Playing With Guns

All the little boys that lived in our neighborhood are all grown now, but a few years ago the three streets where we live were raucous with their activity. At first all the moms would make phone calls to make sure it was alright if the boys played at a particular house. Later, as they got older they were given more leeway and pretty much came and went from various houses as they pleased. Bikes, skateboards, and big wheels littered various yards as they moved through the neighborhood like a herd of locusts.

Sometimes their play became loud and a little dangerous, but hey, you really haven't "arrived" as a mother of a young boy until you utter the words, "Hey, watch out! You're going to put an eye out with that thing!"

I count myself fortunate that the majority of Dear Son's play never crossed the line to something more dangerous.

It would appear that young men have always played hard even back in the late 1800s. I found a particular article dated October, 1883 from The Weekly Star, the paper in Douglasville at the time.

The article stated Mr. Joseph H. Camp of Chapel Hill was shot in the right thigh by Mr. Abijah Arnold at the bar room of Mr. G.B. Stewart.

I haven't done any genealogy on either young man other than just a glance, so I'm not sure of their ages, but they were old enough to be sitting in one of the many saloons that were located around the courthouse.

G.B. Stewart had a saloon on Pray Street, but later moved his establishment to the corner of Price and Broad.

Generally, the only difference between the saloons of the Wild West and the Douglasville saloons were the gunfights, as the folks who frequented the Douglasville saloons preferred to fight with knives and their fists. A week without a street fight was rare during the saloon heyday, and during election time votes could be bought for a shot of whiskey.

However, this time the weapon of choice was not a knife or someone's fist. The weapon was a pistol - a toy pistol - to be exact.

The paper stated, "A toy pistol did the mischief. Exactly how it was done we could not ascertain as there was conflicting rumors about it."

One possible story advised Arnold had bought the toy for seventy-five cents and was revolving the cylinder while he showed it to Camp.

The pistol discharged.

The other story is more plausible since drinking was more than likely involved. Some folks believed the young men had been quarreling, and the discharge from the pistol wasn't so accidental.

Camp was carried to the store of Dorsett & McElreath where today's Precedence building is located at the corner of Campbellton and Broad Street. Arnold ran for the doctor.

Soon Arnold returned with Dr. P.S. Verdery. The good doctor probed the wound and cut out the bail. He advised the wound was serious. Camp was taken to his home at Chapel Hill to recover.

Efforts to get the saloons in Douglasville closed down had already started in 1883, but prohibition wouldn't pass until October 28, 1885. At that time there were only three saloons remaining in the city. 

I feel certain this one incident of "play" was used by those wanting to close the drinking establishments down.

Early City Ordinances and Fines

Well, television has the Emmys and the world of cinema has the Academy Awards, but one of my favorite awards is the Stellas.

Not familiar?

The Stellas are given to people who file frivolous lawsuits.   They are named after Stella Liebeck….the woman behind the words “Caution- Hot!” on each and every cup of McDonald’s coffee.    While I realize Ms. Liebeck….and elderly woman…was burned terribly and McDonalds had been warned for years via customer complaints their coffee was too hot there are other Stella award winners that are beyond reasonable and reach the bizarre and brazen category. 

  

One Stella award winner was attacked by a squirrel outside a shopping mall and claimed her injuries could have been prevented if the mall had warned her that squirrels were living outside the mall doors.

A…..mazing. 

I’ve never actually seen an attack squirrel.  I have some that squeal their gibberish and peer over the gutters at me, but attack?   Hardly.   Perhaps it’s the mall variety of squirrel that’s the most dangerous.

 Another plaintiff who won a Stella award blamed Mazda Motors for her injuries in a car wreck claiming the company failed to provide instructions regarding the safe and proper use of a seatbelt.

Seriously?

Perhaps each vehicle should come with its own private stewardess so we can receive the seatbelt, exit and life vest tour every time we venture from our driveway.

I really shouldn’t be surprised.   There are and have been all sorts of crazy laws throughout history…..

Laws are necessary.  You simply can’t live with a group of humans and not have laws.   While laws certainly don’t prevent bad things from happening…..they can serve as a deterrent and the consequences for breaking laws can eventually protect us from those who can’t seem to follow laws.  

But, sometimes laws are passed because someone wants to promote something or someone did something stupid.  Also, from what I can see it’s much more fun for our lawmaking bodies to pass laws than it is for them to repeal them….especially when they have become antiquated.   It’s interesting to see what still remains on the books in some jurisdictions.

I’ve been told when you visit the City of Gainesville, Georgia, you must eat your fried chicken with your hands.  Now, if you happen to know that Gainesville considers itself the chicken capital of the world then it makes sense they want to promote eating fried chicken with your hands…..but a law?   Any tried and true Southerner would know to eat fried chicken with your hands.

At one time in the city of Columbus, Georgia it was against the law to sit on your front porch in an indecent position.  First of all…..what I might consider indecent you might consider decent.

  
Second….I’d love to hear the story behind that little law. 

It is also rumored the state of Georgia still has at least 75 laws on the books dealing with rice paddies.

Yes, rice paddies.

This dates back to a time when rice was the number one crop before the Civil War along the Savannah, Altamaha and Ogeechee Rivers.   Later a hurricane damaged most of the coastal rice fields and they were never replaced, but the laws remain…..just in case, I guess.

The City of Douglasville is no different.   If you go back through the Douglasville city ordinances during the late 1800s some things stand out……

For example, citizens would be fined if they tied a mule, a horse, or a cow under a tree and left it there for any amount of time.

Since automobiles weren’t around then it makes sense that folks would travel to town using animals…..and if they had to go into the courthouse or one of the businesses along Broad Street the animals had to be hitched up somewhere, right?  

The downtown parking lot didn’t exist then…..and at the time I write this it doesn’t exist either due to construction…..but that’s another column for another day, so I would guess the appropriate place back then would have been the road outside the buildings, but apparently some folks wanted to tie their animals up underneath the trees around the courthouse or even James Grove.    I guess with the animal droppings and the animals grazing on the grass and flowers the ladies had planted in James Grove… it would have become an issue.

Docket’s for the Mayor’s Court indicate Tom McElreath’s horse, Julia Clayton’s cow and George Gamble’s mule were all found tethered beneath trees within the city limits.   All three were fined one dollar.

On the subject of animal droppings…….another early town ordinance called for all males between the ages 16 to 45 to work on the city streets for 15 days a year or pay $1.75 if they refused.  I would imagine since the roads were dirt back then the road work would have consisted of filling in the constant mud holes……there was a large one at the intersection of Campbellton and Broad.  Folks finally named the hole because it couldn’t be maintained due to the traffic.  They called it Hog Wallow if I remember correctly.   It would also take a regular crew of folks to keep the animal droppings off the streets.   I don’t guess folks were given baggies back then to keep the area around their horse or mule neat and tidy.

Some men were exempt from the road crews including men missing an arm or leg.  The Mayor was exempt along with the councilmen and licensed ministers.

During the late 1800s men who were missing an arm or a leg were very commonplace as they were more often than not Civil War veterans.  I can understand their exemption, but the other exemptions seem a little extreme to me.   What about those men who were “filled with the Spirit” and “called to preach the Gospel”, but were not licensed?  I guess they had to draw the line somewhere….

Also….why was the mayor and councilmen exempt?   It wouldn’t have been the first time a politician was known to shovel the……oh, never mind. 

 Traffic violations during the late 1800s were also recorded in the Mayor’s Court dockets, but they didn’t involve automobiles.   Early research indicates two men were fined one dollar each for riding their mules on Douglasville’s sidewalks.

 In the early days Sundays in Douglasville were spent resting, visiting, and going to church, however, some early Douglasville citizens had a choice….and used  the day to pursue other activities such as shooting craps, playing cards or making a little wager on a game of pool at one of the local saloons.

 Bars in Douglasville dated back to 1877 when the first license to sell liquor was issued to G.R.Turner, Douglasville’s City Treasurer.  Four years later Mr. Turner would obtain a license that allowed him to offer a pool table for his customers to use.  

Other saloons followed including one owned by G. G. Stewart.   Licenses to serve liquor were $37.50 per year.   I’ve written about Douglasville’s Saloon Era here for a more complete picture of that time.

There were other entertainments….

In June, 1880 G.B. Stewart obtained a license to operate the first ten pin bowling alley.

During this time if city ordinances were broken citizens would appear in Mayor’s Court.  Most of the court cases involved fighting and failure to pay taxes.  Back then taxes ranged from twenty cents to one dollar.   Failure to remit your tax meant you might be sentenced to work on the city streets and/or pay a three dollar fine plus court costs…..or a week in jail.   Fines for fighting were around one dollar.

Hmmm….I know some people I’d be willing to smack for a dollar fine.  How about you?

Fines were also issued within the city limits for cussing (two dollars), for discharging a firearm within the city limits (two dollars or five days), for disturbing a meeting of the medical society (three dollars) and for getting on or off a moving train (one dollar).  

Just like today laws were usually passed to solve a problem, so I have to wonder about the story regarding the disturbance at the medical society meeting.   I wonder what went on there…..

The more information  I find through my research….the more questions I have.

Have a great week!!!

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Some of this information regarding city ordinances first appeared in a 1960s column Robert Griggs had in the Sentinel.

Douglasville's Saloon Era

The word saloon conjures up images of the dusty west with gunslingers, cowboys, soldiers, miners and brazen women. There was card playing, lively piano music and fights involving fists and guns a la Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday.

By January, 1877, Douglasville had her own saloons as well, with the passing of an ordinance that ushered in the Saloon Era, and for the next nine years citizens could obtain a drink of whiskey in one of several saloons that advertised regularly in The Weekly Star, the main Douglasville newspaper of the time.

Venture over to the west corner of Broad Street and Courthouse Square (known as Pray Street in the 1870s) and you would find yourself in front of the first saloon opened under the new ordinance by Mr. G.R. Turner. Mr. Turner was a member of the city council and also served as the city clerk.

The building that house the saloon was also known as the Old Skint Chestnut store building and was the site of the original skint chestnut tree that gave the area its original name.

Other saloons during the period were the Alligator Saloon, the Magnolia, White's Saloon, an Stewart's Saloon was located on Pray Street before it moved to the corner of Price and Broad.

The only difference between the saloons of the Wild West and the Douglasville saloons were the gunfights, as the folks who frequented the Douglasville saloons preferred to fight with knives and their fists. Many a citizen found themselves cut up during a knife fight, but Fannie Mae Davis' book regarding Douglas County history relates there were no murders. A week without a street fight was rare during the saloon heyday, and during election time votes could be bought for a shot of whiskey. By 1881, the citizens of Douglasville and other cities and towns across Georgia had had it with the street fights and bad element the saloons brought in.

This time period also coincided with the beginning of the Progressive Era -- a period of time in American history where reforms in social, political, an economic life took place. Areas of reform included women's suffrage, education, labor reforms including child labor laws, and even prohibition. Many of the calls for reform in Georgia did not come from political stars of the time but came from journalists -- men President Theodore Roosevelt is given credit for labeling the journalist as "muckrackers" because even though they told the truth they continually "raked the muck".

Douglasville was no different. Our fair town had a muckraker in Charles O. Peavey, the editor of The Weekly Star. Peavy began to speak out on the evils of whiskey as early as 1881 and by 1884 the issue had become an election focus. Mr. Peavy also operated a barbershop at the corner of Broad and Bowden streets.

The call for temperance across the state of Georgia had begun much earlier than 1881. The Georgia State Temperance Society had formed in 1828, and when the state chapter of the Women's Christian Temperance Union was established in 1880, efforts in the state really picked up steam. As the debate for Prohibition became stronger in Douglasville whole families split over wanting the saloons to close or keep them open.

Peavy compared the removal of the saloons to Shakespeare's The Tragedy of MacBeth using the popular line "Out, out damned spot" in one of his editorials calling for the saloons to be shut down.

He was interested in sending delegates to the State Temperance Convention in Atlanta during June, 1885 and US Senator, Dr. W.H. Felton of Cartersville, a man whose oratory skills were on the same par with the famous William Jennings Bryan, spoke in Douglasville against the ills of whiskey and he railed against "the whiskey men" -- those citizens who owned the saloons.

Prohibition was finally voted on and passed in Douglasville on October 28, 1885 passing by 114 votes. At this time there were three saloons remaining in the city. The city council worked with saloon owners who still had inventory to dispose of, but soon the saloon era was a thing of the past in Douglasville.

You can read more about Doc Holliday's connection with Georgia by reading my post The Hollidays, the Hamiltons and the Wilkes: A Connection over at Georgia on My Mind.