Elbert County GaArchives Biographies.....Wansley , Frank Nicholas October 21, 1901 - October 25, 1983 ************************************************ 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: Chandler Eavenson http://www.genrecords.net/emailregistry/vols/00030.html#0007294 August 9, 2008, 11:10 am Author: Janelle Jones McRee The following article by Janelle Jones McRee appeared in the Spring 1979 issue of Georgia Life magazine: "Elbert County owes a debt of gratitude to a native son who has brought to light the rich heritage of his own county and state. Frank Nicholas Wansley may not have amassed a fortune like Joseph Rucker, Georgia's first millionaire, but he has accumulated a wealth of historic material and he has given it to the Elberton Historical Society. This collection is in the Frank Wansley Room at the Christmas Tree House. Writers have enriched their books by consulting the county's foremost historian. He is the author of From Rome to Ruckersville - Our Wansley History and can tell you whether to brag about your ancestors or just 'lay low.' His next book to be published is the History of Vans Creek Baptist Church of Ruckersville, said to be Georgia's oldest Baptist Church in continuous service. "Old-timers in Ruckersville say that Frank came into the world knowing how to make a clock run and how to play a violin. Of the thousands of clocks he has repaired and built, he prefers the old-fashioned pendulum clock. He looks like a doctor of horology as he uses a stethoscope to amplify the beat in order to get an exact balance between the tick and the tock. At present he is building a case for a clock with Westminister chimes, but he says he now does well just to take care of this regular 'patients.' "When he was barely able to hold a violin he played his first tune, Little Brown Jug, and he remembers the words: 'Me and my wife and my little feist dog crossed the creek on a hickory log.' Listening to Fritz Kreisler playing Dvorak's Humoresque on a Brunswick phonograph, he succeeded in getting exactly the same sound and tone. When he played along with the record listeners heard the sound of only one violin. He has been asked if his violin is a Stradivarius, but the country boy from Ruckersville admits he just has a plain old fiddle. 'I guess I've been the happiest country boy in the whole wide world,' he says as he looks back on his 77 years. 'Strict discipline did not squelch my sisters, brothers or me. It made us know that our mother and father loved us. Our father told us that if he ever heard of our stealing anything or telling a lie or not paying back some honest money that we owed, we wouldn't have to go to hell to see the devil. We'd see him in Ruckersvile.' "When Frank was a little boy he started whittling and made scrub boards that he sold for ten cents at his father's general store. They never locked the door when they went home to dinner. He recalls the happy memories of walking down a cedar lane with his father and the warmth he felt as he saw his mother standing in the doorway of a home that was never locked. The woods and creeks furnished ample room for hunting, fishing and trapping. He became interested in taxidermy and picked enough cotton to pay $1.60 for a book on the subject. His father said, 'Son, you could have bought a good pair of shoes for that' The subject of shoes did not come up again after Frank sold fur neck pieces and chokers to ladies all over Georgia. "Years ago when he built a little log cabin in Ruckersville his father vowed tht a cabin built with vertical logs would fall down after the first high wind. But the young man with a mind of his own had a different notion. He used one- inch rough boards at a 45 degree angle inside the logs. Through every board into each vertical log he drove two 20-penny nails. He ceiled the cabin with old-style beaded tongus and grooved pine boards. No log was more than five or six inches in diameter. The cabin did not collapse and L. H. Wansley admitted that a vertically built log cabin had a mighty good chance of standing up under a Georgia tornado. "The man with many talents saw no reason to rush into matrimony, for, as he observed, 'Cupid sometimes makes you act stupid.' But when Ruby Moss, one of Elberton's most beloved nurses, came along, he asked her to marry him and live in his log cabin. She agreed and Frank says that was the smartest thing he ever did. They lived there until 1944 when they moved into a home four miles from Elberton on Highway 368. He was one of the first in Elbert County to buy a Model T Ford and he became one of the first Model T mechanics in the county. He charged five dollars for overhauling a motor. During the Depression he was swamped with repairing clocks, sewing machines and Model T's. During that time he bought a walnut tree for one dollar and from it built a four-poster bed, a dresser and a desk!. "Frank Wansley wears many hats. Friends and neighbors call him 'Mr. Resource Man.' Others know him as the Cedar Post Tycoon, Mr. Sand Man or as a surveyor. Part of his father's estate was a large number of cedar trees. A manufacturer of cedar chests bought the trees on the stump. After they were cut, the tops and logs were left and Frank bought them from the estate and began buying cedar trees from his neighbors. He has sold more than a million posts. Years ago he went into partnershjip with Luther Burton to form the Coldwater Sand Ooperation which has pumped many truckloads of sand each day for seventeen years. "Now, Frank Wansley builds bird houses and feeders of cedar. When he put one up on a Friday last July, a pair of bluebirds moved in on Monday. The new homemakers seemed to like their Swiss chalet with its little ornamental balcony of twigs and a perch under the door. He has been so deluged with orders he says he can only build for his own birds and friends. He has especially enjoyed surveying, and proudly says that he has never been in a witness chair for an error. Because of his health he gave up this activity in 1976, but he has never stopped working, listening, studying, and answering the needs of others." Additional Comments: Frank Nicholas Wansley, born 21 Oct 1901, died 25 Oct 1983, and Ruby Moss Wansley, born 25 Feb 1901, died 10 Jan 1987, are buried in Elmhurst cemetery in Elberton. Janelle Jones McRee (1912-1996), teacher, columnist and writer, was the author of the book "Down on Cooter's Creek and Other Stories," published 1986 by Cherokee Publishing Co., a book of stories and people of Elbert Co. 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