Colquitt County

 Colquitt in 1898

The preceding chapter deals with Moultrie and Colquitt County in 1895, which was two years after the first railroad reached Moultrie. We are now to deal with our subject as we found it in 1898. Our first personal contact with Colquitt was on the second day of June, 1898. We had been admitted to the bar twelve days before, at Ellijay, Georgia, by Judge George F. Gober, of the Blue Ridge Circuit. We visited our wife's kin at Arlington and at Camilla, and with her, drove over from Camilla in a two-horse hack, coming through Hartsfield, and the section that is now Funston. We arrived at Moultrie at high noon, and took dinner with W. H. Budd, the Methodist preacher, and went into a rented house belonging to Mr. J. F. Monk. The next day, we took dinner with Mr. H. C. MacKenzie, whose wife was a relative. Mr. John H. Smithwick, our professional partner to be, had preceded us one day, having left Cherokee County about the same time we did; but he came direct to Moultrie.

In a biography of William Tecumseh Sherman appears the account of how his parents, both college people, went West as advised to do by Horace Greeley, and settled at Lancaster, Ohio. The book says, "It was a good place to build up a law practice. The county was new, and there was much title and transfer work, as well as land litigation. Also, there were several saloons, which furnished a lot of criminal practice."

This exactly describes conditions in Colquitt County in 1898. Plenty of title litigation, and much real estate transferring. Also, there were nine saloons. Also there was a criminal killing about every four weeks, and we did not count Negroes.   It was a young lawyer's paradise, if he knew how to charge and collect a fee. The prosperity sound-ing out of the advertisement described and quoted in a preced-ing chapter was rising right on. W. B. Dukes, the "model mer-chant," was still running his five stores. He was Moultrie's leading merchant alright, his main store being situated on the northeast comer, formed by the intersection of the streets where Friedlander's store is now located. Monk Murphy and Co., a partnership composed of Miles Monk, Sr., Henry Mur-phy and J. F. Monk, was operating a general store, where the Moultrie Cafe is now located. Jack Walker, the lawyer, was gone, as was Attorney Lester. John A. Wilkes had just come to Moultrie, and formed a partnership with J. L. Hall. H. C. MacKenzie and J. D. MacKenzie were practicing law in partnership. Drs. Sessums and Peters sole members of the medical profession in 1895, had been joined by a Dr. Ellis, whose office was on the ground floor of a building in the middle of the block immediately south of the courthouse square. He had a mounted human skeleton in his consultation office. Dr. Holtzendorf, plying the profession of den-tistry in 1895, was gone in 1898. Dr. J. H. Cook, however, was still in Moultrie.

W. C. Vereen, who lived on his turpentine farm in northwest Colquitt in 1895, had moved to Moultrie, in 1896, and lived in a two-story frame building, on the present site of his elaborate brick residence.

The Moultrie Banking Company, which was not in existence in 1895, was here and going good on June 1, 1898, with W. W. Ashburn, president; W. C. Vereen, vice-president, and J. H. Clark, cashier. J. B. Norman, Jr., owner of a grocery business in 1895, had closed this business in June, 1898. There were only two brick buildings in Moultrie in 1898, and none in 1895. Antone Huber was laying brick on the second story of his two-story building, situated then and now on the west side of the courthouse square. Battle Bros., a firm composed of George and Joe J, Battle, had a kind of livery stable and wagon and buggy business where the Sunday school extension of the First Baptist Church of Moultrie now stands.

The Battles were very eccentric, on occasion. For instance, late in the year 1898, this firm put in a stock of undertakers' supplies in their store, and advertised that part of their business by suspending a full-sized black coffin to a beam extending out over the sidewalk at right angles to their warehouse. In a night or two, the coffin was missing; and was presently found over in the Ocapilco swamp, filled with mud. Some fifteen year later, Joe Battle had a livery stable and a live-stock warehouse running back north from First Avenue, East, and back to the present Friedlander store. In course of time, he cut off on the side of his warehouse a storeroom, for a stock of milliners' supplies; and in a day or two, across the whole front of his building and high up above the roof, was a big sign in box-car letters, carrying the words, "J. J. Battle, Millinery and Mules."

By 1898, J. B. Norman, Jr., Hon. Martin F. Amorous, and Major Bacon had acquired extensive timber interests on the eastern side of Colquitt County, and had built a tramway to their sawmills which were located about fourteen miles east of Moultrie. From Sparks, a station on the G. S. & F. Ry., and then decided to extend it to Moultrie, having taken out a charter for it, under the name of Sparks, Moultrie and Gulf Railroad. This had been done in the middle of 1898, and daily schedules had been put on between Moultrie and Sparks. Henry Parrish presided in its Moultrie depot, which was near the present A. B. & C. depot. By 1898, a good many thousands of acres of timbered lands had been worked for turpentine, especially that portion within hauling distance of Sparks. The men who had worked this turpentine were J. B. Norman, Jr., W. H. Barber, Duncan Sinclair, W. B. Connoley and a Mr. DeVane. Mr. W. C. Vereen came to Colquitt for the purpose of going into the naval stores business in the neighborhood of Pineopolis, only to find that Mr. DeVane had already preempted it. As a result Mr. Vereen went to the northwestern part of the county, and secured a bonanza in virgin, workable timber.

Others who were at work in the naval stores business in 1898 in Colquitt were A. C. Darling, and James Holmes, operating separate stills in the eastern suburbs of Moultrie. D. A. Autrey, with a hundred thousand dollar investment, at Autreyville, in southern Colquitt, and Major John K. McNeil toward the southeast corner of Colquitt, was doing an ex-tensive naval stores business, in connection with his son, Thos. McNeil.

There was held in Colquitt County, on June 6, 1898, an election for State and county offices. Perhaps it was a primary; but anyhow, there was no registration and Negroes voted in droves.

The candidates for governor were Robt. Berner, Spencer Atkinson and Allen D. Candler. Pearsall and Shipp managed for Atkinson, while McKenzie and McKenzie sponsored Candler's interests in Colquitt. Candler spoke, just before the election, at the courthouse.   High light of the speech— "And fellow citizens," he squeaked, "I'm against taking taxes from the poor for the upkeep of the University of Georgia, for the purpose of teaching dudes to dance. My observation has been that, about the time you learn a boy the meaning of the Latin hie, haec, hoc, he forgets the meaning of gee, haw. Buck." The audience roared in glee, and Bob Shipp, Atkinson's manager in Colquitt, said to those around him, "Let's go, boys, the old man's got the county."

In the afternoon of June 6, we acted as a clerk to the election managers, this machinery was seated in one of the rooms on the ground floor of the old courthouse, and on the south side. The voters came up the walk from the south of the courthouse square, and handed their tickets, marked and folded, through a window. Presently, in some excitement, a turpentine operator, brought up forty-three Negroes on the walk. He stood at the head of the column, and as a Negro would walk up, he handed him a marked ticket and watched him while he stuck it in the window. The column reached nearly, if not quite, through the turn-stile on the south side of the square. Two white flankers walked up and down the column, to prevent the opposition to the ticket being voted by the men from getting any of them away from their bossman.

"Can that man vote all those Negroes?" we asked of lawyer Bob Shipp, who with us was in the room where they were voting.

"It's a pretty safe bet he can," answered Shipp.

"Well, if I were running for anything, I'd like to have the support of that gentleman," we mused.

Just about that time, a man tried to yank one of the "voters" out of the line, when, with great promptness, one of the flankers shot him. The shot was not fatal, but it was temporarily effective all around; and after this, the turpentine man was not interfered with any further in his politics. The turpentine operator is still alive, a resident of a nearby county; and the man who got shot is still going. But we are under the impression that he has quit fooling with another man's political "rights."

In 1898, there were no paved sidewalks in Moultrie, although some planked sidewalking is remembered in front of the stores, over in front of the south side of the courthouse square. The streets around the square were very sandy, and much cut up with the traffic. About 1904, the city authorities spread a coating of native red clay over the surface of the streets around the square; and Attorney John A. Wilkes told us that he had just overheard a visiting woman say, "There'll be no endurin' the people of Moultrie henceforth, now that she has clayed her streets." John thought the remark was in poor taste, and attributed it to envy. Said he thought that she must have come from either Camilla or Tifton.

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

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