Blips on a Map.....Wilsonville, Hannah, and McWhorter

We tend to think the little towns and communities we are so familiar with today are the same ones that existed years ago, but it just isn’t true.   For the most part when examining old maps we do see some of the same names, but there are always unfamiliar ones.

Take the following map from 1883 I’ve posted below.   We can distinctly see a separate Douglas County and Campbell County since our county was formed in 1870.  

Feel free to click on the maps to get a closer view....then you can return to this article by hitting the back button.

Douglas County, 1883

Focus in on the words "Campbell County" and then let your eyes move to the left a bit.  Within Douglas County you clearly see the word "Wilsonville."

Wilsonville?

Why is it on the 1883 map, but isn’t widely known today? 

Places just don’t disappear, right?  

Fannie Mae Davis’ history of Douglas County advises one of the first settlers in the southern part of what would one day be Douglas County was a man by the name of Moses Wilson.  He packed up his wagon and along with wife and young boys he made the trek from North Carolina to Georgia in 1829 after the Indian removal.  Sources tell me when Moses first reached Georgia the land he settled on was actually along the Chattahoochee River in Carroll County, but once Douglas County was created he found himself to be a citizen of Douglas.

  

Over the next few years Moses Wilson added to his land holdings until he had acquired several hundred acres of land.   In fact, I located one such property transaction between Cheadle Cochran and Moses Wilson recorded in Deed Book C, Pages 228-229 for Campbell County dated October 9, 1839. There were obviously many others that can be located within the old records of Carroll and Douglas Counties, too.

Moses oldest son, Peter, stayed on the property and per Fannie Mae Davis he eventually took over his father’s holdings.   Another son named Joseph traveled over to Villa Rica which was a rough and tumble gold mining town at the time, and he opened a general store. Years later, his two sons….Ulla and Wallace became leading Villa Rica merchants.

Moses youngest child….John A. Wilson, had been born in North Carolina in 1828, and was no more than a year old when the family traveled to Georgia.   John traveled again….but this time a shorter distance….when around 1850 he left his father’s home and moved to Hurricane Creek just a little further north from his father’s holdings.  There along the creek, John had a wool carder as well as grist and saw mill.

Community names seemed to spring up around the mail stops, and in this case since the post office was located on Moses Wilson’s land the area became known as Wilsonville.  George W. Burnett was listed as the postmaster as well as a physician in the area. 

The 1881 Georgia Gazeeteer indicates the area received mail four times a week.  Isham N. Brown was also listed as physician, V.P. Burnett was Justice of the Peace, W.L. Davenport was a Methodist preacher and saw mill owner, E.H. McWhorter was also a Methodist preacher and blacksmith, Allen Manning was mechanic along with J.S. Moss and Samuel Pate.   J.J. Shadix was a Baptist preacher, S.A. Steed was the constable and Moses youngest son, John A. Wilson…. was the grist mill owner.

One of the Douglas County little courthouses was placed at Wilsonville as well…..the little courthouse for the Fairplay District Courthouse….. where justice of the peace cases were heard and citizens could vote during elections.

Douglas County established its first Board of Education on March 25, 1871 and John A. Wilson was installed as the first president.  Flint Hill Academy was one of the first schools organized.  It was a one room cabin and was located on the back of the lot where Flint Hill Methodist Church stands today.

By 1879 the Georgia Gazeeteer indicates 75 people were living at Wilsonville.   Mail arrived weekly by horseback.  By this time there was a shoemaker in the little village named J.J. Kimbrell.

In 1880, a terrible fire destroyed the mills belonging to John A. Wilson.   By this time he and his wife, Lucinda, were elderly, and they decided not to rebuild.   The post office moved a few miles south and for a time mail in the area was addressed “Hannah” instead of Wilsonville since John’s daughter-in-law, Hannah Wilson (married to Noah) took over the duties of postmistress.   A school by the name of Mt. Zion was close by and took on the name Hannah as well.   Hannah was very close to the area where Tyree Road intersects with Post Road today.

John A. Wilson and his wife moved to Douglasville.  Fannie Mae Davis surmises they probably left with a heavy heart since “they [were leaving] the village they had built and loved.”  The Wilsons moved into one of the first houses along Bowden Street and John was appointed postmaster of Douglasville in July, 1890.  Later his wife took the position in 1893.

Notice the changes on the  1899 map of Douglas County I've included below.    You no longer see the name Wilsonville, however, you see the community of Hannah…..and there’s something new in the vicinity…..the community of McWhorter.

Douglas County, 1899

By 1883, three years after the Wilson mills were destroyed by fire...the Wilsonville area had become known as McWhorter.

When the Hannah post office closed in 1885 the mail was sent to a popular store in the area operated by Dave Tolar.  The name was then registered as McWhorter since the store was located on land belonging to Matthew McWhorter and his recently deceased brother, Elijah H. McWhorter who had been a pastor in the area.

The little courthouse was moved to McWhorter.  Fannie Mae Davis relates, “As people were saying, “It takes a post office and a courthouse to start a town.”

The area had been once been known as Skinner, but the young people had a different name referring to it as Tight Squeeze or Fitsquese.   I have yet to discover the reason why, but even the local Douglasville paper referred to the area as Fitsquese.

An issue of The Weekly Star, dated 1886 mentions “Fitsquese is on the boom.”

In fact, the 1886 Georgia Gazetteer provides the names of some thirty-six farmers working the surrounding countryside.  By 1887 the population had increased to 160 and by 1880 there were 200 souls calling McWhorter home.

McWhorter wasn’t just a community or a mail stop….it was a town!

McWhorter news regularly appeared in The New South….a paper published in Douglasville.  In June, 1883 the paper published a story concerning McWhorter.   The article stated, ”Our town is on the boom.  Town plots are selling at $150 each, which is considered a fair price for suburban lots.   The Methodist have just completed the best house of worship in the county (Flint Hill).  It has a Masonic and Alliance Hall over head….We have a splendid school….We have two doctors in our town, G.W. and W.K. Burnett, who do a driving business.  They both keep fast horses.  They run a drug store and have an extensive farming business.  M.R. McWhorter is the blacksmith and politician of the town.  Dan Gaston of the firm McWhorter-Gaston is the woodwork man.  G.T. Giles and S.A. Griffin are real estate agents for this section.

The paper also published social news as well…..” J.T. Bartlett while engaged in rolling a log into his saw mill carriage had his head and nose badly mashed.  His wife hardly recognized it as the lovely nose of yore.  James Gaston and Joe Barron have each lost a mule recently.”

By the turn of the century there were new businesses…a barber shop, ginnery, and shingle mill….two additional doctors….W.L. Friddel, a native of Douglas County and Delvous Houseworth of nearby Clem, Georgia which was between Carrollton and Whitesburg along State Route 27.   Mrs. Lizzie Griffith operated a millinery store at McWhorter as well.

Flint Hill Academy had become Flint Hill High School serving grades 1-9  in a larger building and two churches had been added to the area……Basket Creek and Fair Field Methodist which Fannie Mae Davis advises were the Black churches in the area.

By 1914, a telephone exchange was installed in a store owned by O.H. and Joseph Hines, but by 1923 it was discontinued as Southern Bell had entered the scene and modern phone service became the norm.  Eventually roads were paved and unfortunately that meant the growth of McWhorter would stall since     people were able to move around the county a bit easier and reach the larger stores of Douglasville and even Atlanta.  Stores in McWhorter began to close and finally the intersection of Highways 5 and 166 began to take on the appearance we see today.

The final map I’m posting is from 1999, and as you can see…..Wilsonville, Hannah, and even McWhorter are just historical footnotes.

As Fannie Mae Davis states, “Two great highways cross paths where years and years ago, a dozen or more business places were in operation.”    People zoom by each and every day without a thought to the thriving town that once existed there.

His Honor and the Sacred Harp

When I was growing up the stifling heat of July mean one thing…..it was almost time for the Land Family reunion where the offspring of several generations from two people would gather at Sharp Mountain Baptist Church in Ball Ground, Georgia for dinner on the ground.  

In those days we met under a shelter outside the church where the longest table constructed of slabs of marble and concrete blocks I had ever seen extended through a stand of pine trees.  The table would be a checkerboard of various cotton tablecloths brought by the women for them to place their lunch.   All the designs formed a rather strange and beautiful quilt. 

Assorted picnic baskets and Tupperware would be unloaded and stacked underneath the table.   My mother’s Tupperware always had Band-aids stuck on the bottom with her neat handwriting…..Mrs. Geraldine B. Land.   Lord forbid someone got the wrong ham carrier or salad bowl!

The table literally groaned underneath all of the food – every sort of vegetable you could imagine from stewed squash and green beans to fried okra and sweet potatoes – some topped with marshmallows, some with pecans and brown sugar, of course.  There would be fried chicken, country fried steak and salmon patties….roast with carrots and potatos, sliced ham, and pork roast, too.  Biscuits, corn bread, and every type of dessert you could imagine.  I always grabbed one of the largest Chinet plates in the stack and promptly filled it to capacity.

 

After dinner the kids would go running off up the hill to the cemetery to play tag among the headstones of family members long gone or play school in one of the Sunday School rooms.  The adults of every age would talk and contemplate their full bellies in lounge chairs scattered around the table.

And then the singing would begin. 

My Great Uncle Homer loved his singing.   He’d head into the sanctuary by himself and fuss at any of us who might be running through the church building.  He’d tell us “the singing” was about to begin and we better hush up and be still.

Homer would begin to holler for the adults to come on in and sing…..or at least listen, and bit by bit most everyone would straggle in to watch and hear Uncle Homer.   You couldn’t help it.   The comforting sound would draw you in.   He’d select the hymns and then lead us in “a singin’” as he would call it. 

I loved it….and miss it very much.   Uncle Homer has been gone for several years and reunions really aren’t the same without sitting on that wooden pew with my cardboard fan printed with Jesus at The Last Supper on one side and ads from local businesses on the other trying to keep the hot air moving around me.  Everyone from 5 to 85 was flapping those fan so….it’s a wonder we all didn’t just lift up off the ground and rise to Glory.

Sweating and singing with family……it WAS glorious.

Like my Uncle Homer Douglasville’s Joseph S. James was a huge champion for singing – shape note signing, that is.

I’ve written about Judge James before here, and if you aren’t up to speed on Douglasville’s greatest champion and Founding Father then you really need to click through and read a bit. 

Go on…..click through and get up to speed.  I’ll still be here.

Judge James also had a love of music in his bones.   He was born in 1849…..to a singing teacher named Stephen James (1821-1872) and his wife….Martha Shipley.

Besides reading law James also attended the singing school of J.R. Turner and became what is described to be a tireless promoter of Sacred Harp singing in the Atlanta area.

I hear the crickets chirping.    I would imagine many readers might not know what the Scared Harp might be.  

Let me help…..

This website advises, Sacred Harp is a uniquely American tradition that brings communities together to sing four-part hymns and anthems…Technically, [the] style of singing is “shape note singing” because the musical notation uses heads in four distinct shapes to aid in sight-reading, but it is often called “Sacred Harp” singing because the books that most singers use today are called “The Sacred Harp”…The term “sacred harp” refers to the human voice – that is, the musical instrument you were given at birth…In 1844, “The Sacred Harp” was just one of more than 100 oblong hymn books published in the United States.  It has been continuously updated ever since.

This video is a great representation of shape note singing:

Joseph S. James was a shape note singer and composer.   He helped to organize the United Sacred Harp Musical Association in 1904. 

Between the years 1904 and 1911 he published five different works including the Revised Sacred Harp in 1911.  The revision added alto parts to most of the songs and restored several songs that had been deleted from the 1869-1870 version.  Unfortunately, the James’ revision ended up being challenged and our Judge James found himself defending himself in a lawsuit that he eventually lost.

You can read a little about the lawsuit here.

Of course the loss was a huge blow to Judge James, and in 1920 he wrote a pamphlet titled An Explanation of the Sacred Harp in order to defend his position regarding his version of the work.

It’s amazing to me Judge James had time to devote to shape note singing.  He was our first mayor, promoted the railroad through town, involved with our first cotton mill, as well as many other businesses and let’s not forget he had that law career as well.  

When Judge James passed from this Earth his memorial service in Atlanta attracted several hundred singers.  I can only imagine what it sounded like as they tried to honor the man who had been so devoted to shape note singing.   Judge James is buried in Douglasville Cemetery.

The Judge was given credit as a collaborator with S.M. Denson for the arrangements for the song Traveling and The Great Roll Call which is performed in the video below by singers at Mount Pisgah in Stroud, Alabama.

Enjoy!

The soundtrack for the movie Cold Mountain is also a great resource for shape-note singing.  Many of the tracks are found on YouTube.

I feel certain my Uncle Homer and Judge James are still singing….perhaps they have even teamed up and are leading a band of angels!

A new documentary regarding The Sacred Harp and shape note singing will be released in March.  You can find out more about it here.

Have a great week and please share this column regarding Douglas County history with a friend or share with your Facebook friends. 

Jump into the Poole House!

Last weekend I had the pleasure to visit Le Jardin Blanc on Strickland Street. I walked around the gardens and enjoyed tea as part of the Hydrangea Festival’s events.

After tea I was able to roam about the historic home alone from room to room with my camera, so this week my column is heavy with images instead of words.

Let’s just say I was in heaven! le Jardin Blanc has all the ingredients for a nice afternoon as far as I’m concerned–great food, interesting teas, wonderful décor, beautiful gardens, a little shopping, and history! 

The correct historical name for the property is the Poole-Huffine-Bulloch-Rollins home, and at 144 years old it has quite a history.

It was built by William Haynes Poole, the very first physician and surgeon in the area before Douglasville or Douglas County existed by name. Dr. Poole began studying with Dr. M.F. La Dell in Cedartown, and earned his degree from Savannah Medical College where he served one year as an intern at the Marine Hospital...

THANK YOU for visiting “Every Now and Then” and reading the first few paragraphs of “Jump into the Poole House“ which is now one of the 140 chapters in my book “Every Now and Then: The Amazing Tales of Douglas County, Volume I”. 

Visit the Amazon link by clicking the book cover below where you can explore the table of contents and read a few pages of the book…plus make a purchase if you choose!


 

Ephraim Pray: An Amazing Man

Currently, I have the number twenty on the brain–as in twenty years. When I was twenty I was working as a paralegal for law firm in Marietta. Looking back on it now I had it made. I had my own money, but I lived with my parents. Mother was available as my cook and laundress while Daddy served as my advisor and back up banker. My main activity when not working or sleeping was hanging out with my friends.  

Even though I worked it wasn’t back-breaking labor. I was in a very nice air-conditioned office with machines such as a word processor and a copy machine to help me with my job which basically consisted of drafting complaints and researching case law. The attorney I worked with never came in before twelve each day, so twice a week I’d venture over to the courthouse and answer a calendar call on his behalf. I ate lunch out every day in places that had real waiters and cloth napkins. 

Even though I was great at my job and took it very seriously the words cushy, charmed and spoiled come to mind, but it wasn’t lost on this student of history I was experiencing a much different lifestyle at twenty than many of my female counterparts who had gone before me. I had more opportunities than my aunts had experienced, much more than either of my grandmothers, and my great-grandmothers would have been shocked I didn’t already have three or four kids trailing after me and one on my hip while I took care of the house, the garden full of produce and a yard full of chickens outside my back door. 

Go back to the 1820s and 1830s and life was just plain hard–not just for women, but things were difficult for men as well when compared to today.  Folks didn’t have the ease of today’s modern fabric regarding clothing choices, education was lacking unless you had money and the right connections, and modern conveniences such as the phone, electricity, and modern travel just didn’t exist.

To reach a certain age such as twenty years old and venture off to make your way in the word was a hard thing to do. There was no constant contact with loved ones and friends like there is today. Striking out on your own meant being on your own–TOTALLY!  Once you left your family’s side a letter could take several weeks to reach its destination. Overnight postal service didn’t exist.

In fact, if you left your family and moved to another state or even more than fifty miles away it was very probable you might never see your family again. Yet, people did leave their families and did make their own way in the world including a very important man in Douglasville history. 

Ephraim Pray – one of the area’s earliest citizens even before Douglas County or Douglasville existed, and he actually hailed from the North.
  

Yes! A Yankee in our midst! All joking aside, Ephraim Pray became a model for hard work and responsible citizenship...

THANK YOU for visiting “Every Now and Then” and reading the first few paragraphs of “Ephraim Pray: An Amazing Man“ which is now one of the 140 chapters in my book “Every Now and Then: The Amazing Tales of Douglas County, Volume I”. 

Visit the Amazon link by clicking the book cover below where you can explore the table of contents and read a few pages of the book…plus make a purchase if you choose! 

Let's Go Back in Time

This week I want you to imagine yourself traveling back through time to the spot where the old courthouse is located in downtown Douglasville. There you are....standing on the sidewalk on Broad Street facing where the old building is today. All the buildings along Douglasville's main street have fallen away and suddenly the street noise has ceased.

What do you see?

What?

A group of Cherokee Indians standing alongside a chestnut tree......a tree where all the bark has been scraped off?

Oops.....sorry.   You've gone too far.

Move ahead in time a little from that spot.

There. Try that.

What do you see?

Yes, it's okay that you still see the very large chestnut tree. Do you see any people? Yes, you are in the right place if you see a wagon with a white man and white woman.

The year is 1835, and the land where you stand is still part of Campbell County. Douglas County will not exist for another 35 years, and very soon the ten-mile wide No-Man's Land separating the Creek and Cherokee Nations will no longer be necessary. The strip of land had been created in 1821 by the state of Georgia as a buffer zone between the Lower Creek Nation and the southernmost settlements of the Cherokee Nation since they fought constantly. The agreement stated the natives could not settle within the buffer zone but could hunt and fish there.

The Indian Removal Act of 1830 was the death knell to the Creeks an the Cherokees in Georgia. The Creeks ceded their lands and were removed from the state in 1832, and by 1838, following a lengthy court battle the Cherokees would walk that long Trail of Tears.

While there were many wagons with white settlers entering western Georgia one in particular is important to the Douglasville story....that would be the wagon carrying W.G. Black and his wife, Sarah. They had traveled all the way from Carrabus, North Carolina along the Indian trails to Campbell County, Georgia. At the Chattahoochee River they crossed at Buzzards Roost, an island in the middle of the river, and finally made their way along the trail to the lone chestnut tree high up on the ridge within No-Man's Land.

Black decided to settle on the land staking out a claim on both sides of the trail. Soon he saw the advantages of his location as more and more wagons passed his place close to the tree that would become known as the community of Skint Chestnut. W.G. Black set up a trading post, dug a well, and set up a few camping spots for travelers to rest along the journey.

Trading posts were necessary in those days just like we need convenience stores, fast-food joints, and hotels and motels today when we take long trips. Travelers could meet up with other people, hear the latest news, purchase and barter necessary items and most importantly they could just rest.

W.G. Black and his wife are both buried at Winn Wilson Cemetery found on N. Flat Rock Road off Cedar Mountain Road in the woods behind the Rufus Nicholson farm (as of 1977) northwest of Douglasville per this website.