USA > Georgia > The story of Georgia and the Georgia people, 1732 to 1860 > Part 29
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Mr. Everett, of Fort Valley, a very wealthy Methodist, came to the rescue of the Wesleyan Female College when it was in distress, and by a generous contribution, or rather by the purchase of scholarships, succeeded in saving it from sale and, possibly, failure. Since the war the villages along the line of railway have become centers for good schools, while in Fort Valley there is a graded school of excellent character.
The Methodists and Baptists are the principal denomi- nations of Christians, and they came to Houston with its first settlement, and during the pastorate of Rev. Samuel Anthony, on the Perry circuit in its early days, there were sixteen hundred additions to the Methodist church alone in one year in this and the adjoining counties of Dooly and Pulaski.
The county had become by 1850 one of the largest cot- ton-growing counties in the State, and there were very large plantations and a great many slaves. The rich bottoms on the Flint and the black lands below Perry were occupied by
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large planters who had a large number of negroes, but after the war the negroes deserted these black lands and they be- came unprofitable to the planter and declined in value, until plantations which were worth before the war ten thousand dollars were not salable at one-tenth the price.
It is hardly possible to give a list of early settlers in any of the counties of this period, since they were settled by such a number at near the same time, but Mr. White gives as among the first settlers: Abner Wimberly, James Clark, David Clark, Allen Sutton, Allen Williams, M. Joiner, Thomas Gilbert, Mr. Kelly, Colonel Howell Cobb, Lewis Hunt, Daniel Dupree, Jacob Little, James Everett, Rev. D. Mckenzie, Thos. Scott, D. W. Mann, H. W. Kaley, J. Pol- lock, A. Wingate and F. Pattillo.
These were among the first, and there was at an early day a large immigration from South Carolina of wealthy slave-owners, who settled in the black lands of the county 'and who made very great fortunes.
After the war, as we have seen, the rich country of the prairies and rotten limestone region was, to a large extent, deserted, and the pine woods sections greatly improved, but in late years there has been some improvement in the black land country.
There was a cotton-mill of small size established in Hous. ton at an early day which has now been abandoned, and there are now no cotton-mills in the county.
There are few counties with better railroad facilities and in which there has been greater development than in Hous ton during the last few years ..
DOOLY.
Dooly was in the upper part of the purchase of 1818 an was included in Early, but was made into a separate count in 1821 and named in honor of Judge Dooly. It had in it bounds what are now several large counties.
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There were sundry rich hummocks on the creeks and some fine bottom land on the river, and these were soon occupied by cotton-planters. The pine woods were re- garded as barrens, and when oak and hickory lands were worth ten to twenty dollars an acre the pine lands were held at from fifty cents to one dollar.
In 1887 a new railroad was constructed from Macon, Ga., to Palatka, Fla., and one from Americus to Savannah. These railways opened up the pine woods, mills were erected, turpentine farms opened, and prosperous towns sprang up. Farmers began to cultivate the land from which the saw- mill men had cut the timber and opened productive farms.
The story of Dooly is much the same with all the wire- grass counties, only modified by the fact that Dooly had a larger area of rich land on its creeks than most of them, and there was from the first a larger number of wealthy people, and the growth of the towns had been greater. Vienna, Ashburn and Cordele are places of considerable business.
While the upper part of Dooly has long been settled, and while there were churches and schools in Vienna and Drayton from the early twenties, the pine woods were sadly neglected by the preachers and teachers for many years. The Primitive Baptists and a few scattering Methodists were all the religious people in this section, and a few log churches the only houses of worship; but with the coming of the railroad and the influx of new people churches and schools sprang up in all directions, and now Dooly is abreast with any of the counties in the provision she has made for the improvement of her people.
MONROE.
The county of Monroe, which was named in honor of James Monroe, was laid out in 1821 and the land distributed by lottery. It lay abreast of Jones and Jasper, which had
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been settled for nearly twenty-five years. They were already crowded with inhabitants and the first settlers had grown restless and longed for new lands, and when Monroe was opened they came rushing into it in great troops.
It was a magnificent domain when it was first laid out, stretching from above Griffin to below Macon, but was soon divided into sundry counties; indeed, they were ordered be- fore Monroe could be organized, and the county stands at present almost as it did when it was organized in 1822.
It is now bounded on the east by the Ocmulgee river; the Towaliga, a river of some size, flows through its north- eastern corner, and it is well watered with large creeks and many brooks. It does not differ from other middle Georgia counties, and, as is common in them, it has fine red land, rich bottoms and some gray thin land, and in the northern part a considerable pine belt.
The county when opened was accessible and healthy. The land was given away to Georgia people, and it was soon very thickly settled. The fortunate drawer of the land in most cases moved directly to it, or sold to one who did.
Monroe was settled largely by Georgia people. It never had any of the features of the frontier, except the single one of log cabins, which were a necessity in all new counties in those days. The people who came to Monroe were so many that it was more thickly peopled a few years after it was settled than it is now. In seven years there were 16,000 in the county. In 1850, thirty years after it was settled, there were a thousand more negroes than whites in the county.
The history of agriculture in Monroe is but the same story told of the older counties east of the Ocmulgee. It was at first settled by people of moderate means who had but few slaves and small farms, and oftentimes there were several families on one lot of land. Then these small
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farmers sold out their possessions and went westward, and the wealthy slave-owners bought their farms and made large plantations. Negroes increased; for the country was healthy, and they were. well cared for. As the planter was anxious for quick returns from his fields, the grand forests were cut down and large cotton fields opened. The land was hilly and the soil easily washed away, and many of the large plantations were soon reduced to a state of
almost barrenness. Fields were worn out and washed into huge gullies and then given over to the old-field pine and the Bermuda grass. The planter found it difficult to make any clear profit on his products, but comforted himself with the thought that he had such a valuable lot of young slaves. He found himself, when they were freed and commercially valueless, with his old fields and his decaying buildings as his only estate. There were years when it seemed as if the old county, once so rich, would never rally; but there came a better day. The lands were divided into smaller bodies, the hills terraced, the farming diversified, and the old pine fields were brought into cultivation; and now perhaps Monroe is really more prosperous than ever. But much of what was once the best part of the county when white people had beautiful country homes is given up to negro tenants; and, as is the case in all the middle Georgia coun- ties where the landed estates are large, there is a tendency to leave the country for the town. This, however, is only true of that part of the county in which there were planta- tions and not farms. In the pine woods and the gray lands the farms were small and the inhabitants many. The people had but few slaves, the larger number none. They lived in log houses and in a very plain way. They spun and wove their own clothing and worked their own fields. They had not been cotton-raisers before the war except on a very small scale, and their main effort was to raise sup- plies for home use. When the war ended and the negroes
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were freed and commercial fertilizers were introduced largely, it was in Monroe as it was elsewhere, and these poor sections of the county became the best.
The county was a very large one and was thickly peo- pled, in the rich red lands by negro slaves and in the pine woods and gray lands by white people. It was very rough, and roads in the early days were very bad; and, as there was no navigable river, it was decided to build a railway.
The first railway projected in the State was the one from the new city of Macon to the new town of Forsyth. After much struggling it was built. Years afterward a part of the county on the eastern side was traversed by the Southern railway, and a section which had been thickly settled but which had become thinly peopled with white people was brought into communication with the outside world. Some sprightly villages, with good churches and schools, have sprung up beside the new railroad.
Forsyth, named in honor of John Forsyth, was made the county site when the county was organized. It was too near Macon to become a place of great commercial impor- tance, but up to the war was a thrifty town with three churches for white people and as many for negroes, a high school for males and a female college. The Monroe rail- road, now the Central, reached Forsyth in the early forties, and it was the first interior town in the State to have a rail- way connection with a navigable river.
After the war, in common with all middle Georgia towns, Forsyth began to make a forward movement, and it is now a very prosperous little city. There is a very fine court- house. The Baptists have a handsome college. There is a large graded school. The Baptists, Methodists and Pres- byterians have very neat and comfortable churches. There is a cotton-mill, an oil-mill and other enterprises. The planters have moved in from the country to get school privi- leges, and the population has largely increased.
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The county is a prohibition one, and is noted for its sobriety and morality. In the extreme southwest of the county the lands were very fine, and a body of wealthy planters settled a village where they could educate their children and named it Culloden. They were mainly Meth- odists, and were rigid advocates of total abstinence. They had an act passed forbidding the sale of liquor within a mile of the village. They erected the first brick church built by Methodists in Georgia. They established a high school and opened the celebrated Culloden Female Seminary, over which Dr. John Darby presided. The little village was six- teen miles from a railway, and sank into a decline; but the building of the Macon and Birmingham and the Atlanta and Florida railroads, both of which pass through it, has given it a new vigor.
The people of Monroe were of the best class of Georgia people. They came from Hancock, Baldwin, Greene, Mor- gan, Jones and Jasper.
The settlers of Monroe were a truly religious people, and the first thing they did when they reached their new homes was to build log houses of worship.
The Baptists were very numerous among the first comers, and as they had not divided at that time into the Primitive and Missionary bodies, they were possibly the most numer- ous body of Christians in the county. They established churches in all sections of the county and had a large fol- lowing.
The Methodists came with the first settlement and soon had churches in every part of the county. At one time there were three camp-grounds belonging to these in dif- ferent parts of the county. They had a missionary to the negroes, a stationed preacher in Forsyth and two circuit preachers in the county in 1860.
It was in Monroe that the Congregational Methodist
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church, which is Methodist in doctrine and Baptist in church government, was organized.
The Presbyterians had two churches in the county, but were not numerous.
After the division of the Baptist church the Primitive branch was very strong and wealthy and so continues to the present time.
Monroe has produced some very distinguished Georgians. Her list of public men in church and State is a long one for a county which has been more a county of plain, thrifty, energetic planters than of lawyers or politicians, and few villages have sent out so many distinguished men as the little village of Culloden. Here Governor James M. Smith was born and received his early education. In this village the Hon. Alexander Speer, formerly the secretary of state in South Carolina and a famous Meth- odist preacher, had his home, and from this village his two gifted sons, Judge Alexander M. Speer of the Georgia Supreme Court, and Dr. Eustace W. Speer, one of the most distinguished of the preachers in Georgia, went out to begin public life. Colonel N. J. Hammond, so famous as a lawyer and a statesman, began life in Culloden, and Dr. W. F. Cook and his brother Dr. J. O. A. Cook were brought up here. Judge E. G. Cabaniss, long a judge and one of the most gifted and excellent of men, lived in Forsyth. Judge R. P. Trippe, long a judge in the supreme court, a member of Congress, lived in Forsyth for many years.
The county has been noted for her excellent schools. The Baptist Female College in Forsyth has been for fifty years a good school, and some of the most distinguished Baptist preachers in Georgia have been professors in it. There was a Methodist male school, Hillard Institute, in Forsyth.
Early Cleveland was famous for the excellent private
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academy which he conducted for many years in the county, and the Rev. Thomas G. Scott, either as teacher or as county school commissioner, spent his life in educational work in this county.
The celebrated seminary in Culloden had a fame which went beyond the State.
BIBB.
When it was decided in 1822 to lay off a city opposite Fort Hawkins, a new county was a necessity, and Bibb, to contain a part of Jones and a part of the projected county of Monroe, was decided on. It was to be called Bibb, after Senator Wm. Wyatt Bibb of Elbert, and the county site Macon after that staunch Republican, Nathaniel Macon of North Carolina.
This new county when made had in it some very excel- lent land and much whose agricultural value was very small. The upper part, bordering on Monroe and reaching down to within a few miles of Macon, while very hilly, was very fertile. This was soon taken up by large slave-owners who came from Baldwin, Putnam and Jones. They formed a community of wealthy planters, many of them kins- people, and were of the best class of Georgians. There were but few small landholders among them, and they soon sold out their farms and went west.
The same story told of these people elsewhere is true of Bibb. Plantations grew, lands were worn, and planters took the place of farmers. As their wealth increased, in many cases they removed to the city and left their planta- tions in charge of overseers. When the railroads reached southwestern Georgia many of them settled plantations there and removed the larger number of their slaves to these new fields. The usual changes passed over the social features of the county: negroes and plantations took the
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place of white people and farms, schools went down and churches were thinly attended.
The pine lands south and west of Macon were for a con- siderable time thinly settled and by poor people; but the lands were healthy and the products of small crops found a ready market in Macon, and even before the war there was much thrift in a number of the piny woods homes. After the war and the building of the railways these people prospered more largely and some good villages sprang up where a few years before there had been only sterile pine woods.
The prosperity of Macon has had its effect on the coun- try around it, and market-gardens and dairies have been numerous.
As I shall give in a future chapter a sketch of Macon there is much which concerns the country which will be then brought under review. The first settlers could hardly be given, for the county was scarcely laid out before it was thickly settled.
The religious privileges of the Bibb county people have always been good. The Baptists, both Missionary and Primitive, have had a large following, and some of the best country churches in Georgia have been found in the rural districts of this county.
While the city of Macon has always had the best of schools, the country around it was not for many years so well favored. In the first settlement of the county there was an academy in the Holt and Myrick settlement, nearly four miles from Macon, known as the Lake academy; one in the northern part of the county, in the Lamar settlement, known as Washington academy, and one near Liberty chapel in the pine woods.
There were besides these a few schools which were of in- ferior grade, but when the common school system was adopted by the county school facilities were provided for all classes,
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black and white, in every section of the county; and now in ho part of the State is there better provision made for the education of all classes.
The nine railroads which terminate at Macon have led to the establishment on their lines of sundry small villages, until the country has been well dotted with them-Holton, Mims, Rutland, Walden and Lizella are hamlets of small size on the railroads.
CRAWFORD.
By the same act in 1822 by which Bibb was made a county another was ordered in the new purchase, which was called Crawford in honor of the celebrated William Harris Crawford.
The county site was called Knoxville, in honor of Gen- eral Knox, Washington's secretary of war.
It adjoined Monroe on the north, and a limited part of its upper territory was of the same kind of land as that. which belonged to Bibb and Monroe. There was a valley of rich land along the Flint, and some rich bottoms on some of the creeks; and there was a remarkable hill known as Rich Hill, which, rising in the midst of a pine forest, was itself a great deposit of fossils and was the richest of lime- stone land. The rest of the county was all pine forest, and much of it richly deserved the name of pine-barrens.
The population varied with the land. Along the river were extensive plantations, and planters with many slaves owned them. These plantations were rarely occupied by the planters themselves, but were in charge of overseers. From one hundred to five hundred negroes were often on a single estate.
The land was very fertile, but was subject to overflow, and was leveed for miles; but during the war the levees broke, and after it was over the negroes moved out of the swamps, and the river floods were so common that after a.
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vain effort to cultivate the rich lands profitably, they were at length to a large extent given up to cattle ranches.
The people in the pine woods section of Crawford were, many of them, poor people living on poor land and in a poor way. They had but few religious or educational advan- tages. Knoxville was a very small hamlet, with a few families of cultivation and wealth residing in it; and its proximity to Macon, its distance from a railroad and the general poverty of the country around it prevented any- thing like growth until the railroad came close to it. It is now somewhat improved.
Crawford had in it in 1850 as many negroes as whites, but they were owned very largely by the wealthy people who owned the river plantations.
The strong red lands north of Knoxville and adjoining Monroe had the usual history of such lands at this period. They were at once occupied and soon impoverished and sold by the owners to some near-by planter who absorbed them into his great plantation, until much of the land was owned by a few people.
It was in Crawford that remarkable man Colonel Benja- min Hawkins, the famous Indian agent, lived and died. The old agency on the Flint river was for many years his home, and here he ruled the Creek nation with an imperial but kindly sway. Descended from an aristocratic English family who resided in North Carolina, he was educated at Princeton College, and while there became a proficient in the French language. He entered the army during the Revolution and became a member of Washington's staff, where his knowledge of French made him useful. He was elected after the war senator from North Carolina, and Washington, when he was president, selected him as com- missioner to treat with the Indians. He became fascinated with Indian life, and accepted the position of agent of the Creeks and settled among them. He was a man of great
MANZ CHICAGO
ST. JOSEPHS CHURCH, MACON. G.A. N. J. CLAYTON. ARCHT. GALVESTON, TEXAS.
FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, ATLANTA.
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wealth and large enterprise as well as of fine culture, and con- ducted extensive farming and pastoral interests in the nation, at the same time directing his efforts to elevate the people among whom he lived. He had large interests in Crawford and a comfortable residence at the old agency on the Flint. Here, as a kind of satrap, he lived for many years, revered and beloved by the wild tribes who knew how implicitly they could trust him. While his home was here he died .*
Judge Samuel Hall, judge of the supreme court, was from this county, and Judge Simmons, at present chief jus- tice, was born and brought up here.
The religious and educational advantages of the county before the war were few. The leading denominations were the Missionary and Primitive Baptists.
UPSON.
Upson county, which adjoins Monroe and Crawford on the west and Pike on the north, was laid out from Crawford and Pike in 1824 and named in honor of Stephen Upson, a distinguished lawyer of Oglethorpe county.
Thomaston, its county site, was laid out in 1825.
Upson has a good deal of fine bottom land immediately on the Flint river and some fertile bodies on the various creeks; but the main body of the land is like that of Pike and Monroe-very hilly red land easily washed away. It was productive when first cleared; and, as the climate was good, soon after the county was laid out it was settled by a body of pushing planters. The red lands were cleared of their magnificent trees. The hills were high, and the wash- ing rains denuded them of their soil, and much of the land became sterile; and while Upson had 7,913 people in it in 1830 (only six years after it was made a county), in 1850
* Wheeler's History of North Carolina ; Chappel's Pamphlet.
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the population had only reached 9,000, and in 1890 there were only 12,000 in the county of all races.
Much of the land was badly worn, and many of the land- owners after the war sought the villages and towns as places of residence, and the negroes were tenants in the country where their fathers had been slaves. The rural white pop- ulation, as in all these middle Georgia counties, decreased, but the villages all increased in the number of inhabitants.
Upson was one of the first of the middle Georgia coun- ties to enter upon manufacturing on an extensive scale, and there was established in the county several large cotton- mills at an early date. The Waymanville factory, Rogers factory and Respess factory were cotton-mills of consider- able importance long before the war. Some of these were burned by the Federals who desolated Upson on a raid, but some escaped. The Waymanville factory is still stand- ing, and has been for fifty years a prosperous mill.
The town of Thomaston was, like most of the interior towns, a place of little importance until after the war, but is now a thriving and prosperous little city. It has two railways and is an educational center, with an excellent institute and two handsome churches, the Methodist and Baptist.
The county has always been noted for its decidedly re- ligious character. The Primitive and Missionary Baptists are strong, but the Methodists are, perhaps, most numer- ous. There are good churches all over the county, and a successful camp-meeting has been held for many years near or at the Rock, a village eight miles from Thomaston.
TALIAFERRO.
The counties of Wilkes, Warren and Hancock, which ad- joined each other, were all large counties, and in 1825 it was decided to take a corner from each and make a new county. This was done and this new county was called
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