USA > Georgia > Tift County > History of Tift County > Part 48
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Tech, 1902), son of Sallie Willingham Bacon and Dr. Edward Henry Bacon of Eastman. Sallie was a sister of Bessie, and Ed, Jr. was a frequent visitor in the H. H. Tift household, in Tifton.
Catherine and Ed Bacon went to Manchester, England where they lived for five years. They later lived in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Thence they moved to Jacksonville, Fla., their present home. They have three daughters, Dorothy, Katherine and Betty.
In 1915 the E. H. Tifts went from Tifton to Massachusetts. In December, 1916, Mr. E. H. Tift visited Tifton friends by whom he was warmly re- ceived. He then returned to Massachusetts. There, shortly afterward, one Wednesday afternoon, at about six o'clock, he died of hardening of the arteries. Death occurred at Arlington, a suburb of Boston. Burial was in the Tift lot in Mystic, where the Tifts had been buried for many genera- tions, E. H., at the time of his death was about 63 years old.
E. H. Tift was survived by his widow, his daughter, his brother, H. H. Tift, and three sisters, Mrs. William K. Holmes, of Mystic, Conn .; Mrs. S. E. Bebee, of New York City; Mrs. Frank Buckley, of Mystic, Conn.
At the exact hour of the Mystic service a memorial service for E. H. Tift was held in Tifton at St. Anne's, in the little white chapel which he had helped to build and which he had greatly loved. There his friends gathered at 2:30 in the afternoon of Thursday, January 25, 1917. The Vicar, W. W. Webster, was in charge of the service, but had recently come to Tifton and had not known Mr. Tift. He introduced Dr. C. W. Durden, pastor of the First Baptist Church of Tifton, and a friend of Mr. Tift. Dr. Durden preached the sermon, which was followed by the reading of the Episcopal burial service, the Lord's Prayer, and the singing of "Asleep In Jesus."
Mrs. E. H. Tift continues to live in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Mr. and Mrs. E. H. Bacon, Jr. continue to make their home in Jacksonville, Fla. Dorothy Bacon is a skilled technician. She has been in doctors' laboratories in Thomasville, and Jacksonville, and she now is in the far West. Kath- erine and Betty Bacon are married.
BESSIE WILLINGHAM TIFT
Bessie Willingham Tift moved to Tifton in the autumn of 1885 when she came here as bride of Henry Harding Tift after a honeymoon trip which included a visit to fashionable Saratoga, Niagara Falls, and New York City, and a sojourn with Henry's people in his boyhood home, Mystic, Connecticut. Bessie and Henry had been married at a ceremony performed by the Reverend W. B. Wharton of Atlanta, in the First Baptist Church, Albany, Georgia, June 15, 1885.
Bessie was one of seventeen children of Thomas Henry Willingham (born Lawtonville, South Carolina, July 12, 1825; educated, Penfield Acad- emy, Penfield, Georgia and at Madison University, Hamilton, New York, now Colgate's, which he attended 1842-1844; married at Beaufort Baptist Church, Dr. Richard Fuller officiating; died May 29, 1891, Atlanta, Geor-
Top-Mrs. Henry Harding Tift, the beloved mother of Tifton prominent Left-Mrs. H. H. Tift and three little sons, Willingham, Amos, Henry. artist and writer.
Bottom-Mrs. Florence Willingham Pickard, prominent artist and writer, a sister of Mrs. H. H. Tift.
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gia; buried, Albany, Georgia) and Cecelia Baynard Willingham (see sketch, this book).
Bessie's parents were natives of South Carolina, and Bess was born at their handsome South Carolina plantation home, "Smyrna," near Old Al- lendale, on June 30, 1860. When still very young she refugeed with her parents and brothers and sisters from South Carolina to a plantation her father owned near what is now Baconton, Georgia. Not long afterward she moved with her family to another place Thomas owned, the Yancey Place, comprising several hundred acres, on which was Blue Springs, now famous Radium Springs, a few miles from Albany.
When ten years old Bessie was baptized into membership of the Mission- ary Baptist Church, Albany; Dr. H. H. Witestt, pastor of the Albany Church and later president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, performed the rite of baptism.
Bessie and her younger sister, Florie (see sketch, this book), attended in Alban'y a girls' private school conducted by R. D. Mallory. There they were prepared for college. Both entered Wesleyan in 1875, Bessie going into the Freshman class and Florie entering Sub-freshman. At Wesleyan both joined the Adelphian Sorority, which many years later became Alpha Delta Pi.
In January of 1877 Bess entered the upper Junior Class of Monroe Fe- male College, Forsyth, from which she was graduated in 1878. During that period Florie remained in Albany but after Bess's graduation Florie went to college in Virginia.
During one of Florie's vacations Bess and Florie visited friends at a house-party at Louisa Courthouse, Virginia. There Bess fell in love with a brilliant young man to whom she became engaged. Later they had a mis- understanding, which made Bess deeply unhappy. Soon afterward she was shocked and grieved to learn that he had committed suicide.
Some time after this Bessie attended service at the Episcopal Church in Albany, one Easter Sunday. Bess had on a daring new hat, so new and so stylish that her married sister to whom it and another belonged had told Bess that she had not nerve to wear either alone but would wear one if Bess would wear the other. That day Henry Tift was present at the service. He saw Bess and was captivated. He later said that he made up his mind at once that if that young lady (Bess), was as good as she was pretty he was going to have her for his wife, if possible.
Bess soon after this received an invitation to attend a house-party given by the Nelson Tifts at St. Simons Island. Nelson Tift was Henry's uncle, and Henry, who had arranged the party for the purpose of meeting Bessie, was one of those present. Later, while driving near Blue Springs, Henry asked Bessie to marry him. At first Bess said "No," but he asked her why?
"There are two reasons," said Bess.
"What are they?" queried Henry.
"You will not go to church with me," Bessie told him.
"I will go to church with you every Sunday morning that I am not sick," Henry said, and then asked, "What is the other reason?"
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"You are twenty years older than I am," said Bess.
Henry replied: "That is true, but I come of a family of great longevity, and it is probable that I shall live almost as long as 'you do."
Henry was highly regarded by Bess's father and by all who knew him. He was a man known to be of sterling character and he had accumulated great wealth. Bess decided to marry him; and she liked his sending from the jeweler's a whole tray of diamonds from which she might choose any ring she preferred.
Henry proved to be a kind and devoted husband and Bessie was deeply blessed in his great love for her.
When first Bessie and Henry arrived in Tifton in the fall of 1885, after their honeymoon in the North, they occupied the two-room apartment which had been Henry's before his marriage and which was over his office. He had had it completely newly furnished in readiness for Bess's coming.
Henry soon built for Bess a handsome new house into which they moved and which they continued to call home as long as they lived. The house in which they first lived is still standing, but it has been moved from its original location to a site about a block east on Second Street, and across the street. Its original location was the place where Twin Brick Warehouse now is. The new home that Henry built for Bess is that now occupied by Amos Tift, son of Henry.
To Bessie and Henry Tift were born three sons, Henry Harding Tift, Jr., Thomas Willingham Tift, and Amos Tift. They had no daughter, but they reared the daughter and also a son of Bess's sister, Belle, who died when her children, Cecilia and William Lawrence, were small. Bessie and Henry also reared Virginia Pound Tift, called "Prec," and Henry Harding Tift III, children of their eldest son, Henry, Jr., whose wife, Virginia Pound, died when the older child was still little more than a baby.
When Bessie came to Tifton she found no Baptist Church here. It was not long before she and a few other Baptists, about a dozen in all, banded together, and a church was constituted. The minister who constituted the church was the late Reverend William Wiley LaFayette Webb, better known as W. W. Webb, whose sons Henry D., Elias, and George, make their home in Tifton and are members of this church. Bessie was one of the charter members of the church and among the others were Reverend and Mrs. W. W. Webb, Mr. and Mrs. B. T. Allen and a Mrs. Adams. That first meeting was held in a small frame building which stood on a lot next to a cotton field which Bess owned behind their house lot. The building stood about where the Primitive Baptist Church now stands. This small building was used for a church, a school, and a courthouse, and for all public meetings. It was Tifton's only place of public meeting at that time. It was destroyed b'y fire in 1888, not long after the Baptist Church was constituted.
Soon after the destruction of this building, Baptists, Methodists and other Tifton church members desired to erect a new building to be used by all denominations as a church. Henry Tift for this purpose gave a lot and a part of the building fund and this dream became a reality. (See sketch of Henry Tift.)
Bessie was instrumental in organizing the first Woman's Missionary
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Society in Tifton. Composed of women of different denominations, it met in Bessie's parlor early in 1891, and she became its first president. Miss Lena Knight (later Mrs. Williams), a Methodist, was the first secretary. Mrs. Wesley Thomas Hargrett, a Baptist, was the first treasurer. There were about ten charter members. Seven of these were: Bessie Tift, Lena Knight, Mrs. W. T. Hargrett, Mrs. I. W. Bowen, Mrs. E. P. Bowen, Mrs. Hargrett's sister, Mrs. A. S. Speight, Mrs. W. O. Tift. The Reverend C. M. Irwin, of the Baptist State Mission Board and first pastor of the Tifton Baptist Church, met with the ladies on the occasion of their organization meeting.
Bessie continued president of the Missionary Society until her death, a period of more than forty years; out of this society grew the Baptist Woman's Missionary Society of which Bessie was president from the time of its beginning until her death. As the various churches increased in mem- bership, women of each denomination had their own society.
The year 1904 was brimful of excitement for Bess. Tifton was growing, and the world was doing things hitherto little heard of, or on a scale un- precedented. On Tuesday afternoon, of the first week of January, 1904, the first south bound train of the "Millionaire's Special" steamed into Tifton. Its "elegance" and convenience was town talk, for at that time its two Pullman cars, dining car and observation car were a marvel of luxury. It was "lighted by electricity by a special, patented device." The cars were the El Dorado, the Persian, the Falls City, and the Wellington. Bess looked forward happily to the exciting pleasure of travel under such conditions as these.
The tenth of January was the brithda'y anniversary of Cecilia Willing- ham. As the day of seventy-fifth year approached Bess was busy in prepa- ration for a family reunion in honor of Cecilia. She and Henry were hosts at the hospitable Tift home to a great gathering of Cecilia's children, grand- children, and great-grandchildren, and the wives or husbands of the des- cendants. It was a brilliant occasion. The Tift home was flower-decked, the great seated dining in the dining room was a veritable feast of turkey, cranberry, home-made rolls, steaming hot vegetables, ice cream, whipped cream, and home-made cake. Following this was a heart-stirring program rendered amid tears of joy, or mirthful laughter in the candle-lighted par- lor, cheerful with its great logs upon the tall brightly polished brass andirons. These reunions were held almost every year from the time Cecilia was seventy-five until the year of her death, at 86, in 1914, at Easter time.
The St. Louis World's Fair was held in the year of 1904. At the exposition grounds was a Georgia building, a replica of the General John B. Gordon home. Into its building went the finest of lumber and Henry Tift was in charge of furnishing that lumber. He personally selected for the interior especially beautiful lumber from his Tifton mill.
Henry went up to the Fair, and Bess journeyed there with him. It was great fun. The Georgia building, on the highest place of the fair grounds, was beautiful. It was the scene of a number of receptions arranged for Georgians attending the Exposition. At one of these Bess wished to sum-
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mon a maid. She pushed a button and awaited the maid's arrival, but she did not appear. Suddenly, Bess heard the loud commotion of the arrival of the fire department. It stopped at the Georgia building. To her con- sternation and embarrassment Bess realized that she had not summoned a maid but had turned in a fire alarm!
One of the most interesting trips of Bess's whole life was in the summer of 1905 when she accompanied her sister, Florie and Florie's husband, the Reverend William Lowndes Pickard, to Europe where Will Pickard went as a delegate from the church of which he was pastor, the First Baptist Church of Lynchburg, Virginia, to the first Baptist World's Alliance, held at Exeter Hall, London, July 11 to 18, 1905. The venerable Dr. Alexander McLaren, then in his eightieth year, presided over the congress. Dr. Pickard preached at one of the Baptist churches of London on Sunday.
After the congress was over, Bess and Florie and Will toured Europe, visiting England, Scotland, France, Germany, Switzerland and Italy. It was on that trip that occurred an incident out of which grew the inspira- tion of two large pictures painted by Florie. One of these, "Choosing the Crown" was dedicated to Bessie. The other, "The Chosen Crown," was dedicated to her sister, Belle.
In 1905 came the long hoped for creation of a new County of which Tifton was to be the County Seat. It made Bess very happy that it was named Tift, partly for Nelson and much for Henry. Everyone knew that though the county was officially named for Nelson, it was in large degree Henry's popularity that prompted it and the name was chosen to do honor to him as well as to his uncle.
Nearly every summer Bess and Henry spent at Henry's boyhood home, beloved Mystic, Connecticut. After the death of one of Henry's aged rela- tives, Frances Pyncheon, who had owned the old Tift homestead, Henry bought the old home, and thereafter he and Bess spent most of their sum- mers there. The summers were given over to house-parties, and Henry's relatives, the Beebees, and many of Bessie's relatives were their guests on more than one occasion. Those were happy days, begun with prayer and Bible reading, and given over to rest and recreation. There were clam- bakes, swimming parties, sailing and picnics. The Tifts loved those sum- mers at Mystic, but they also looked forward to the return to Tifton in the fall.
In 1906, through Henry's suggestion, Mrs. N. Peterson interested Bessie in the one-year-old Twentieth Century Library Club. Bess was not a mem- ber nor had she ever attended a meeting. She said she did not have time for the work.
"My church work keeps me so busy-m'y Sunday School class and the Missionary Society. I just haven't time for club work," Bess said.
Nevertheless, the club announced to Bess that she had been elected pres- ident, provided she would join the club and so serve. She accepted the office, which she held, with the exception of a few months, until her death, thirty years later. She became interested in other clubs, also. About the time that Bessie became president of the Library Club the organization affiliated with other state clubs, and the State Federation of Clubs met in Tifton
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in 1907, at the new school, at present Tifton Grammar School, but then housing all of the grades through high school. Social functions were at the then recently completed Hotel Myon. The delegates were entertained in the homes of the Tifton club members.
In 1907 Bess became a vice-president of the Georgia Federation of clubs. This position she held for many 'years. Also she was a life director of the Federation.
Bess was one of the first three trustees of Tallulah Falls School. Through her interest in that school Henry gave the lumber with which the school's first dormitory was erected, and her son, Henry, Jr., gave the money for the purchase of tools with which it was built. The students did the labor. That cottage is now called the Lucy Willett Hall.
Bessie Tift taught the Bessie Tift Bible Class from the time of its or- ganization until her death, a period of many years. She was for five years president of the Tifton Woman's Temperance Union.
Bess was a charter member of the Charlotte Carson Chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy, and she was a member of the Thronateeskee Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution.
After Bess's graduation from Monroe Female College she continued deeply interested in the work of the college. Henry became interested, too. This resulted in Henry's making numerous large gifts to the college. The gifts were so generous, that the college trustees, to show appreciation, changed the name of the college to Bessie Tift College. This took place at a Trustee meeting held at Cartersville, Georgia, November 21, 1906. J. L. White was president of the Board of Trustees at that time and Dr. C. H. S. Jackson was president of the college.
Bessie was a woman of exceptional charm and beauty and she was a gifted and persuasive speaker. Besides teaching the Bessie Tift Sunday School Class, Bessie taught a Sunday School class which she organized at the Second District Agricultural School. Also, she for a time taught a Sunday School class at the Bessie Tift Chapel. She was a consecrated, pious woman and gave much of her time to Bible study and to the study of the Sunday School lesson, and to pra'yer. Throughout the years daily family devotions were held in the Tift home each early morning. To prayer came all members of the household-the family, guests, Negro servants. Scripture was read, Bess or Bess's mother, Cecilia, if she were there, led in prayer and then all joined in the repetition of the Lord's Prayer. It was a sweet and blessed devotion whose influence reached out into the days and years ahead.
Bessie lived in terms of her church, her family and clubs. She was deeply devoted to her husband and to her sons, Henry, Jr., Willingham, and Amos; and she loved to visit her kinspeople and to have them visit her. Hos- pitality had a large share in hers and Henry's lives. Bess's brothers and sisters with their wives or husbands, and her many nieces and nephews were frequent visitors, and it was seldom that there was not one or an- other of these present. The household was blessed with faithful and effi- cient Negro servitors, and among these were Aunt Jane, an artist in cook- ery, Jerry, Julia, both excellent cooks, Old Uncle Herbert, for many years
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the gardener; kind Bertha, nurse and sometimes house-maid; Flora, who as a laundress was unexcelled, and faithful Jeff Mathis.
Bessie Tift often visited her brothers, Ben and Will in Atlanta, Baynard, in College Park, and her sisters, Fetie (Mrs. Cornelius Daniel), in At- lanta; Florie (Mrs. W. L. Pickard, who lived in man'y places where Dr. Pickard's church pastorates took him); Julia (wife of Dr. Wallace Winn Bacon), in Albany; and Sallie (wife of Dr. E. H. Bacon, brother of W. W. B.), Eastman. Bessie's sisters, Maggie (Mrs. T. O. B. Wood), Pearl (Mrs. Irvine Myers), and Belle (Mrs. William Lawrence), lived in Tifton. Bessie's brother, W. J. Willingham, was a frequent Tifton visitor.
The Bacon brothers, Wallace and Edwin, whom Bessie's sisters Julia and Sallie, respectively, married, were descendants of the Bacons who were among the earliest settlers of famous Midway, in Liberty County. History relates that on 6th of December, 1752 Mr. Benjamin Baker and family and Mr. Samuel Bacon and family arrived at Midway and proceeded to form a settlement. (White's Statistics of Georgia, p. 370.) Wallace and Edwin were first cousins of Senator A. O. Bacon, who, early orphaned, was reared in their father's home. Julia Bacon (Mrs. Jim Osburn), daughter of Dr. and Mrs. W. W. Bacon, was a member of the Tift household for a time when she taught school in Tifton, when a young woman just out of college. Belle Willingham, Bess's sister, made her home with Bessie for several years prior to her marriage. Bessie's mother, Cecilia Willingham, made her home with Bessie from a few years after Bessie's father's death until Cecilia died.
All three of Bessie's sons married. Henry, Jr. married charming Vir- ginia Pound, daughter of J. B. Pound, of Chattanooga; Willingham mar- ried lovely blond Catherine Terrell, niece of former Governor Terrell, of Georgia; Amos married beautiful Titian haired Lutrelle McLennard, who is a ministering angel to the bereaved when death visits a household. Bess took great joy in her grandchildren, Henry's and Virginia's Virginia and Henry III; Willingham's and Catherine's Catherine Hill and Thomas Willingham, Jr .; and Amos's and Lutrelle's children, Lutrelle, Amos Tift V, and David Tift.
Bess was deeply interested in Tifton's growth, and she was delighted whenever a new building was erected. It made her happy when Henry, Jr., built his pretty bungalow, and next to it Amos, his. It pleased her when Willingham put up a number of houses for sale, and store buildings, and when Amos erected business edifices. It pleased her, too, that Henry, Jr. took great interest in Tifton's civic affairs, and was in demand as a speaker at club meetings and at the college in the founding of which his father took prominent part. She loved the park which Henry had given to Tifton.
In February of 1922 Bess saw her beloved husband, Henry, Sr., buried, at Mystic, Connecticut, whither a large group of sorrowing relatives and friends took his body to be placed, according to his request, in his native soil.
After Henry, Sr.'s death, Bess leaned more and more upon her son, Henry, Jr., ever loving and considerate of her welfare and happiness. She
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derived happiness also from the companionship of her beloved sister Florie, whom Bess called her "Other Self." Florie and Will, after his retirement because of failing health were making their home in Tifton, and Bess and Florie saw each other every day.
Bess bravely accepted giving up her precious Henry, Jr., who was tragi- cally killed in an automobile accident. He died June 13, 1929, at Tifton. Florie lived only a short time after this. She died December 2, 1930. Bess also in the time soon after this gave up two brothers claimed by death. Will, and Baynard. Through all of this sorrow she continued in the sweet- ness which had endeared her to all. She progressed also in spirituality and in consecration, which made her life a power in its influence for good.
Bessie Tift died at dawn, Tuesday, December 8, 1936 in her bedroom of the home that Big Henry had built for her. Willingham and Amos were with her when she went, as were her sister Pearl, her daughters-in-law, Lutrelle and Catherine, her brothers-in-law, Irvine Myers and Will Law- rence, her nieces, Telie Daniel Fleetwood, Marguerite Myers and Bessie Belle Pickard. Telie's husband, Shine Fleetwood was present, and a trained nurse, and Dr. Carlton Fleming.
In another room in the house lay desperately ill Marion Ragan, who with her mother, Mrs. Dan Ragan, had been Bessie's companions since Bessie's grandchildren had been away at school and her sons were living in their own homes.
In Bessie's room the fire, forgotten, burned low in the big fire place. In the garden outside birds sent up a chorus of song, a strange, excited and unwonted persistent twittering. When the doctor announced that Bessie was dead, the sorrowing loved ones passed about the bed, a weeping pro- cession, each pausing for the last farewell. Willingham and Amos, shaken by silent sobs, turned away from the bed where their mother lay and placed their arms about each other's shoulders. One of them said: "Let's say the Lord's Prayer. She would want it so!" All joined in the familiar, blessed words of our Lord Jesus :
"Our Father, who art in Heaven. Hallowed be Thy name. Thy kingdom come; Th'y will be done On earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day Our daily bread; And forgive us our debts
As we forgive our debtors.
Lead us not into temptation But deliver us from evil. Thine is the kingdom, The power and the glory. Amen."
Funeral services for Bessie Tift were held at the First Baptist Church, Tifton. Burial was in Tifton Cemetery, by her beloved first-born son, Henry
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