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The
boats of the world stood at anchor in the harbors
wanting cotton, and now that the cotton gins were
operating, the virgin and fertile fields with the
slave labor could supply their wants and a tide
of wealth came into the South . . . The planters
and their families lived in luxury . . . and their
rolling lands as far as the eye could see were growing
the fleecy cotton . . . The rail fences cut off
lush green pastures for the blooded horses and fine
cattle. The driveway curved up across a vast expanse
of lawn, bordered by crepe myrtles or cedars on
either side . . . Their homes were substantial and
well built by slave labor . . . It was the slaves
whose muscle turned a wilderness into a cultivated
land.
Carolyn Williams ~ History of Greene County,
Georgia
Civilization comes to Greene
.
By the arrival of 1800, the population of Greene County
had exploded to over 10,000. In 1803, its largest
town, Greenesborough, was incorporated. In 1807, the
“Observator” became the first paper to circulate,
and many were looking to expand local mail delivery.
The Stagecoach Road from Augusta was driving its lanes
through Greene into the interior of the state. The
county was gaining prominence; as was Greenesborough,
the county seat. A courthouse was built, as well as
a stone, “bastille-like Gaol,” replacing
the previous prison that was reportedly burned down
in the attempt of a runaway slave to free a slave
prisoner. Important men met to talk agriculture, to
plot progress and discuss politics at Ye Eagle Tavern.
Noted pioneer and resident Samuel Dale was commissioned
by Thomas Jefferson to blaze a trail through Indian
lands to the Spanish city of Walnut Hill, soon after
to be known as Vicksburg, Mississippi. It was called
the “Three-Chop Road” due to its blaze of
three ax marks. In 1809, Zacariah Sims and George
Paschal were awarded a loan by the state legislature
to establish Georgia’s first paper mill; which
they did within a year at Scull Shoals. In 1812, the
state awarded a charter to the Oconee Navigation Co.,
whose sole purpose was to clear the Oconee from Athens
to Milledgeville for the commercial, waterborne transport
of goods. A few years later, Peter Early, son of Greene’s
most prosperous pioneer settler, Joel Early, became
governor of Georgia. Prosperity ruled the day. George
Troup, governor during the late-1820s, would proclaim,
“men and soil constitute the strength and wealth
of nations, and the faster you plant the men, the
faster you can draw from both.” Such was true
in Greene during the early 1800s. The “head-right”
grants that were being awarded to veterans of the
Continental armies and the expansion of land lotteries
kept settlers pouring in for decades. Yet as Arthur
Raper pointed out, a general shift was beginning to
take place. In Tenants of the Almighty he stated,
“small businessmen began to feel the power of
the plantation owner.” The plantation would be
the center of Greene County life for the next sixty
years.
In the early 1800s, though, Greene was still only
a step removed from the frontier. Church-goers still
carried muskets to service, armed guards being posted
out front for fear of Indian attack. Yet by the turn-of-the-century,
this practice was continued more out of habit than
out of actual need. Thaddeus Brockett Rice relates,
“those were the days when the land was fresh
from the hand of God . . . and the rivers and creeks
were full of shad and other fish.” The Oconee
River was as rich a natural resource as the county
could claim. Two fisheries operated along the Richland
Creek section of the river, the Methodist, operated
by, of course, Methodists, and the Yazoo, operated
by the rival Presbyterian and Baptist segments. Members
of the cooperatives would devote a set amount of time
each year setting and repairing traps, harvesting
and cleaning their catch for the respective memberships.
Homegrown industries were establishing themselves
throughout the county, hinting at greater operations
of the like. Tobacco gave rise to the “Cracker’s
Neck” community, also near Richland Creek where
modern-day I-20 straddles Lake Oconee. The tale relates
that farmers of the region rolling giant, cylindrical
casks (called “hogsheads”) of tobacco to
market in Augusta were dubbed “those boys from
Cracker’s Neck” due to the snap of whips
they would crack while urging on their beasts of burden.
Everywhere the land was showing the potential of its
yield. Gold was discovered in multiple locations,
most notably in Daniel’s Spring near modern-day
Union Point.
With the sprite steps that Greene took in nurturing
its new, civilized demeanor, so continued the pursuit
of taming its feral, frontier roots. Grand juries
were busy condemning some of the lewd practices which
typified Greene’s early days. Gambling, profanity,
fiddling, and parading stud-horses to church was condemned.
The churches made their objections known condemning
such acts as chicken-fighting on Sunday, stealing
roasting ears, and betting on horse races; the latter
in direct reference to the Greenesborough Jockey Club
which had indulged its members in the pursuit of gambling
on horses since 1800. Georgia itself followed its
recently civilized frontier by outlawing the barbaric
act of “gouging,” fighting with sharpened
rings, in 1810.
Everywhere within the county prosperity was giving
rise to the development of this natural paradise.
The Grimes, Doherty and Strain-Statham hotels were
serving their guests. Impressive Greek-Revival homes
were sprouting up in the townships and on massive,
impressive lots; Oak Hill, Paradise Hill and Jefferson
Hall to name a few. And the plantations were growing
in a stature and wealth that was uninhibited.
The Rise of the Planter .
E. Merton Coulter in his history of Georgia,
described the flourishing agricultural economy as
“a philosophy of life and a civilization based
on the soil.” It was an “economic organization
and a business enterprise.” And these organizations,
and the wealthy men who ran them, built empires in
the south. As a result, they were holding more sway
in matters both economic and political. Coulter states
that “cotton’s influence in . . . political
and agricultural thinking went far beyond its actual
importance.” The plantation was a self-contained,
self-sustaining operation. It turned out profits as
well as yielding all the food and feed required for
the residents, slaves, livestock and draught animals.
Clothing was hand-stitched on its grounds and the
forests provided fuel for cooking and warmth. The
best lands were being bought up by the large landowners.
The soil composition of Greene is divided into the
rich, red-clay topography throughout its northern
and western sections and the less-fertile, sandy gray
lands throughout the southeast. Naturally, the planter-class
migrated towards the rich red-clay where large farming
operations would thrive. And thrive they did. Greene
County would count over a dozen large plantations
by 1860.
The rise of the planter brought on two social conditions
of the time; the yeoman and lower-class, or non-slaveholding
farmers, and the unchecked proliferation of slavery.
With the planters’ reach spreading across the
red-clay sections of the county, appropriately dubbed
“Prosperity Ridge,” the yeoman and their
families were forced to stake claims in the “poorer”
gray-land of the county. Many packed up and moved
out. Those who stayed were considered lower-class.
Like the planter, the yeoman ran a self-sufficient
farm and required little of the outside world. But
here the similarities end. For cash crops were grown
simply for bartering in the acquisition of tools and
implements. The children of the yeoman were rarely
educated. In the early 1800s, Georgia set up a “poor
school endowment” to provide tuition to those
white families without the resources to educate their
children. A certain bloc of residents were considered
candidates based upon tax records. Yet most proved
either too proud to accept the “hand-out”
or were generally disinterested in the concept of
education altogether. Schooling meant losing a hand
in the field. And practicality of the moment was more
often a necessity than the long-term benefits of education.
The typical yeoman may have owned a slave, but usually
did not. And in the south at that time, slaveholding
meant wealth, position and power. It meant the difference
between an important man and just a man. Still, the
region at the time resembled a large extended family.
In many cases, especially on the community level,
this was literally the case, a few extended families
making up a majority of the population. This goes
a long way towards explaining the general neighborly
feeling that existed between the wealthy and the lower-class.
In his epic volume, Mind of the South, W. J.
Cash explained that “unaware of any primary conflict
in interest, and seeing the planter not as an antagonist
but as an old friend or kinsman, the common white
naturally fell into the habit of honoring him . .
. deferring to his knowledge and judgment, of consulting
him on every occasion, and of looking up to him for
leadership and opinion.” The south has always
maintained a unique network of regional relations.
This trait can be traced directly back to the earliest
days of its settlement.
The second condition resulting from the planter’s
rise was, of course, slavery. Slavery enabled this
southern economic development, was the cornerstone
in its foundation. Celebrated southern historian C.
Vann Woodward defined it as one of the “burdens
of southern history,” and rightly so. For the
standards of socio-economic life today can only hint
at the attitudes of life during the early years of
this country which proliferated slavery and its inherent
prejudicial demeanor as a matter of course. Slavery
was widespread in Greene County, and its sister “Black
Belt” counties where land was fertile, abundant
and waiting to make men wealthy. Slavery seemed on
the wane during the post-Revolution years, a notion
voiced by the notable southern historians Coulter
and Cash, amongst others; Greene’s own T. B.
Rice for one. But Eli Whitney’s cotton gin changed
all that, irrevocably. The cotton gin made cotton
the single most efficient cash-crop, and its farming
spread through Greene County and the south like wildfire.
Slavery, as a result, became entangled in the southern
landscape; became an indispensable institution. The
slave population increased to over 7,000 in Greene
by 1840, almost double the amount of white residents.
The day-to-day experience of slaves has found its
way but sparingly into popular history, much of what
has been written being tainted by prejudice and misrepresentation.
Generally, slaves were treated well; well in that
they were fed and clothed. They were property, an
economic expense, and this being the case were taken
care of as such. Plantation owners varied man to man
in their benevolence. Some allowed their slaves to
accompany them to church. In 1818, balconies were
built into the new brick Bethesda Baptist Church in
order to accommodate slaves. Yet whether in an altruistic
environment or not, the identity of the slave was
in every instance subservient to the will of the master.
When there was trouble, the penalty was often brutal
and inhumane. Slaves were bought and sold irrespective
of family lines. Slave life was institutionalized
humiliation. Many slaves had been born into this life,
and knew no other. Many survived through fatalistic
resolve alone. In Tenants, Arthur Raper describes
a strangely romantic scene in which children of the
favored black house servants run and play together
with the plantation owner’s white children. This
was common. For even amongst the slave population
there was class distinction. But Raper goes on to
describe the obvious contempt, regardless of station,
for this life of bondage. He talks of a scene in which
the children of field hands were called to their lunch
which was eaten out of a trough. Demeaning enough,
while they ate one of the house servant’s children
began to walk through the trough as if to show that
though he was a slave he was better than slaves in
the field. The boy was pulled from the trough and
beaten to a pulp by the field hands. But this story
pales when compared to the understandable contempt
which was often manifested to a much higher, more
violent degree amongst adult slaves. Those slaves
who were new or unbending before the rigid dehumanization
of slavery were often belligerent. They were beaten
mercilessly, often before the rest of the plantation’s
slaves. Many committed suicide. Raper relates:
"Some
found the slave’s lot intolerable and killed
themselves so their spirits at least might return
to their native country. It is reported that one
slaveholder overcame this practice ‘by cutting
off the head of the suicide,’ and telling the
other slaves that even if the dead man did return
to his country he would be without a head."
Negro
slaves’ contempt for their situation showed itself
in more militant ways. Slave insurrection was a constant
fear amongst southern whites. And it was dealt with
harshly, resulting, without fail, in capital punishment.
In Donald Grant’s telling volume, The Way
it was in the South, he talks of a slave from
Greene known as Captain James who reportedly told
of an insurrection slated to begin at midnight on
April 22, 1810. The plot apparently involved killing
local whites, seizing arms, and relying on the insurrection
to spread into a formidable force. There is no record
of any insurrections in Greene, but Grant stipulates
that this may have been a model for Nat Turner’s
slave revolt in Virginia in August, 1831. Census records
listed 20 “free persons of color” living
in Greene as of 1820. But “free” meant anything
but. Freedom for blacks in the south would not realize
reality until civil war created a military strategy
of it. “Legalized” freedom for African-Americans
would not be realized until Lyndon Johnson signed
the Civil Rights Act in 1964.
A watercolor depicting the manufacturing
operations at Scull Shoals ~ |
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1805 letter written by Archibald Gresham
charging a fraudulent land claim ~ |
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A painting on tin of an early resident
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Golden Years .
Despite the dark underbelly of southern economics,
optimism ruled the day. The War of 1812 was met with
patriotic support in Georgia. The state militia included
many men from Greene. They fought with Andrew Jackson
and helped win the war. And with victory, the infant
United States felt for the first time what Coulter
called, “the development of a rampant nationalism.”
Politics became a part of the national lexicon. It
was especially popular in the south. Coulter describes,
“it was necessary to amuse Georgians, not convince
them if their votes were to be secured . . . (such
a) method of securing votes was the barbecue, where
roasted pigs, calves, and sheep were much more convincing
than any amount of dry argument.” T. B. Rice
mused detailed descriptions of “hog-killings
and corn-shuckings,” which served no political
purpose but showed Greene’s high regard for such
gatherings. Georgia had been at odds with Washington
for decades over land cessions with the Creek, when
the hated “Protectionist” tariff act was
passed in the late 1820s. The controversial act was
blasted for favoring the northern manufacturing industry
over the interests of the southern economic scheme.
The call of “states rights” was heard in
the south; and with it “nullification” of
the act. This basic difference of opinion had shown
itself within vehement arguments, and was to be one
of the first steps in leading the south down the road
towards secession.
Despite political turmoil, and a bank panic in 1819,
times were good for non-slaves in Greene County. In
June of 1820, Greene received one of its most famous
guests. Andrew Jackson made an anonymous business
trip here, visiting a relative who just happened to
reside in Greene. He was quickly found out, and the
county rallied together a grand dinner for the war
hero, soon-to-be president. The county had also rallied
to the cause of education, in Arthur Raper’s
words, a “progress of the mind.” Aside from
Greenesborough Academy, who’s 1821 curriculum
included Milton’s “Paradise Lost” amongst
the standard reading, writing and Latin, Greene could
claim Brockman United, Lafayette Hall, Thornton Academy,
and White Plains Institute by the 1830s. But the most
important school for which Greene could boast came
about in 1831. A convention of prominent Baptists
in Savannah hatched the institution that would become
Mercer University. Adeil Sherwood, with the financial
help of Thomas Stocks, W. Flourney, and Josiah Penfield,
had secured the school’s charter by 1837. Classes
began at Mercer two years later, the university named
for Sherwood’s long-time friend and supporter,
Jesse Mercer. The village that grew up around the
school was named in honor of Josiah Penfield. Greene
entertained many teachers who would go on to great
fame: Louisa Alcott, Dr. Francis Goulding (author
of “Young Marooners” a wildly successful
book akin to Robinson Crusoe), Dr. Joseph Wilson,
father of Woodrow Wilson, our 28th president, and
a rumored, ironic figure, William Seward – who
would become an outspoken Republican later serving
in Abraham Lincoln’s cabinet. Country doctors
were popular and were the first form of healthcare
in the county. Though their trade was rudimentary,
riding horseback to deliver babies, set broken bones,
roll pills and administer herbal remedies, they were
highly sought; some highly respected. Dr. Lindsay
Durham of Scull Shoals became the most famous of the
county’s early doctors, his reputation reaching
far past Greene County.
It was in its economic development where Greene County,
and the south, reaped her greatest benefits. In 1833,
Georgia celebrated its one-hundredth birthday, and
everywhere prosperity ruled. Penfield was fast becoming
a center for Baptist publications, and the Athens
Southern Banner enjoyed wide circulation in Greene
County. The Athens Banner covered the general vicinity
and outlying areas, a March 12th, 1839, article reporting
this news from Greene:
"6
horses attached to an Athens to Augusta stagecoach
ran away in Greenesborough and turned over the coach,
injuring 3 passengers; one of them feared lamed
for life."
In
answer to the growing problem of depleted soil and
erosion brought about by unwise farming practices,
an agricultural club was created. Thomas Stocks, one
of the county’s most influential leaders in business
and politics, his residence “Oak Hill” among
the county’s finest, became the club’s first
president. The club would eventually develop into
the Georgia Dept. of Agriculture. Greene nurtured
many influential men; James Park, Robert and W.H.
McWhorter, and Thomas Janes, who were planters, Thomas
Cobb and William Dawson, who were state representatives,
and noted bishop George F. Pierce, among others. But
in 1827, a man named Thomas Poullain took over the
operations at Scull Shoals, and quickly became the
wealthiest man in the county; as well as its largest
slaveholder. Scull Shoals had endured a checkered
past. Sims and Paschal had been forced to sell in
1815 to Thomas Ligon. Ligon soon encountered his own
difficulties due largely to the mercurial Oconee River;
the power source and lifeblood of manufacturing at
Scull Shoals. Poullain streamlined the operations
and concentrated on milling cotton. Despite a devastating
fire in 1845, the mill was soon devouring 4,000 bales
of cotton a year and operating 2,000 spindles; a considerable
number for the day. Cotton Mills were springing up
throughout the south. Greene also claimed mills in
Greenesborough and John Curtwright’s at Long
Shoals. Industry in general was thriving. The census
of 1840 listed 47 industries in the county. There
was the tinsmith John Zimmerman, and the blacksmiths
Miller & McKinley. There were wagon shops and
many cotton gins. Yet the most unique business belonged
to Josiah Davis & Orville Barber. They were clockmakers
originally from Bristol, Connecticut, who found Greenesborough
an advantageous setting. They relied heavily on slave
labor in the creation of their intricate clocks, and
had soon gained a reputation. Aside from the actual
clocks, the detail of their casings included beautiful
carved eagles and cornucopias; their trademark detail,
meticulous, reverse-glass paintings.
Despite the county’s impressive resume, it all
was second to the coming of the railroad. The Georgia
Railroad was, at the time, only the third operation
of its kind in the entire country. Its construction
began in Augusta in 1833. Within three years, it had
reached Lemuel Greene’s impressive “Jefferson
Hall,” in the eastern portion of Greene. The
story goes that a stretch of the Stage Road within
the county, prone to bottomless mud and impassable
after a rain, prompted the railroad’s coming
to Greene. By 1836, the first leg was complete. Work
began on a branch line to Athens from this terminus,
two-miles past Jefferson Hall. So was born the town
of Union Point. But the railroad was not met with
immediate approval by all residents, Gwynn Allison
having chased railroad surveyors off his property
at gunpoint. The train was loud and obnoxious, the
first engine to run dubbed “the Firefly”
due to the sparks it would shoot. There was, in fact,
a noise-ordinance for many years which prohibited
the engine’s running at night. But as Coulter
explains in Georgia, “the coming of railroads
was of extreme importance; on them awaited the rise
and fall of cities, and the growth and decline of
whole sections.” Only the interstate system of
a century later would have more impact on the history
of transportation in the United States. The Georgia
Railroad’s construction was soon making its way
west through Greenesborough, and was heading for the
little town of Marthasville; later to be renamed,
Atlanta.
Dark Clouds on the Horizon .
In 1836, Greene County militia were enlisted to fight
alongside Federal forces in the Florida Seminole Wars.
But as the years passed, political, economical, and
social philosophies fired obvious cultural strains
that would eventually tumble recklessly into our nation’s
Civil War. Daniel Grant, one of Greene’s most
successful entrepreneurs, freed his slaves in 1840
and moved to Atlanta where he would become a railroad
giant; Grant Park in south Atlanta, being named for
him. Joel Early, son of the county’s first large
planter, also freed his slaves, and even paid their
way back to Africa if they wanted it. Elsewhere, though,
slaveowners were digging in. Arthur Raper explained,
“slaveowners who among themselves had earlier
expressed misgivings about the system were now becoming
united in their unqualified defense of it.” The
feared abolitionist movement in the north, a collection
of freed blacks, priests, and political leaders, was
taking aim on slavery and that section of the country
which proliferated it. In 1835, a grand jury in Greene
answered with the proclamation “the interference
of abolitionists” was a “grievance to the
whole South.” Rhetoric became more provoking
and damning over time. And lines were drawn.
In 1848, Greene County built its third and most impressive
court house; which still stands. The 1850s saw the
creation of two female academies, one in Penfield,
the other in Greenesboro (it was about this time the
“rough” in “Greenesborough” was
shortened, the reason unknown). A bank panic in 1857
could not curb the optimism shown in an article written
for the Greenesboro Gazette: “we are glad to
note that our little city is beginning to look up
a little – that the spirit of improvement has
taken hold.” And an ad that year proclaimed “good
bye” to tallow candles; “as artificial light
is indispensable . . . we . . . recommend use (of)
Kerosene Oil.” Indeed, industrial progress was
still in motion. Yet everything else, it seemed, was
changing. In Jonathan Bryant’s telling, provocative
history, How Curious a Land, he states:
"Even
the poor had opportunities in Greene County not
usually found in rural areas, for they could find
work with the railroad or in one of the county’s
cotton mills. For one-third of its population Greene
County offered opportunity and prosperity . . .
The other two-thirds . . . however, lived in bondage.
While witnesses to and an integral cause of the
county’s prosperity, these slaves inhabited
another world."
Socially,
the country was deteriorating along cultural lines.
E. Merton Coulter states:
".
. . they (north and south) lost their reason as
their passions carried them forward, and they sought
no longer to understand each other . . . secession
came as a recognition that the country was already
divided – in religion, in politics, and in
every kindly regard and feeling for friendship."
As
telling a result of this truth was the splintering
of the churches, north and south. Southern Methodists,
Baptists, and Presbyterians all formed their own organizations
separate of their northern brethren. In Greene, slaves
were no longer allowed to worship with whites.
In 1859, the mounting unrest exploded with John Brown’s
raid of the Federal arsenal at Harper’s Ferry,
Virginia. Hoping for a general uprising amongst the
slaves throughout the south, which never came to be
(the raid suppressed by none other than U.S. Colonel
Robert E. Lee), Brown came to embody northern intent.
C. Vann Woodward explained in John Brown’s
Private War, that Brown became a “symbol
of the moral order and the social purpose of the Northern
cause.” Coulter stated in Georgia that
it was “an impossibility to save (the) ante-bellum
south without slavery . . . (for) without it there
would be a race problem.” Yet in the south, slavery
was such an ingrained part of its character that the
argument over its existence was eclipsed by the call
of the southern homeland echoing simple, cultural
survival. Woodward also explained the south’s
defiant response as, “let the ‘higher-law’
of abolitionism be met with the ‘higher-law’
of self-preservation.” Woodward summarized the
whole situation by writing, “paranoia continued
to induce counter-paranoia, each antagonist infecting
the other reciprocally, until the vicious spiral ended
in war.” And this war would come down hard upon
the south, and Greene County. It would change everyone
and everything forever.
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Modern-day photograph of the Old Gaol ~
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Next Page
A History of Greene County, Georgia
- Table of Contents
Early Years:
Pre-History - 1800
Golden Days: 1800 - 1860
War, Reconstruction &
the Coming of a New South: 1860 - 1885
The New South & the
Turn of a Century: 1885 - 1915
War, Uncertainty &
a New Deal: 1915 - 1940
Research Sources, Credits
& Acknowledgements
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