Bleckley County GaArchives History .....Cochran 1935 ************************************************ Copyright. All rights reserved. http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm http://www.usgwarchives.net/ga/gafiles.htm ************************************************ File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by: Joy Fisher http://www.genrecords.net/emailregistry/vols/00001.html#0000031 July 28, 2004, 5:35 pm COCHRAN The town of Cochran lies on the edge of the great pine forest that extended from here to the coast. I am told that Burwell B. Dykes owned all the land between Cochran and Coley Station. He was the man who, according to the numerous deeds involving town lots recorded in the Clerk's office, owned all Cochran. He himself lived a mile from Coley Station, south of the Beaver Dam Creek. Jim Clark was the first Rural Route carrier from Longstreet post office at Coley Station to Twiggsville, the half-way post office on the old star route from Longstreet to Jeffersonville. Like many other American towns, Cochran was railroad-born. After the first lines went through in Georgia, the State went railroad crazy. And the craze never receded till the automobile became common. The Macon & Brunswick Railroad Company was chartered March 1, 1856, and the work of construction was begun in Macon some years later, though just when the line reached Cochran is uncertain, according to a letter just received from Mr. Guy E. Mauldin, assist-ant secretary to the President of the Southern Railway. It was before 1866, however, for he says that they had the line p. 78 in operation all the way from Macon to the Ocmulgee at Hawkinsville; and by 1871, it was in operation to Brunswick. Hartwell Blackshear, probably the oldest colored man in Cochran, says that he came to Cochran in 1866, and that the road was then in operation to Hawkinsville, and they told him that the road did not get any farther south than Coley Station till some time during the war. He worked on the road as a section hand for two years, while they were building towards Brunswick, under the Reverend Arch Harris, under a Mr. Goff, and two or three others. A Captain Mallary was supervisor, and perhaps after him Mr. Bush Raiford. Judge P. T. McGriff was probably the first railroad agent. Dr. Yancy H. Morgan, whose two daughters still live in Cochran, had the first drug store. Dr. Morgan was one of Pulaski's representatives in the General Assembly, and was one of Cochran's fore-most citizens. His wife was Miss Weaver, daughter of one of Cochran's first storekeepers, when Cochran was Dykesboro. Mr. James Martin of Cochran District, one of the few old residents, gave me several bits of information about Cochran in its early days. "Uncle Jim," as he is known, lost his father in the war, and his mother married Mr. James Coody. His first memory of Cochran was when, just before the War Between the States, he went to town with his grandfather, George Martin, who, with Joe Haskins and Bill Allen, owned an enormous part of the land below Cochran. He was just large enough to hang on to grandpa's coat-tails, and was scared almost to death at the fighting going on around the stores. What is now the main street of Cochran was then just a country road leading to the station, and the stores were then on the opposite side of the railroad from the present store region. Frank Ryle had a store and the post office was in a corner of it. Ranse Sirmons and a Mr. Weaver also had stores. People came into town in those days in horse carts, two wheeled. They had no wagons and no buggies. There was a big pond below the station, and another somewhere about the oil mill site, and the road, now Second Street, ran through a gallberry thicket, and some man named Lamb, from above Cochran, was noted for the deer that he killed in that gallberry thicket. Mr. Martin remembers what a furore of astonishment it caused when P. L. Peacock and James Oberry bought, just about the end of the War Between the States, 1,900 acres of land in one body for the then munificent price of about a dollar an acre-land absolutely covered with long-leaf pines. It was where Lewis Thompson now lives. Land sold then for 25 to 50 cents the acre. p. 79 And a still greater marvel to the natives was the turpentine still they erected, right in there, a little nearer the railroad. Albert Peacock, father of Col. Vance Peacock, put up the first turpentine still in the State of Georgia. He came from North Carolina, settled in this vicinity, and built a still down on the Satilla River, but had to abandon the project because of the impossible transportation of the region. He returned to North Carolina, and after the railroad was built moved to the vicinity of Yonkers. Years ago Bob Bowen told me that when he came back from the War Between the States he plowed barefooted for nearly a year, and was paid for that service with a whole lot of Wilcox County land, 202 acres, which was then considered liberal pay. Such trades made him rich in the years to come, for its pines later became a fortune. Choate Brothers had both a store and a woodwork shop some years later, and McPhail also had a later store. The first church was a union of Baptist and Methodist, the sites for both the church house and the public school being donated by David Dykes, son of Burwell. The location of the school is the same as the high school. The Baptists eventually sold out to the Methodists, who retained the ownership of the present site, while the Baptists built a wooden church at their present location. Both Baptists and Methodists now have handsome brick edifices. The first brick building in Cochran was the present post office, and that whole block was owned by Mr. Charles Mullis. Maas brothers had a general merchandise store, and later a cotton ware-house. Tom McVay established the first cotton warehouse in the town and bought the first bale of cotton ever sold there. Giles Wright, father of Mrs. Mack Thompson, was the most enthusiastic promoter of the Ebenezer Baptist College, which preceded the A. & M. and the Middle Georgia. It was a religion with him to get that college. Others almost equally energetic were the Rev. P. A. Jessup, Dr. T. D. Walker, W. J. Mullis, P. L. Peacock, J. E. Oberry, Mrs. W. H. Wiggs, and perhaps others, and a Mr. Parker of McRae. These schools have gone far to build up Cochran's educational outlook. Mrs. Mollie Wooten had the first real hotel. Col. James A. Thomas kept the old Daisy House. His son became a Colonel in the World War, and died en route to France. Dr. Carroll also built a hotel, and later John Blount and his uncle, Mills Blount, built the present hotel of brick. About 1898 the first bank was established. It was promoted by p. 80 Mr. Clarke from Ashburn, and local capital. Mr. Clarke was the first cashier. Two years later this became the Cochran Banking Company. The First National Bank was located where Thompson's Cafe is. Col. Vance Peacock was cashier when he was elected to the State Senate. The Peacocks, the Thompsons, the Mullises, the Walkers, and the Taylors, E. Cook, Sr., and a half dozen, maybe a dozen, other individuals, were interested in all the various enterprises of the community: the Cochran Banking Company, the First National Bank, the Cochran Oil Mill & Ginnery, the Cochran Cotton Mill, the warehouses, and several other businesses, all of which made up Cochran's climb from a scattering group of country stores to a pretty good old town, or, as one fellow told me years ago, "a noble city." Recurring to the railroad topic again, Mrs. Mary Eloise Cochran Jones Taylor says that her uncle, Judge Arthur Cochran, was the chief promoter of the project to connect Macon with the seacoast, the first idea being to have Darien the terminal. Later, Brunswick was selected, and the road called Macon & Brunswick; after that for years, the East Tennessee, Virginia & Georgia; and still later, when reorganized by the Morgan banking interests, the Southern Railway. Judge Cochran was one of the first presidents of the M. & B., and after some delay the village of Dykesboro became, in his honor, Cochran. The aforesaid Secretary Mauldin is unable to state why the line was not built on the west side of the 0cmulgee, unless it was decided to be a shorter reach over the present route. It is said that George Walker III of Longstreet heard that there was a balky leader of men at Hawkinsville whose influence would not let the required subscription of several thousands be raised, and he thereupon consulted his neighbors who, along with him, promptly raised the money, and the road was diverted to the route by Coley Station. The Schofield Iron Works took over a gin and warehouse in Cochran, with several thousand hales of cotton, and manufactured the cotton here. They hulled the cotton seed and threw the hulls away. 'They sacked and sold the kernels. B. J. Wynne helped to pile the lumber that was sawed out of the pines on Cochran's main business street, and now that street is paved for its whole two miles. By all this community gossip of the ancient village, I have tried to present you a living contrast from gallberry patch to a paved highway. Not so bad when, a hundred and thirty years ago, it was the haunt of the wild beast and the trail of the red man. JOEL T. DEESE. 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 File at: http://files.usgwarchives.net/ga/bleckley/history/other/gms87cochran.txt This file has been created by a form at http://www.genrecords.org/gafiles/ File size: 9.9 Kb