"OLD LONGSTREET"
"Slowly westward the course of empire takes its way."
Ask almost any native hereabout where his people came from before they moved
into Georgia and the answer will be, "Virginia, North Carolina, or South Carolina."
These three states grandmothered, or grandfathered, practically the whole
South, and a large percentage of the Middle West.
The gates of entry into our section of Middle Georgia seemed to be five or
six shoally fords or ferries on the Oconee River between Milledgeville and
Dublin, and the Indian trails leading from them seemed all to converge towards
the most accessible crossing of the Ocmulgee over its shoal water at Old
Hartford, in the whole stretch between Macon and the river mouth.
The Old Hartford main trail, leaving the river, soon spangles out into about
six others:
"The Up-River Road" towards Macon; "The Down-River Road" towards Eastman;
"The Chicken Road" towards Dubois; "The Oochee Road" towards Cochran and Dublin;
"The Ball's Ferry Road" towards Sandersville and Augusta; "The Hartford Road"
proper, or "The Federal Stage and Post Road" towards Jeffersonville, Irwinton,
and Milledgeville.
This last-named road also became a military road, and along it moved Georgia
militia, and the few federal troops available, to Old Hartford, in 1812, to
withstand the invasion of Middle Georgia by British and Seminole enemies.
General Andrew Jackson used either this road or the "Up-River Road" in
February, 1818, on his way to punish the Seminoles. Coming down the Ocmulgee
from Old Fort Hawkins, he took
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either "The Federal Stage and Post Road" through old Longstreet, or the upper
river road, he does not make clear which.
As he camped a week at the Manning Phillips place, a mile and a half this
side of the southern mouth of the upper river road, he would have been "back
trailing" on his objective, the Hartford crossing; and "Old Hickory" did not
back trail.
Probably one of the first settlers in this section was a Revolutionary
soldier, George Walker II, whose father, George Walker, settled in Burke County
in 1756. He built his home near Shellstone Creek about 1806, slightly before
Pulaski was made a county, when land grants were made. I have some 1,808
gubernatorial grants in my line of title, derived from the Walkers.
George Walker's four sons, George III, David, Charles, and Thomas, built
their homes on a three-and-a-half-mile stretch of road on the "Federal Stage and
Post Road," one mile east of their father's settlement, and this three and a
half miles became known as "Longstreet."
George Walker III built near the Twiggs County line. About three-quarters of
a mile down the road was David's home. His son, David, surveyed the town of
Cochran when it was laid off in streets, and his son, J. A. Walker, is now
postmaster of Cochran. Another son, Dr. Thomas Duhart Walker, became Bleckley
County's member of the House of Representatives.
He was one of the original founders of the Baptist College upon the hill
where the Middle Georgia College now stands. He was also most active in having
this property converted to the use of the Middle Georgia College. He leaves a
number of descendants in Cochran.
In fact, take the Longstreeters out of Cochran, and there would be several
big holes. Great people, those old pioneers of the early nineteenth century.
The first house south of the Twiggs County line now was built by Mr. Walker
Jordan on the ashes of his grandfather's residence. Next below was the Reverend
George R. McCall residence.
A hundred yards away is the Longstreet Methodist Church, organized by Charles
Walker, Charles Edward Taylor, and their Methodist neighbors. Charles Walker
gave two acres of land for this church and a school building.
Directly opposite the Methodist Church was built the Old Longstreet Academy,
famous in days gone by for the people who taught there: Rev. George R. McCall,
W. C. Singleton, John Brantley, Moses McCall, and others.
The next house was the residence of Charles Walker. When he moved to Alabama
he sold to Dred Griffin, who later sold to Tim-
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othy Mason. Timothy Mason was interested in the stage lines from Tallahassee to
Milledgeville, the only passenger and mail carriers between the two State
capitals. His two daughters, Miss Ella and Miss Julia, conducted a young ladies'
finishing school in that old residence. Mr. Mason's daughter, Miss Callie,
married Burwell Jordan. Another daughter married Mr. Walker Jordan, who
after-wards became, while living at Longstreet, one of Pulaski's two
representatives in the General Assembly. He it was who first put the convicts on
the public roads in the county, one might say, at the risk of his life; for I
have been told that in some of the districts the new system of road repair was
so unpopular that the first chain gang approach was met with shotguns.
And now, according to Commissioner Ralph Peacock, it means shotguns if the
gang does not come. How we do hate the new before we know it; and how we love it
as soon as we become acquainted.
Mr. Jordan's present wife is Miss Caroline Tarver, granddaughter of one of
those Virginians who settled just across Shellstone Creek from the old Pulaski
County line, in Twiggs, General Hartwell Tarver. He did not live at Old
Longstreet, but it was all one community of neighbors hereabout, even if it was
Twiggs. The General is buried in the old rock-walled cemetery about a hundred
yards from where I write. Historic landmarks among these old red hills, that
remind us of the days of their glory, long gone.
The next house south of the Mason place, which is now the home of Mr. John J.
Purser, was the old Beaton place. This house, a two-foot thick basement, floored
with home-burned brick, has two stories above of fat pitch pine, cemented and
plastered with home-burned shell rock from shellstone exposures, roofed with
home-drawn pine shingles. It is a magnificent old structure, built by Charles
Edward Taylor, the father and grandfather of all the Cochran Taylors, and Whit
Taylor of Hawkinsville.
Next below, almost in front, was the home of Mrs. Betsy Walker Wimberly
Jordan, daughter of George Walker III, whose place was later the property of
Judge Richard Jordan of Macon, former Hawkinsville boy, born at Old Longstreet.
South of that is the house built by Thomas Walker, and inherited home of his
son, Dr. Frank Walker, until he moved to Cochran. He was called by Cochran
people "our most beloved citizen." This place has for practically half a century
belonged to Captain B. E. Barksdale and his daughter, Mrs. R. C. Sanders.
Captain Barks-dale, of the Wilkes and Warren County Barksdales, was one of those
rare gentlemen whom everybody liked to call friend, so helpful and generous was
he to his neighbors, both white and colored. He was Pulaski's chosen member of
the House of Representatives, but died before he could take his seat.
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Everybody in the two counties remembers Professor R. C. Sanders as the great
school principal in both Hawkinsville and Cochran for long years, and as County
School Commissioner for Pulaski, while Bleckley was still of the family circle.
The next old "fo-de-wah" house was the residence of Judge George W. Jordan,
father of "Walker" and "Dick" and "Lee," all of them long identified with the
county's main interests. Judge Jordan's first wife was a daughter of George
Walker III. In 1881 he moved to Hawkinsville.
I told "you-all" above that take out the Old Longstreeters and there would be
some big holes in Cochran, and Hawkinsville would have had quite a number also.
On down the road half a mile or so, between the forks of Evergreen Creek, is
old Evergreen Baptist Church, whose roll covered more than half of the old
Longstreeters of yore. And there were the names of negro slaves in the roster,
too; for, "in the olden times" the negroes worshipped in the same church as
their masters. The negro gallery is still a part of Old Evergreen.
According to historical accounts of this community, Evergreen was originally
constituted as Mt. Horeb, at the present Centenary Church site, and two years
later, 1846, moved to its present site. It was given the name "Evergreen"
because of the many beautiful water oaks that surround it. George Walker III
gave the large Bible that is still used at church services, and his wife gave a
silver communion service.
The name Bollinger has always been associated with Evergreen Church. The
pioneer ancestor of this family has descendants still residents at Longstreet,
and are members of Evergreen. From the home of George Walker III, near the
Twiggs line, to Evergreen Church, was considered "Longstreet," that noted
country community.
Professor Morgan Wynne lived on the sandy knoll of land just south of the
south fork of Evergreen Creek, and taught school in a house across the road from
his residence. He has many descend-ants prominent in Cochran and other towns.
The last old residence before reaching Coley Station going south was built by
John Abercrombie Drake Coley ( and was later the home of his son, J. A. D.
Coley, Jr.). "Big John Coley," his neighbors called him. A mile away, on the
present Cochran to Macon State Highway No. 87, lived his brother, Laish Coley;
while a few hundred yards farther towards Cochran lived their brother-in-law,
who for many years was tax collector of Bibb County.
Coley Station was named for "Big John Coley," who gave the land for the
station site, when the old Macon & Brunswick Railroad reached that point in
construction.
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All of these planters at Longstreet had their cotton gins, their
commissaries, their negro "quarters," their cotton presses, and other
paraphernalia for self-sufficient living.
They were small independent principalities, unique and resembling nothing so
much as the old feudal estates of the British Nor-man conquerors, from whom many
of these "Old Marsters" were indeed descended. But now, their civilization is
gone, perhaps forever.
I trust that it will not be thought that I have singled out this man, George
Walker III, to glorify at the expense of any other.
These are my sole reasons for the selection:
1. He was leader in his own community, acknowledged of men;
2. He was a type of those dauntless pioneers, whose exhaustless energy,
up-and-doing intelligence and foresight, seized upon and even forestalled any
and every opportunity, any invention that promised better living conditions for
himself, for his principality, and for his community. He and his kind built the
agricultural empire that was Georgia.
3. I have lived in the waning shadows of his achievements for many years, and
am, in a sense, George Walker's heir, as are many others besides myself in this
community.
Due to his long-headed foresight, these red hills and plateaus that I live
upon are the most splendid soil, instead of the scarred and gullied Georgia
hillsides whose profitable soils long ago washed down to the Atlantic.
Due to his wise system of terracing these hillsides with ditches of but
slight fall, emptying into main drains, these soil-covered slopes were
themselves covered with a forest of pines, which at last have become of value to
myself and to the community.
Old Joe Walker, his colored body servant, told me that he carried the chain,
or "toted" "Ole Marster's" compass while he was laying off these terraces. Joe
once showed me a ditch in a creek swamp, and said to me, "Ole Marster used to
say `that swamp would bog a duck before I had that ditch cut'."
Those big creek drains are still open to a large extent, in spite of dead
trees falling into them. They drain the soil so well they can still be
cultivated; his old rice pond could still be used. The stones that covered parts
of these slopes were piled at his command, sometimes higher than one's head, so
that the plows may even now go through and between without a creak.
Heir to George Walker? I sold some of those piles for rip-rap work to the
State Highway. Why? Just because George Walker had them piled, and made them
easy to get.
Over here on the State Highway, about a mile to the south, they
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have built a marble shaft to his memory, the best we poor humans can do, of
course, when we would honor the dead; but these are not his real monuments.
His real monuments are what he has contributed to his community, his pioneer
sawmills, and grist mill, and flour mill, his first cotton gin, when his
neighbors had none, those fine English Devons, and there were those Merino rams,
and those Spanish jacks, with which he sought to improve the stock of his
community. Colonel John Fort, authority on artesian wells, said he was the first
man in Georgia to bore for artesian water.
There was the Longstreet Academy which he helped to build, and Evergreen
Church, which was built largely upon his initiative. He won a silver cup at the
Macon fair for the best hempen rope, made by himself out of hemp grown on his
own place. I have seen my own father do the same rope making, when I was a child
just out of skirts.
With all the reverence that is in my soul, I bow before these early pioneer
men and women of heroic mold, who braved the wilderness, the wild beast, the
savage, and dread disease and death, to create a civilization that is perishing
off the earth because of our degeneration from their high constructive endeavor.
Additional Comments:
Extracted from
Historical Sketch of Bleckley County (Formerly Pulaski County)
A Chaper in:
"HISTORY OF PULASKI COUNTY GEORGIA"
OFFICIAL HISTORY
COMPILED BY THE HAWKINSVILLE CHAPTER
DAUGHTERS OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
PRESS OF WALTER W. BROWN PUBLISHING COMPANY
ATLANTA, GEORGIA
