USA > Georgia > Coffee County > Ward's History of Coffee County > Part 14
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In the year 1917, the first year the boll weevil began his operations, the farm given you as an example produced 220 bales of cotton. In 1918, the next year, the same number of acres produced 116 bales of cot- ton. In 1919, the third year, the same farm only pro- duced 16 bales of cotton, being almost a total de- struction.
The farmers have tried many remedies to combat the boll weevil, but nothing so far has been a success. Early varieties of cotton and early planting with the use of lots of high grade fertilizers and rapid cultiva- tion adds much in the production of cotton under boll weevil conditions. Dry, hot weather, with rapid cul- tivation helps in the fight.
This year, 1930, July weather conditions are favor- able and the farmers hope to make at least half a crop.
So far as we can get information as to the history of the boll weevil in other countries, he continues his partial destruction of the cotton crops. The farmers
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continue their fight against the boll weevil but do not hope for his final elimination. But so long as the farmers can grow a half crop of cotton they will con- tinue to grow it.
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Storms
Coffee County and this section of Southeast Georgia is almost free from storms of every kind. So far as I can ascertain there has never been but one severe storm in Coffee County. I have heard of this storm all my life. I saw the track of this storm about twenty years after. There was not a tree standing in the path of the storm. It was in the fall season, about 1857, when a severe storm originated in the neighbor- hood where the country home of Mr. J. C. Brewer now stands, about three miles north of Douglas. The storm moved eastward almost in a straight line, passed on to the coast and into the Atlantic Ocean. The path of the storm was about one mile wide. A story is told about old man Dan Lott, who at that time was one of the biggest farmers in Coffee County and was well fixed with houses and fences and other things usually had on a big country farm. Mr. Lott had just left home on his way to Jacksonville, Georgia, to attend Superior Court. But the storm had passed over and there was not a roof on a house on the farm. The crib was blown away and the corn scattered for more than a mile. The cotton house was blown away and the cotton was scattered for more than a mile. It looked like a snow storm had passed over the place. The bed quilts were scattered for miles, some of them were hanging in the trees. Everything on the Lott place was in confusion and the big family all scared half to death. The old negro went after Mr. Lott and overtook him before he reached Jacksonville, Georgia. When he told Mr. Lott what had happened Mr. Lott said it was not so, that nothing could be as bad as
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that. But he turned around and went back home and found it much worse than the negro had pictured it.
No such storm has ever visited Coffee County since that time. We are perhaps safer from storms than any other section of South Georgia.
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The Liquor Laws
By Act of the Legislature of 1878-9, page 388, a license for selling or vending spiritous, intoxicating and malt liquors in the counties of Wayne, Liberty, Coffee and Appling, was fixed at the sum of $1,000, and a bond was required given and an oath taken by the retailers, and the Act made it a misdemeanor for violation of its terms.
The Act of the Legislature approved August 18, 1881, Acts 1880-1, page 594, amended the previous Act ยท so as to apply the license fixed in Coffee County to the sale of beers, ciders, bitters or nostrums, whether patented or not, and with or without name, which, if taken in sufficient quantities to produce intoxication.
The Act approved September 4, 1883, Acts 1882-3, page 567, amended the law further so as to fix the annual license fees in Wayne, Liberty, Coffee and Appling Counties at the sum of $10,000.
In 1885 the Legislature passed a general law, Acts 1884-5, pages 121-24, known as the local option Act, authorizing any county in the state to petition the Ordinary to call an election to determine whether liquors should be sold in the county. This Act was amended by the Acts of 1890-91, page 130, so as to attach penalties for violation of the Act.
A local act approved July 16, 1903, Acts 1903, pages 362-4, authorized the County Commissioners of Coffee County, and the Mayor and Council of the City of Douglas to open up and operate a dispensary for the sale of intoxicating liquors in the City of Douglas, and further authorized the County Commissioners to open up and operate a dispensary in any other incorporated
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town in the county having a population of four hun- dred or more. The Act contained a referendum re- quiring an election to put the Act in force, and when the election was held the Act failed of adoption.
Coffee County continued dry under the local option Act, until superseded by the Eighteenth Amendment of the Constitution, the Volstead Act, and the Enabling Act of the State of Georgia, under the Eighteenth Amendment.
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A Strange Phenomenon
About the year 1914, in the month of August, there appeared a strange phenomenon in Coffee County. In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, hundreds of acres of cotton plants were wilted in the fields. rain had fallen about three o'clock in the afternoon but the clouds had passed away and the sun was shining. There was no wind blowing like the hot winds in the west, nor nothing to indicate that any- thing unusual was about to happen.
Mr. W. H. Vickers, a good farmer and a very re- liable man, living about four miles south of Douglas, gives a good description of what happened on his farm. He was standing under a shelter and had a good view of the clouds and the fields. All at once the heavens seemed to light up as though a cloud had passed from under the sun, but the sun was shining all the time. The phenomenon did not cover the entire county but was in spots, perhaps worse at the Vickers farm than anywhere else. Many of the plants recovered and became normal, but many of the leaves twisted up and crimped around the edges and finally died.
This phenomenon does not compare with earth- quakes nor with the falling stars of 1833, but it was a real phenomenon and is a part of the history of Coffee County.
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Early Steamboat Navigation on the Ocmulgee
By Mrs. Lon Dickey
In the Centennial Edition of The Telfair Enterprise, published at McRae October 31, 1907, is the following bit of history concerning early navigation on the Ocmulgee River in Coffee County. Because of the fact that this territory was a part of Telfair County up to 1854, and the territories on the south side of the river were served in the same manner from the landings in the present boundaries of Coffee, as follows: Ashley's Landing, Barrow's Bluff, First Tub Lake, Manning's Lower Fence, Burkett's Ferry and Dodge's Boom. This article says :
In the Pioneer days of Telfair the only means the people had of transporting their products to market and obtaining supplies that could not be provided at home was by pole boats on the Ocmulgee, Altamaha to Darien, thence by sail to the markets, or by wagons, a distance of one hundred and twenty-five miles by dirt road to Savannah.
Pole Boats Built
Boats were built in the county, loaded with cotton and other farm products, drifted down the river to Darien where the cargoes were transferred to sailing vessels for Savannah and other ports. The boats were then loaded at Darien with cargoes of general mer- chandise brought by sail from Savannah, Charleston, and New York, and poled up the river by hand, re- quiring several weeks to make a trip. In times of
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high water it was often necessary to use a rope and windlass to pull the boats up the swift current at certain places in the river, so it can be readily under- stood that the up trip of a pole boat was slow and tedious, requiring much labor. In those days the freight on many kinds of goods was more than the prime cost; yet the people of this section were con- tented and prosperous though the cost of transporta- tion was so high.
Introduction of Steamboats on the Ocmulgee
About the year 1827 steam navigation was intro- duced on the Ocmulgee. There is much doubt as to how high up the river the first boat ran. And there is no record at this late date as to the name of the boat and her commander.
The first steamboat on the Ocmulgee to run as high up as Macon was the "North Carolina," commanded by Captain Salter. The historical record and history of Macon and central Georgia, by J. C. Butler, gives the date of the arrival of this steamer at Macon as January 18, 1829.
On the trip of the steamer up the river, the Macon Telegraph, of 1829, said: "Many of the people along the river banks were alarmed at the smoke and noise. Some mistook the noise for a roaring lion; others for the sneeze of the elephant. Some thoughit it the hissing of a sea serpent, or the groaning of an earth- quake. Others thought it was war, pestilence and famine, but the most general opinion was that it was the tariff coming in person to cat up our cotton and corn and to drink up the river dry and that was an? infringement of the state's rights. There was a
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climbing of trees and picking of flints and had not the boat made its escape it would have been hard to tell what the consequence might have been."
The Steamboat "Pioneer"
The next boat to run through to Macon was the "Pioneer," built at Macon by Charles Day and James R. Butts.
At first, the steamboats ran only to Darien, but later regular line freight and passenger steamers ran through from Macon to Savannah. After the building of the Central of Georgia Railroad from Savannah to Macon in 1843, which furnished quicker transporta- tion to the seaboard, steamboats to Macon were dis- continued and Hawkinsville was made the head of navigation.
Before the war and for a few years after the sur- render, there were some fine passenger and freight steamers on the Ocmulgee plying between Hawkins- ville and Savannah. It was the only means of trans- portation for the merchants and planters along the river who made business trips to Savannah two or three times a year, but after the building of the old Macon and Brunswick and the territory adjacent to the river with the seaboard, navigation on the Ocmulgee began to decline.
Historic Incidents on the Ocmulgee
In the spring of 1861, just before the breaking out of the Civil War, the steamer "General Manning" on her up trip from Savannah to Hawkinsville, with a large cargo of general merchandise and a long list
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of passengers, was blown up at "Manning's Lower Fence," a landing a few miles below Jacksonville.
Many of the passengers and members of the crew were killed by the explosion of the boilers. Among those killed were Joseph Williams, Jacob Parker and John Harrell, all prominent planters of the China Hill neighborhood in Telfair County. The steamer was in command of Captain Taylor, of Hawkinsville, who was seriously injured and his son killed.
The "Governor Troup" Captured
Near the close of the Civil War, the steamer "Gov- ernor Troup" was captured by a band of deserters from the Confederate Army at Town Bluff, a few miles below the junction of the Ocmulgee and Oconee Rivers.
The "Governor Troup" was on her way down trip from Hawkinsville with a cargo of supplies for the Confederate army on the coast. At Town Bluff, where she had landed to take on wood, the band of deserters boarded her, took possession, placed guards over the pilots and engineers and forced them to run the boat to Savannah where she was delivered to the Union forces for a large money consideration.
The engineers of the steamer, Mr. Isaac Higgs, now a resident of Appling County, and Mr. Miller, late of Hawkinsville, conspired to blow up the boat with the deserters on board, but desisted on learning that some prominent men from Irwin and Telfair Counties were on board sleeping in their staterooms. The engineers intended saving themselves, in case that the boat was blown up, by taking refuge in the wheel house, the "Governor Troup" being a sidewheel steamer, they could easily have exploded the boiler.
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The Steamer "Wanderer"
A few years prior to the Civil War, the noted steamship "Wanderer" landed a cargo of African negroes on the coast in the vicinity of Brunswick in violation of law, as years before Congress had passed a law prohibiting the importation of African slaves into the United States.
This cargo of Africans was smuggled in and a portion of them were shipped up to Ocmulgee and landed at Jacksonville, it being the object of the promoters of the enterprise to sell them as slaves.
But the authorities learned of the affair and sent officers to arrest the negroes as well as those having them in charge. Those landed at Jacksonville were captured, sent to Savannah, and either liberated or deported.
f
(Left) ARTHUR LOTT, who represented Coffee County in the Legis- lature 1900-01.
(Right) MAJOR JOHN M. SPENCE, Captain Company C., 5th Ga. Regiment, and later was elected Major of his regiment. He was also a member of the Constitutional Convention of 1877.
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The Ocmulgee River Section
Plantation Memories
By Mrs. Lon Dickey
The Ocmulgee River section of Coffee County lies along the Ocmulgee River in the northern part of Coffee County. Before the Civil War this section was the wealthiest and most cultured section of Coffee County. The Ashleys who lived up there were big slaver owners. Nathaniel Ashley owned more than a hundred slaves.
A public road ran through this section and was known as "The River Road." Many beautiful homes were located along this highway which led from the section around Hazlehurst to Hawkinsville, Ga.
But it is not altogether of military heroes that I would write. For there are the character builders of Coffee County, those who believed in the study of the Holy Bible as a foundation of character.
The Boyd Plantation
There are two thousand acres included in it, and it lies three miles from the western boundary of the county, on the road from Hawkinsville to Hazlehurst.
The first accounts I have of it is that it was owned by one Hiram Swain, and was purchased by Cornelius Ashley, of Telfair County, for his son, Jonathan Ashley, who married Miss Elizabeth Shelton, daughter of Major Charles Shelton.
Major Shelton is buried at the Old Block House just across the river, and on his tombstone we read
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that he was born Nov. 16, 1787, and died July 19, 1871, nearly eighty-four years of age.
His descendants around Valdosta are numerous, but only two grandsons were born to him in Coffee County, Maxey and Ed Ashley, the former now living in Valdosta. His son, "J. M. the third," served in the World War from Lowndes County.
The Ashley Sisters
At the death of Cornelius Ashley his slaves were divided, and his daughters, Mary and Ellen, came over from Telfair County and made their home with their brother, Jonathan, who worked their slaves, twenty- five each, on this old plantation.
Mary married a Medlock, and Ellen married a Culver, from Culverton, in Hancock County. Her daughter, Burrows Culver, named for her Grand- mother Burrows Maxey Ashley, married A. J. Comer and lived at Cordele in 1924.
There were other Ashley families along the river road all the way to Hazlehurst, and, as I understand it, Nat and Cornelius were the sons of old Dr. Bill Ashley, one of the first settlers of Telfair County. Matt Ashley, who organized the Fourth Georgia Cavalry, from Coffee County, was the son of Nat Ashley. His children were Dr. Bill Ashley of Ocilla, Marshall Ashley of Douglas, Mrs. J. J. Lewis and Mrs. William Hinson of Hazlehurst.
However, to use a right expression, their "family tree has become a forest," and it is not for me to try to unravel its history. Ashley River, on which are the famous Magnolia Gardens of Charleston, is named for one branch of their family.
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Was Store Keeper
My father, Capt. Boyd, was a member of a family of twelve children, near Lumber City, and after re- ceiving his education at Spring Hill Academy near there, he came over to "keep store" for his cousin, Jonathan Ashley.
Susan Caroline Ashley was my father's grand- mother, and also, Elizabeth Shelton was his first cousin. And oh, the many happy and amusing ex- periences my father had with the slaves with which he used to delight us, for he was an excellent story teller.
My grandfather was James Boyd, born in Camden County, April 14, 1807. My grandmother was Mary Ann Monroe, born November 5th, 1811. They were married in Laurens County, Georgia, December 23, 1830. My grandfather died at his Telfair County home January 1st, 1884, and my grandmother came to make her home with us until she passed away March 25th, 1885.
Memory Goes Back
The question is often discussed, how far back into childhood can one remember ?
I heard grandmother tell many delightful things concerning my father's oldest brother, Dr. Augustine Monroe Boyd, who had visited often at the home of Jonathan Ashley.
He received his medical education at the old Shorter . College, which was then a medical college for men, located at Cave Spring, I was told. There he married Miss Eva Fitzgerald, October 3, 1854. Shorter was later moved to Rome.
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He served throughout the War Between the States as surgeon for the Confederate forces, principally from Macon up to Virginia.
Goes to Mexico
At the close of the war he bitterly declared that the United States was no place in which to rear a family, with its free negroes, carpet baggers, and other un- desirable conditions brought on by the war, so he took his family of several sons and a daughter to New Orleans, thence down to Tuxpam Bay, in Mexico, and at one time lived in Tampico. He died there July 21st, 1886. Although he tried to persuade the other members of his family to accompany him, my Aunt Ella Jane Boyd, for whom I was named, was the only one who went, having married Captain Archibald Hughes, of Mt. Vernon, in Montgomery County. She lived there eight years, but returned and died the last member of her family, December 28th, 1929.
But getting back to Coffee County. My father, Julius Warren Boyd, volunteered and joined a com- pany at Jacksonville, and all the plantation and a great many people from other homes in Coffee went over to see them off. My father left as lieutenant, but on the death of their captain he took his place, Captain of Company H, 20th Georgia Infantry.
He served throughout the war without coming home, and was paroled at Appomattox Court House, Vir- ginia, April 9th, 1865.
Off to Valdosta
With the slaves freed, all of the Coffee County Ashleys moved to Valdosta. Captain Boyd was left
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in charge of the JJonathan Ashley plantation, until the death of Mr. Ashley one year after settling in Val- dosta.
Captain Boyd purchased it and, March 31, 1870, married Miss Marcella Smith, on the William Ashley plantation three miles further east.
On this plantation, right near the "Big House," are two old weatherstained tombstones that are very dear to me. Their inscriptions read : "Sacred to the memory of Joshua H. Frier. Died Feb. 28th, 1872. Aged 65 years, 9 months, and 28 days. None knew him but to love him."
"Narcissa Frier, died March 26, 1887. I love them that love me; and those that seek me early shall find me. Proverbs 8:17.''
Things That Live
The stone was placed there by Mr. J. M. Ashley, of Douglas, who was surprised on receiving through her will this old plantation which had come to her, with its slaves, through her first husband, Capt. William Ashley, who died May 1st, 1839.
What would have been a mere pittance decided among others, was managed judiciously by its new owner, who traded it to Reverend Monroe Wilcox for a body of pines farther back from the river, and gave him the start in naval stores business that helped him to amass a fortune in and around Douglas.
Reverend Wilcox had also married a second time, and his wife, who was my mother's cousin, Emma Pickren, became another sweet memory to me as a neighbor. But just now it is of my great uncle and
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aunt, Joshua Frier and Narcissa Frier, that I would offer a few words in memory and appreciation.
Just a Tribute
She was first Narcissa Smith, and at the time of my Grandfather and Grandmother Smith, near Denton, took her three nieces, Narcissa, Annie and Marcella, and reared them, and as there were no schools that I ever heard of, except one on the adjoining plantation of Mr. Archibald McClean, they taught them all they ever knew. Uncle Joshua becoming one of my mother's sweet and sacred memories, for he was a gentleman of the old school and a loyal and devoted Christian.
The old school of which I speak was taught by a dear old gentleman whom my mother called "Uncle Tarrant," but she was never privileged to attend this old school but three months.
The eldest of these three orphan girls, Narcissa, married Mr. Aaron Frier and reared a large family in the lower part of the county.
An Old Doctor
Annie married Dr. James Allison Googe, whose father had come into the country from Holland. It was his second marriage, and they lived at Milltown and Homerville, and finally on one of the river planta- tions. She is buried at Oak Grove Church with one of her sons, Walter Googe. The others were Jefferson Lee and William Robert Googe, the latter being Dr. W. R. Googe of Abbeville.
Marcella married Captain Julius Warren Boyd, March 31, 1870, and eleven children were born to them at their plantation home.
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A Church Founded
One of the first things my father did after his mar- riage to my mother March 31, 1870, was to begin a Methodist Church on his grounds. This was Oak Grove Church, and was not finally completed until along in the 80's, when Mr. Miles Wilson Howell, of Suffolk, Va., and Mr. John McLean began naval stores operations in that part of the country and contributed greatly in the upbuilding of the church.
Mr. "Tony Howell," as he was called, married my sister, Leila Boyd, in October, 1891, and Mr. John McLean married Miss Anne Latimer, daughter of Dr. Latimer, of Hazlehurst.
This church was burned sometime after my family moved to Fitzgerald in 1900, and later my husband gave lumber from his old saw mill at West Green and it was rebuilt across the road from the old site, some of the builders being A. M. Wilcox, Duncan McLean, Anderson McLean, and Mr. Dickey.
A Returned Soldier
I recall a very touching incident of my mother's girlhood days which she told to me, and which hap- pened at an old church along the old river road beyond Rocky Creek, somewhere between there and Hazlehurst.
It was during the War Between the States, and my mother had seen two of her brothers march away to war, also two of them had gone from Bronson, Fla., which is way down on the Suwanee River in Levy County.
Her favorite brother, Neil Smith, had been wounded and had been reported near death in some far distant
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land, and she was feeling very sad and distressed when two of her friends, Miss Roxie Reed who later married Captain Tom Wilcox, and Miss Rebecca Mc- Duffie who married Mr. Willis Dorminey, came to accompany her to this old church, which was nothing more than a shelter with a brush arbor built around it, though the elite of the land gathered there at these annual meetings in summer.
Sitting there listening to the old minister, with her face toward the east, she saw a soldier limping down the road in a tattered grey uniform, who, on reaching the crowd that rushed out to meet him when he col- lapsed from hunger and fatigue, turned out to be her brother, Neil Smith.
This brother afterward married Miss Nannie Smith, of Homerville, and lived in Valdosta a number of years, later moving with his large family to Nacadoschee, Texas, where he died.
Saw General Beauregard
Another war incident my mother remembered was of seeing General Beauregard and his staff of uni- formed officers who stopped and had dinner at the home of her uncle and aunt following the surrender.
Needless to say, a great feast was prepared and after partaking of it the distinguished visitors drove rapidly away to the west along the old river road. She under- stood that they had been around Savannah and Charleston, and although I never saw anyone who knew of General Beauregard and his staff taking this route, my mother was quite sure this was he, and ever remembered the thrill she felt on seeing the beautiful, sleek black horses, their shining harness, and the
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