Colquitt County

Joel C. Graves was Colquitt's first manufacturer. He was a native of Vermont, who in 1838 had moved to Monticello, Florida. In the beginning of 1857, he trekked northward again; saw Colquitt County; bought timbered lands lying to die south of Moultrie, and finally built a dam across--Creek, about eight miles south of Moultrie, and near the Pavo road, where he erected a gristmill, and put in a set of wool cards, and built a barrel factory—a "bucket shop," as it was called by Graves' neighbors. All these enterprises were housed in a three-story frame building. Their motive power was steam.

This shop manufactured from native hardwoods, such as cypress and the gums, black and sweel, barrels, tubs, and small kils. If we except a few gristmills and wool cards, this was Colquitt's first manufacturing establishment.

Presently, he made a contract with the Confederacy for supplying the army and navy with barrels for use in shipping syrup and meats to the armies from this section. Also, it furnished an excellent reason for keeping Graves' two sons from under the provisions of the "Conscript Act."

At one time during the life of this contract, some fifty to sixty laborers, all taken from the vicinage, worked for Mr. Graves. Of course, when the war was over, the contract was no longer effective; and the local market for barrels, tubs, and buckets did not suffice to keep the bucket shop going.

So Mr. Graves borrowed some money from his three broth-ers, and finally paid off this indebtedness by deeding some of his Colquitt timber lands to them.   One of his brothers was killed at the Battle of Resaca in 1864, leaving some fifteen hundred to two thousand acres of these lands to his wife and two daughters.

Mr. Joel C. Graves was a Presbyterian minister; and when he changed his residence to a place which had no church organization of that faith and order, he would proceed to create such organization; and, when he found it necessary, he would erect the church building. This explains why for seventy-two years, there has been standing in the midst of Mr. Graves' former land-holdings in Colquitt County, a brick church building. It long has been called "The Old Greenfield Brick Church"; and was built from brick burned from clay taken from a deposit near Mr. Graves' mill. This was the first brick structure ever erected in Colquitt County, and the only one, till another, a jail, was erected in Moultrie in 1892.

Since Mr. Graves' family, including his "in-laws," constituted all the Presbyterians resident in Colquitt County at the time Mr. Graves built his church, they, of course, constituted his organization. After Mr. Graves moved away from this section, the church building came to be used in a desultory way for both Methodists and Missionary Baptists, residing in the neighborhood. Especially, after Dr. Baker E. Watkins, a neighbor of the Graves, and a Methodist, and Rev. A. C. Stephenson, a noted Baptist preacher, who lived in Thomas County for fifty years, held forth with more or less regularity in the brick church.

Mr. Graves, a year or two after the war, moved his residence to a point about four miles from Ty Ty, in Worth County, where he was engaged in duplicating his work at Greenfield (including a Presbyterian church building), when he died there, in 1867, and was brought back to Greenfield graveyard for burial, among the "rude forefathers of the hamlet," not many steps from the last resting place of his former friend and associate, Dr. Baker E. Watkins, Methodist preacher, member of Georgia's Constitutional Convention of 1865, and father of two of Colquitt's representatives in the House of Representatives in the General Assembly of Georgia. Dr. Baker E. Watkins' grave, with that of his wife, has fallen into much disrepair. Doubtless it will soon be put in proper shape, as the Moultrie McNeil Chapter of the U. D. C. has constituted itself guardian for Greenfield churchhouse and graveyard. This fact is profoundly gratifying, since it is always painful to find graveyards have become "neglected spots."

The 1860 census shows that Ruth Graves, a native of Ver-mont, age 51, and by profession a common-school teacher, was an inmate of the residence of Joel S. Graves, at Old Greenfield. It also shows that Roxy Ann Graves, age 23, a native of Florida, who had the same profession, likewise lived with Joel S. Graves. The former was a sister of Mr. Graves, and the latter his daughter. We have omitted to say that, in addition to Presbyterian church building, Mr. Graves was said to always build a school building. And this is what he did, at "Old Greenfield." The brick building at that place was divided into two rooms. One was for religious services, and the other was used as a school room. Both Ruth and Roxy Graves taught, at times, in that section of the building. We incline to the view that their work was of a very high order of excellence. And we are sure that the same can be said of Mr. Graves' preaching. He is said to have been a zealous proselyter for his church, although it was open for preachers of other faiths and orders.

Source: Covington, W. A.. History of Colquitt County. Atlanta, Ga.: Foote and Davies Co., 1937.

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