for charity on behalf of the starving Irish laborers, whom the company was unable to pay or feed. Aid came in re- sponse from Bishop England at Charleston and Bishop Hughes, of New York. This, however, was hardly a sound basis for railroad progress." (Loc. Cit.)
By 1843 the company was hopelessly in debt, but "Brisbane, with his talent, was still able to describe the situation as hopeful. But a short while afterwards the starving Irish mutinied and beat Brisbane with stones and cudgels. Brisbane fled for his life, and that is the end of the Ocmulgee and Flint River Railroad story. Not a rail was ever laid upon it." (Ibid., pages 274-275.)
Many of the Irish laborers settled in the wire grass country, and from this source many of our best citizens have come. Take for example J. M. Duff, Tifton's postmaster for several years; Brisbane brought Duff's father to South Georgia. Other descendants of these laborers have proved too that Brisbane was partly right when he called his railroad gangs "sev- eral parties of the choicest white laborers."
Discouraged probably for the first time in his life, the "general" at-
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HISTORY OF TIFT COUNTY
tempted to get rid of his worthless land holdings. On February 28, 1844, he sold to Abbott B. White for $200-less than five cents an acre-ten lots in the Sixth District of Irwin County. Nelson and A. F. Tift bought the same land, then in Berrien county, on May 5, 1860. H. H. Tift later bought this tract of 4,900 acres for $10,000 from his uncles, Nelson and A. F. Tift.
Henry Harding Tift worked for five years as a marine engineer on lines operating between New York and Southern coast ports. In 1869 Nel- son Tift, needing an expert machinist in the N. and A. F. Tift Manufac- turing Company of Albany, Georgia, wrote his nephew, Henry Harding Tift and persuaded him to come South. From the beginning the young man was an asset to his uncle's business. Tift's alertness and efficiency were rewarded when the young man was made general manager of the manu- facturing company. Soon, however, envisioning possibilities in another di- rection, Henry left his uncle to come to the piney woods of Berrien Coun- ty. Crossing the Flint River was for him and this wire grass section of Georgia another crossing of the Rubicon.
In 1872 when he came to Berrien County to build his sawmill, Tift "picked up" his shanty and rode. The shanty was conveyed on a flat car, and his machinery, bought from Thomas Henry Willingham, was drawn by eight oxen from the village, Willingham, near Macon. (An interesting romantic touch is associated with the machinery because the former owner of it was the father of Bessie Willingham, who later became Mrs. H. H. Tift.) For several months Henry had to live a "rough and tumble" life, but the power to endure was a marked trait of his character.
In the beginning Tift named his village Lena for his sweetheart far away in Connecticut. George Badger, who worked at the sawmill, resolving to be the first to honor the founder of the village, climbed a pine tree and nailed a placard with bold letters TIFTON, a condensation of Tift's Town.
The news of the sawmill was received with great interest at Riverside, a little station a few miles away. The merchants of Riverside, tired of wait- ing for the trade that never came, decided to move east. Soon after the completion of the mill, John Higdon and William S. Walker moved their store to the mill village, which the railroad recognized as a loading sta- tion. A little later a Jew store at Riverside was also moved to Tifton.
A steady growth at the mill continued for the next few years. Each year, in fact, showed such a marked improvement that in 1879, Captain Tift bought an engine and built his first tram road. In the meantime there had been business changes in Tifton. The Jew had gone. In 1876 Jack Turner, who came to Tifton from Brookfield and went into partnership with James Fletcher, succeeded Higdon and Walker, who had moved their store to Alapaha.
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One of the distinctive marks of the seventies was the continued growth
of the Brunswick and Albany Railroad. Upon the success of the railroad depended the success of the mill. The lumber and naval stores business had increased so much that in 1879 the number of trains had doubled. A train was operated every day except Sunday. Before 1879 the train went to Albany on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays; to Brunswick, on Tues- lays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. The name of the railroad had been
changed from the Brunswick and Albany to the Brunswick and Western. The transportation of passengers and freight was a small part of the rail- road business at that time. The growing lumber and naval stores business vitally affected the Brunswick and Western Railway. A time book kept by W. F. Barkuloo, of Brunswick, now in the hands of his nephew, O. V. Barkuloo, of Tifton, gives the following records for February 24, 1879: Brunswick and Western Passengers
$1.50
1.25
5.00
1.75
1.00
2.50
3.50
1.00
1.00
.50
.50
3.00
$22.00
$ 3.68
3.02
2.33
9.00
1.20
8.74
10.62
$38.59
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Waynesville stated :
Prentice
Pearson
Alapaha
Hoboken
Tifton
Sumner
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Willacoochee to Brookfield
Brookfield to Riverside
Riverside to Ty Ty
Ty Ty to Albany
On the same day the train carried the following freight at the rate
Brunswick to Hazlehurst
Brunswick to Waynesville Brunswick to Albany
Waynesville to Waycross
Waynesville to Satilla
Randolph to Waycross Waycross to Alapaha
Waycross to Riverside
Waycross to Waresboro
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HISTORY OF TIFT COUNTY
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HISTORY OF TIFT COUNTY
On February 27, 1879 the report of the Western trip of a lumber train is :
Left Brunswick 2:00 a.m.
Arrived Riverside 10:20 a.m.
Left Riverside 11.00 a.m.
Cars number 6, 44, 29, 8, 17, 45, 23, 5, 46, 16, 4, 47, 18, 12, 3, from Brunswick to Riverside.
Loaded at Tifton 9 for (i.e. consigned to) D. C. Bacon. 6 for Cook Brothers.
Time loading 21/4 hours.
The loading time of two hours seems unusually long until one realizes that Tifton had no sidetrack then. When Mr. Tift was ready to ship lum- ber, he blew a whistle that called to the mill all hands, who with the train crew loaded the cars.
In 1879 Tifton was still merely a spot in the road. Ty Ty, although smaller than it is now, was the metropolis of this part of the wiregrass.
The salient topic for conversation during part of this period was the famous Little River wreck. The passenger train west-bound on the Bruns- wick and Western (now the Atlantic Coast Line) left Tifton after night- fall late as usual. The bridge across the Little River, three miles west of Tifton, was much longer than it is now. As the train was rolling on to the eastern end of the bridge, the trucks of the combined mail and baggage car jumped the rails, and the first and second-class passenger cars fol- lowed. These cars fell nearly thirty feet into the river below and smashed on the logs and stumps of what was once the swamp. The forward cars were in two feet of water while only the rear of the first-class car rested on the bank.
"Why half of the passengers and train crew were not killed is hard to understand. Yet everyone escaped alive and there were only a few minor scratches and bruises. Perhaps this condition was due to the fact that at that time nearly all trains slowed at bridges. The engineer stopped when he found he had no train and backed up near the scene. The conductor and crew crawled out of the baggage cars and went to the assistance of the passengers who were making more noise than a negro revival at the hallelujah stage . . .
"After much hard work, the passengers were all released from the wreck, many of them being pulled through the narrow windows of the upper sides of the overturned cars. A big fire was built of crossties on the river bank, and there the men, women, and children were huddled to dry. There were only two white women on board, an aged grandmother and a young wife with a baby. The comfort of these was given first attention.
"The engine and tender went on to the nearest telegraph office, and
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HISTORY OF TIFT COUNTY
the wrecking train was called. At Riverside, a mile east of the wreck, there was a water tank, and help was called from there, as well as with the aid of a pole-car the white passengers were carried across the bridge during the early morning hours, and ultimately got on their way, nearly a day late.
"The wreck was a subject for fireside talks for the country side for many months. People miles away insisted that they heard the crash, and every- body for ten miles around took a holiday next day and visited the scene. It was several days before the track was clean." (John L. Herring, The Tif- ton Gazette, July 25, 1919. )
Occasionally now old timers chuckle over one incident in the wreck. The engineer peered through one of the windows to get the lay of the land before attempting to bring passengers out. In one corner of the car he saw an old woman apparently doubled up with pain. He called her, but she made no answer. Perhaps the poor old soul was dead, he thought. Since the passenger car lay on its side, it was necessary for the engineer to climb to an open window before he could get into the car. Dropping inside, he rushed to the aged woman. If she were dying he hoped to rescue her be- fore the last breath. If she were still alive perhaps he could save her. Putting his hand on her shoulder he shook her gently. The old lady turned her head and her cold blue eyes pierced his face as she replied, "Leave me be, son, leave me be. Ain't it enough to shake my pipe outer my mouth without trying to keep me from finding it?"
CHAPTER V WIRE GRASS IN THE EIGHTIES
Boys in jeans and girls in gingham were playing gleefully in the yard that surrounded a little pine-board house. Some of the "scholars" were playing townball; some were dropping the handkerchief; others were rid- ing sapplings. From the schoolhouse to the deep woods was but a step; in fact, balls often lodged in the trees of the forest. The clang of a cow bell! Children scattered and rushed to "books," for recess had ended.
This little house was a distinctive and versatile addition to the sawmill village in the eighties, because it was the setting for the Three R's, "taught to the tune of a hickory stick," the scene of trials in the justice of peace court, ice cream festivals, and sermons. This shack, which stood near what is now the Primitive Baptist Church, had meager furnishings: hard mili- tary benches with no backs, a rough table for the teacher, and wooden shutters, which threw a gloom over the room in rainy weather. Then the little children, like the lightning bug, had to flash their own light.
During the early part of the eighties there were two other houses that had no connection with the sawmill, a small shack that stood on an acre of ground in the northern part of the village and a widow's home in what is now the southwestern part of Tifton.
There was in the village also stronger moonshine than the kind that entices lovers; a saloon stood on a strip of land that was not for sale. Tifton's father and his brother bitterly opposed the sale of liquor, but could not stop it. Although the flag station was only a rough spot in the woods, the prophetic eye could envison a progressive town.
"In 1880 Georgia exported 570,000 gallons of turpentine and 92,000 barrels of resin and pitch, for the first time threatening to rival North Carolina .. . " (Roswell Earle Smith's unpublished manuscript) Georgia was also filling a very important place in the lumber industry. Tifton in the center of a vast turpentine and lumber section was obliged to grow. A decided improvement during this period was a sidetrack on the Brunswick and Western Railroad. Soon afterwards a post office with W. O. Tift postmaster and a telegraph with W. W. Pace as operator, were establish- ed in the commissary.
The growing business in lumber and naval stores meant increased pros- perity to the little towns in the wire grass. It, however, meant something else: Southwest Georgia became as rough as the western frontier. Before the advent of the turpentine industry in Georgia, this section was peaceful, and the majority of citizens, honest. It is true that some ruffians were em- ployed at sawmills, but living in towns, they were more or less isolated. The turpentine gangs, on the other hand, spread over a wider territory.
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HISTORY OF TIFT COUNTY
Native South Georgians, therefore, began carrying pistols for protection ; in fact, weapons were a part of the costumes. N. L. Turner, who was one of the best informed of the old settlers, said that he could identify his friends by the sound of their pistols as we identify now by the honk of automobile horns. Men carried pistols to town, parties, and to church.
Captain Tift was careful about selecting sober men for mill hands, but not all sawmill and turpentine men were as careful as he. Consequently when the sawmill and turpentine bullies, with their disrespect for law and their money for buying liquor, mingled with the pistol-carrying natives, there was combustion.
Despite the conscientious efforts of H. H. Tift, W. O. Tift, and other reputable citizens, life in Tifton was uncertain. A short time before his death W. O. Tift made the statement that there were a few Saturday nights in the early eighties when a man was not killed in the town. Mrs. Katherine Tift Jones, his daughter who has achieved international fame as an interpreter of negro dialect, when a little girl lived in Tifton. She remembers that her parents would not allow her to leave home on Satur- day. The late Enoch Bowen, who owned a store in Tifton fifty-eight years ago, said that four men received fatal blows near his store during his first two years here. Men fought for fun. Bowen, a peaceful gentleman, used his iron safe as a barricade when the shooting began and came out of his hiding place when the excitement ended.
During this period the little school house was the scene of a tragedy. On a sweltering day in 1882 Judge J. J. F. Goodman, justice of peace for the 1314 District, Georgia Militia, called his court together in a session. The building was filled to capacity when court opened: the crowd that chose the court term for business was there and a large group who had come out of curiosity ; for rumors of serious trouble had spread.
"Harrell and Guest, Martin Harrell and G. W. Guest, operated a tur- pentine still about two miles east of Tifton, and a little farther on G. B. Mayo and Company had a loading place on the railroad for their naval stores plant, which was out a mile or so in the woods. Between these two, troubles arose of a source only too common-negro labor-and when it had reached an acute stage, litigation over some timber added fuel to the flame; this growing out of a disputed land line . .. Harrell and Guest took out a possessory warrant for the timber against Mayo and Company. Later a letter written to G. B. Mayo, signed by Harrell, who was the active member of the firm, in which it is said some very abusive language was used. Tradition has it that this letter was written by Jordan, book- keeper for Harrell, but it was shown by him to Harrell, who signed it. It was what Mayo said when he received the letter that led people to ex- pect trouble." ... J. L. Herring "The Tifton War." ... The Tifton Gazette, March 22, 1916.
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HISTORY OF TIFT COUNTY
Trouble did come, for pistol shots broke up the court and wounded or killed several people. "The next week the justice of peace resigned his com- mission, applied for license to preach, and a short time afterwards organ- ized the Tifton Methodist church in the same pine shack which was once the seat of war" ... Tifton Gazette.
As the years passed the town knew less of violent crime. No institution probably has contributed so much to the civilization of the Tift County section as the church. Probably the oldest Baptist church in this section is the Zion Hope Baptist church organized in 1877 by the Reverend W. W. Webb. After the organization of this Missionary Baptist church, no churches were organized in the vicinity of Tifton for several years, al- though visiting ministers occasionally served various settlements. The Methodist Episcopal Church of Tifton was organized by J. J. F. Good- man. The members were J. J. F. and Rhoda Goodman, their son, J. O. Goodman, John B. and Julia A. Greene, Mrs. J. E. Knight, and her mother, Mrs. Anderson. Except for the pastor the church was organized with only two male members.
The shanty in which the church was organized was burned, and in 1884 a larger building was erected near what is now the intersection of Tift Avenue and Fourth Street. The first floor was used for a school and church ; and the second floor, as a Masonic hall. In 1887 this building was also burned by an incendiary.
H. H. Tift contributed lots for a church and a parsonage, and in 1888 workmen began building a wooden structure, which was to cost $2,000, on the site of the present Methodist church building and finished it in 1889. Three attempts to burn this building were made during the process of construction; but after this first attempt, church members guarded the building. The incendiary was shot and wounded by one of the guards.
The church at first was a mission of the Alapaha circuit. The first board of trustees was composed of J. E. Knight, J. I. Clements, and Thomas M. Green, the uncle of Miss Leola Greene, now a veteran newspaper writer.
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