Colquitt County

Speaking of pretty girls and sparking, the girls of the pioneer period were not only easy to look at, according to all accounts, and judging by such daguerreotypes as we have seen; but there was nothing to prevent Nature having her way in the business certain to arise, when youth meets youth. Marriage was both natural and easy. Land was cheap, sometimes selling as low as 25 cents per acre, and cheap land is essential to the organization of families. .

It is a tradition in Colquitt that, when "Uncle Bryant Norman" appeared in the legislature as representative of Colquitt County, and was asked by some one what was the population of Colquitt, he answered, "mostly, beef and tatcrs." The story is perhaps an invention of John Tucker, Norman's fellow citizen, at the time; but, if he did make that reply, he was not far wrong, at that. For cheap lands mean plenty of good solid foodstuffs; and Malthus is our authority for the assurance that a high birth-rale is dependent on a plentiful supply of "good rations." And it is easily demonstrated that a combination of good fat beef and baked yellow yams is about as perfect a food as has ever been in the world. Anyhow, the young folks of the pastoral era married, and were set up for making a living by their parents on a moderate sized piece of land with the necessary household equipment, and the babies came along as fast as the law allowed.

As illustrating this claim, reference is here made to Elder Henry Crawford Tucker, who had already settled in this section in 1830, and who died in the county about 1881. The Elder was married to three wives, who bore him thirty-two children, all of whom he brought to adulthood, and all of whom except one married and reared large families in Colquitt County. The exception was a girl of seventeen, who died from burns received when she fell into a kettle of boil-ing syrup and figs, which she was tending in the yard at her father's residence. The Elder himself was killed by a run-away horse, when he was still "going good" at eighty-one.

In 1898 Hiram Hancock, a grand-son, by the way, of Elder Tucker, married Emma Strickland, a grand-daughter of James M. Norman, another pioneer of Colquitt. This couple did not have a dime, but they bought some cheap land "on a credit," and went to work. Hiram "muscled out" the payments and got a deed to the land, which, by that time, was worth two or three times the original purchase price. In the meantime, his wife was doing her own work and having a girl baby every two years, and less time. She had eleven of them, one at a time, and died in child-bed with twin boys. The father himself is now dead; but every one of the thirteen children is alive and well, and a self-supporting citizen of Colquitt County.

Berry Hancock, a brother of Hiram, married Ella Strickland, a sister of Emma, and they had, in all, fourteen children, raising ten of them. Jim Strickland, their brother, has seventeen children living, by his two wives. J. EL Edmondson married Florence Strickland, sister to Emma and Ella, and this couple lives in Colquitt County with their eleven children. The parents of all these Stricklands had ten children themselves. Dan Strickland, their uncle, raised seventeen children by his two wives. Steven and Elijah Strickland, cousins of Emma, et al., have eleven children each, by one wife.

Instances of such large families in Colquitt, now and in the past, could be extended till it would make a good-size book.   All this seems the more remarkable, when it is considered that, for the most part of the pastoral era, not a soul in the county had ever heard of a screened door or window, a germ, or a vitamin. Since seeing is believing, we close this chapter with a copy of a photograph taken at a family reunion on the occasion of a birthday of Hon. John Tucker. All in this group are descendants of Mr. Tucker, and his wife, Susan, except some elderly people, sitting at his right on the front row. It is put in because it is a good "Beef an' Tater" exhibit.

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

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