Clay County GaArchives History - Books .....LOST TOWN OF COTTON HILL January 1, 1976
************************************************
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:
REBECCA STEWART RSTEWART@ENERVEST.NET October 5, 2011, 6:41 pm

Book Title: HIST OF CLAY COUNTY

An uncle of President Coolidge taught school in this once thriving Georgia 
Village of which little remains now but the old church. Prof. Norman F. 
Coolidge changed the spelling of his name because of a printer’s error.

By Mattie Thomas Thompson


Some time ago I read in the Journal's Sunday magazine an article on “Lost 
Towns of Georgia”, and ever since then my thoughts have been going back to the 
historic old town of Cotton Hill, in Clay County, Georgia. Cotton Hill exists 
only as a mass of ruins now, but it used to be a wideawake town where a famous 
co-educational seminary was located. The President of the school was Prof. 
Cooledge, uncle of the President of the ; United States.	;

Cotton Hill was about fifteen miles from either Cuthbert, Fort Gaines, or 
Eufaula, Alabama, near the point where the three counties Clay, Quitman, and 
Randolph join, t

I grew up familiar with the history of the town because my mother was 
graduated from the Cotton Hill Seminary just before the War Between the 
States, and when I was fourteen years old, she took me over there to attend an 
old-fashioned “protracted meeting conducted by the Rev. Thomas Muse, a dearly 
beloved pioneer preacher of Southwest Georgia, known as “Uncle Tommy Muse”.

I still remember the beautiful and hospitable homes of the Jester, Shivers, 
Boyett, Oliver Morris, Green, Ray, Watson, Crozier, Adams, Kimbal, Beauchamp, 
Davir, wealthy farmers whose plantations were the show places of Southwest 
Georgia.

Many parties were given all over the countryside for my mother and the half 
dozen girls and boys she had brought with her from Eufaula, and we rode to 
them in carriages drawn by fine horses. There were also picnics and concerts, 
for music had been stressed at the seminary where most of the residents were 
educated.

Cotton Hill Seminary at the time Prof. Cooledge was president of it, ranked 
with the best institutes in the South. There have been many conflicting 
stories published concerning the relation between this well-known teacher and 
Calvin Coolidge. The facts, however, as my mother told them to me, are: About 
1854, the Cotton Hill school was without a president, and the Chairman of the 
Board of Trustees, T.P. Jester, who had himself taught in the school, 
advertised in several southern and eastern newspapers for a president for the 
school.

The advertisement was answered by Norman Flavius Cooledge, of Vermont, who had 
come to Georgia three years previously to enjoy the southern climate. He was 
the eighth of the twelve children of Luther Coolidge, of Vermont, and the 
brother of John Coolidge, father of the President of the United States.

Norman F. Cooledge accepted the proposition made him by the Cotton Hill 
School, and under his presidency the institution became a famous seminary with 
a large faculty of fine teachers.

During the second year of the War Between the States one hundred and three 
young men, students of Cotton Hill Seminary, joined the Army. Prof. Cooledge, 
discouraged, stopped 6 teaching to go into business.

The glory of the school then vanished, as did later the wealth of its patrons 
and supporters. After the war, Prof. Cooledge went to Dalton, then to 
ISjorcross where he lived until his death in the nineties. He was the 
grandfather of Atlanta’s prominent citizen and well-known businessman, F.J. 
Cooledge.

The difference in the spelling of names of Norman Cooledge, and his nephew, 
Calvin Coolidge, occurred by accident when the former went into business after 
the War Between the States.

Norman Coolidge began operating a grist mill in Norcross when he found that 
teaching was unprofitable. He ordered a hundred sheets of business paper and 
fifty envelopes from an Atlanta firm and directed that these be marked with 
his name. When the stationary arrived, it was found that the printer had made 
the mistake and spelled the professor’s name with an “e” instead of an “i”. 
This was right after the war, when nearly everyone in the South had lost his 
fortune, and Professor Cooledge could not afford to have the work done over. 
The printer also insisted that he could not afford the expense of correcting 
his error, and so, to avoid confusion, Professor Cooledge adopted this mode of 
signing himself.

It was my pleasure recently to talk with two of the former pupils of Professor 
Cooledge, John Eugene Lanier now of Cuthbert, and Mrs. John J. Jolly of 
Valdosta, both of whom are over eighty-five years of age, and both of whom, 
like my mother, were profuse in their praise of “Mr. Cooledge,” whom they 
extolled as a Christian gentleman of superior intelligence and culture.

In the old days, the church at Cotton Hill was the place of worship for 
wealthy planters who came to service in great style. Their carriages were 
attended by liveried coachmen, and the women and children wore the most costly 
and fashionable attire. Even as late as 1878, when I first visited the town, I 
saw evidences of the wealth of “before-the-war” times.

On Thanksgiving Day, 1927, 1 rode over the site of the old town, and what a 
change after forty-nine years! Only two homes in a radius of five miles were 
occupied. The once flourishing town proper was absolutely extinct.

As I rode through the main road, which had been the main street, I saw on 
either side the once comfortable, elegant homes, now a mass of crumbling and 
fallen ruins. That is,all but one, the fine old home of Dr. Mark Shivers, a 
notable physician of the days of Cotton Hill’s glorious past.

Until recently this old home was occupied by Mr. Thomas Crozier, but it was 
too isolated and lonely for his family, and he moved to the home of his 
father, Mr. Lum Crozier, three miles away.

Across the street from the Shivers home is the doctor’s office, desolate, but 
in a fair state of preservation. There was not a human being in sight for 
miles, not even a bird was visible.

On the road leading to Cuthbert is the old church, still standing on its 
pillars of huge rock. Beyond is the cemetery with a hundred or more beautiful 
monuments and well-cared for lots, silent corroboration of the story I had 
heard of how the descendants of the citizens of that section gather at the 
church one day every spring to clean the place where their kindred rest. They 
come from afar and near to assemble in the historical church, look after 
graves in the cemetery, and talk over what Cotton Hill was in the long ago.

As I stood in the churchyard on a perfect November afternoon, a feeling of 
reverence came over me as I saw this fine example of faithfulness and love 
which has kept beautiful and modern this old cemetery lying in the shadow of 
the ruins of what was once a town of wealth and influence.

An interesting fact about the home of the late Mr. Jack Boyett, which is 
located about three miles from Cotton Hill, is that the home now occupied by 
Mr. Eugene Boyett, his son, extends into three counties. Two pillars of one 
room are in Randolph, two in Clay, and three in Quitman. This is probably the 
only instance of this kind known. Mr. Boyett, former owner of the house, was 
the father of seventeen children, all of whom grew to manhood and womanhood 
and all were born in this house.

At the Shivers home on main street of the town, there used to be a fine 
scuppernong arbor, the largest ever seen in this section of the state. It was 
beyond the garden and covered a place large enough to hold a regiment of 
soldiers. In ripening time great throngs of visitors used to come to the arbor 
and were always given baskets or boxes of the luscious fruit. There is no sign 
of the vine now. Mr. T.P. Jester, whom I knew from childhood, was a unique 
character, and a strong force in the church and community of Cotton Hill. He 
was known as “Tommy Particular” because of his rigid rule for doing the right 
thing on all occasions. Mr. Jester reared a large family at Cotton Hill. One 
of his sons is now a Baptist minister.

The Lanier family, four brothers and one sister, were all students at Cotton 
Hill Seminary under President Cooledge. They’re still living, James, age 89, 
in Quitman County; William, 86, in Enterprise, Ala.; John Eugene, 82, at 
Cuthbert; Mrs. W.H. Farrold, 79, in Jacksonville, Fla. This family is 
remarkable for its health and longevity. John Eugene Lanier, drives his car 
from Cuthbert to Eufala, Ala., a distance of twenty-six miles, several times a 
week.

It seems strange that time should have obliterated completely a town and 
community once so prosperous and contented. There are several reasons for 
this. The passing of a single person or a single faction in a community can 
disrupt a whole town because it is easy to follow an enthusiastic leader. 
Cotton Hill was five miles from a railroad station and the road was uphill and 
sandy. The coming of the automobile lured many inhabitants to other inviting 
fields.

The school was gone. Older heads had passed on; the pulse of the younger 
generation beat to the tune of activity. The exodus began, and like sheep, the 
rest of the citizens followed, leaving only the beautiful churchyard, the 
church itself, and a history of wealth, culture, and contentment that abides 
only in the peaceful quiet of historic towns.






File at: http://files.usgwarchives.net/ga/clay/history/1976/histofcl/losttown789gms.txt

This file has been created by a form at http://www.genrecords.org/gafiles/

File size: 9.8 Kb