Muscogee County GaArchives Photo Place.....Dillingham Street Bridge 
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File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by:
Christine Thacker http://www.genrecords.net/emailregistry/vols/00033.html#0008100 August 29, 2007, 3:27 pm

Source:             Sesquicentennial- Ledger-Enquirer
Photo can be seen at:
http://www.usgwarchives.net/ga/muscogee/photos/dillingh13956gph.jpg
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By Sandra Blackman 
Enquirer Staff Writer
 
   Covered bridges were once a familiar sight around the valley area due to the 
engineering expertise of Horace King, a freed slave who spent much of his life 
in the Columbus - Phenix City-LaGrange area.
   Historical buffs claim that King or one of his three sons built every Valley 
bridge spanning the Chattahoochee before 1910. The famous bridge builder 
constructed several bridges at Columbus, including two railroad bridges, one 
replacing a bridge that was swept away by a flood and another that Yankee 
soldiers burned.
   King got Into bridge building with his master, contracter John Godwin, and 
built his first one across the Pee Dee River In South Carolina. From that he 
progressed to more extraordlnary. lattice-type of truss design. Some of his 
most renowned are the two bridges built in Meriwether County and another in 
Harris County. Other King creations included two bridges in Lee County, Ga., 
but one, the Meadows Bridge. was destroyed by fire Oct. 5, 1973.
   King built his bridges with heavy timbers held together by oak pegs which he 
made by driving square pieces of wood into a steel cylinder with ax-sharp 
edges. He covered the bridges with shingle roofs to add strength to their 
structure.
   Said to be part Catawba Indian, King came to Columbus in the 1830s with 
Godwin of Cheraw, S.C. and continued. to help his master to build bridges. He 
performed so ably that Godwin freed him.
   After King was freed, he began to contract business on his own. He was not 
allowed to join the order of the Masons in Alabama but was accepted and 
initiated
into the organization in Ohio.
   King's membership In the Masons once helped him to recover two of his finest 
mules after Union soldiers took them during a raid in Girard.
   When Wilson's Raiders swept through the area at the end of the war, the 
animals were taken and every effort to recover them failed until officers 
learned he was a Mason. Then the mules were brought back to him with apologies. 
   King is said to have held his master in high regard and when a daughter of 
his former master came on hard times, it was King who gave her four acres of 
his land.
   As, a further indication of his compassion and feeling for his master, King 
placed a headstone on Godwin's grave when he died in 1859. The headstone 
reads: "John Godwin, born Oct. 17, 1798, died Feb. 26, 1859. This stone is 
placed here by Horace King, in lasting remembrance of the love and gratitude he 
felt for his best friend and former master. "
   King served as a state representative for three years, 1869-72, when the 
Legislature was known as "Black and Tan. "


Special Sesquicentennial Supplement 1
Ledger-Enquirer, Sunday, April 16, 1978
Page S9


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