Turner County GaArchives History .....History of Turner County, Chapt 7 1933
************************************************
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 August 25, 2004, 4:03 pm

CHAPTER VII.
NATURAL PHENOMENA.

   Within the borders of Turner County, there are three freaks of nature, the
Sink of the Creek near Dakota; the Rock House, near Ashburn; and Ross Lake near
Alapaha River.

   The Sink of the Creek is so called, because a small creek begins to sink into
a deep ravine for more than a quarter of a mile above the sink, which grows
deeper until where it empties into a subterranean passage, it is more than forty
feet deep and not more than one hundred feet from bank to bank. When more water
collects than the small outlet at the bottom allows to escape, the water
overflows and goes off in a current to Deep Creek, more than a mile away. Where
the water rises again is an unsolved mystery.

   The Rock House, formerly known as Hamilton Sink, is only two or three miles
southeast of Ashburn. It is a deep hole in the ground, probably seventy feet
deep, and doubtless five hundred feet in circumference, and has a perpendicular
cliff on all sides except one side, which is a very steep decline with a path on
this leading to the bottom. In the bottom is an outlet, through which all water
that collects escapes. The first known of the Rock House was about 1830, when
Mr. Lott Whiddon, who lived at Sycamore, was in charge of a large herd of cattle
belonging to a Mr. Hamilton in Dooly County. Mr. Hamilton had several large
herds of cattle with many men in the different sections looking after them. The
story goes that one night Mr. Hamilton was trying to find his way to 1\Ir.
Whiddon's. It was a dark and stormy night and the rain was falling in torrents.
Mr. Hamilton could not see, so he let his horse pick his way, a secret that all
equestrians in that day knew. The horse possesses an instinct to follow trails
that man does not possess. All at once his horse stopped and ran backwards,
almost dislodging Mr. Hamilton, and a sudden puff of wind took Mr. Hamilton's
umbrella, and down, down, down it seemed to go. So he dismounted and sat down at
the root of a tree, not knowing what to do, or where he was. Were you ever lost
at night, far from the haunts of men, so dismal, dark and raining that even a
fire fly could not be seen, with no means of kindling a light, sitting on the
cliff of what seems to be a terrible abyss? Then you can readily imagine this
gentleman's mental state, as he sat and longed for daylight. When the welcome
light began to dawn he discovered the Rock House, over whose brink he would have
fallen to certain death, if it had not been for the instinct of the faithful
horse. He searched around until he found an entrance and descended; then
pro-cured his umbrella and inscribed his name on a rock, where it could be read
for more than fifty years afterwards.

   The Ross Lake is a long, broad and deep lake on Deep Creek that has an outlet
in the bottom that empties this great volume of water very gradually, after the
creek ceases to flow. This outlet acts as a drain pipe, for when the main pipe
ceases to flow, it soon empties itself.

   About sixty years ago is the first record of the settlers finding of its
"going out" and catching fish. Mr. A. P. Haman was a small boy and said Abe
Clements, Silas Townsend, Aaron Chandler and some others gathered and watched
the mysterious subsiding of the waters; to find something new under the sun and
get all of the fish they wanted. They left, Mr. Haman said it seemed to him,
several wagon loads of fish for the mariners of the sky to feast upon. From that
day it has been a great annual gathering place, but at this time nothing is left
for the mariners of the sky but a few terrapins and an occasional alligator who
knows no better than to wait until it is too late to escape.

BEARS, WOLVES AND PANTHERS.

   About eighty years ago a species of the black bear inhabited this country.
Mr. Billie Whiddon said he saw a black bear that the Indians had killed and left
lying on the brink of the Rock House near Ashburn. This happened when he was but
a youth.

   Mrs. Mary Ann Bailey tells that she and two smaller Chandler children were
rambling around in the swamp of the Alapaha River when an old black bear raised
up out of the bushes and growled at them. Their brother, Francis Chandler, shot
at the bear but failed to kill it. On another occasion Aaron Chandler, perhaps
Abe Clements and Silas Townsend, killed a very large bear on the Alapaha. About
1838 Richard Story killed several large bears on Deep Creek about a mile below
Amboy.

   Up until about 1855 wolves were in this country in great packs, but were
captured, killed and run out. However, they returned in great numbers during the
Civil War. Benjamin Rainey caught a female wolf and her pups in a steel trap
about the year 1855, in a branch one and one-half miles below Amboy, which
branch has been known since as the Wolf Head Branch. Some humorous neighbors
played a practical joke on Mr. Joe Rainey by standing a dead wolf on a snag, and
Mr. Rainey took several shots at it before he found that the joke was on him.

   Wolves were very destructive to the small herds of sheep and pigs, so the
settlers were bent on their destruction. They would often dig a circular ditch
about six or seven feet deep, leaving a circular ridge in the middle about six
feet in circumference. On this they would fasten fresh meat, after dragging it
around where the wolves would be likely to get a scent of it. On jumping over
the ditch to get the meat, they would push each other off into the pit and
become captives at the settlers' mercy. Another method was to build a pen around
the pit, have it covered with sticks and straw, so that the wolves in packs
would jump over the fence one after another until the entire pack would go into
the ditch which was too deep for them to escape.

   In the sixties when wolves were very numerous in this section, Mr. Mark
Rainey lived on lot of land number 215 in the 2nd district and Mr. Make Watson
lived across the creek on lot 190. When visiting each other, they crossed Deep
Creek at the Indian path known as the ten mile trail.

   One day Mr. Watson was helping Mr. Rainey kill hogs and it was nearly night
when the day's work was done, and Mr. Watson with a sack full of fresh meat
started home. Just as he stepped off the foot log he saw the wolves were on his
trail, he began to run throwing one piece of meat at a time. As they paused to
eat the meat, he would gain distance and just as he had thrown the last piece of
meat to them, his wife, Sarah, met him with the old-fashioned flint and steel
rifle which he fired at them and they rapidly dispersed with one wounded wolf
following. Mr. Watson had a narrow escape, a good race and a loss of meat, but
was glad to be home safe and sound.

   The old pioneers made a relentless warfare on wolves, by trap-ping, catching
them in pits and killing them with rifles until the last wolf seen in this
section was caught in a trap set by Mr. Allen Smith. The wolf, fastened in the
trap, fell in a large upland lake of water on lot number 176 and was drowned.

   Another pest that worried the old settlers was the wild cats, and they were
here until eight or ten years ago. About ten years ago my father was back of his
farm to feed some hogs, early in the morning, when he met one in the path. He
did not have his gun and so the cat escaped and I have not heard of one since.

   Jesse Sumner killed a panther near Hickory Springs Church with an old flint
and steel rifle, at a distance of two hundred yards. Old folks used to say, if
you answered their scream, which resembled a woman's voice, the panther would
come to you, but I have never heard of anyone's bringing the panther to them in
this manner, as the old flint and steel gun was not always a sure fire.

   Jesse Sumner, Jr., was returning from Florida where he had been engaged in
the Indian Campaign, and while cooking his supper noticed that his horse was
greatly disturbed and when he looked across the fire he saw a crouching panther
which he quickly killed. He kept the skin for years as a trophy.

   Joe Sumner lived on Daniel's Creek and while away, a bear came up and caught
Aunt Mahala's pet sow. The next morning Joe Sumner, Richard Story and another
man killed the bear.

   The old pioneers were very fond of deer and turkey as food. The massive
antlers of old-time stags nailed up in the halls of a few of the old-time homes,
are the only relics we have of the great herds of deer that roamed through the
otherwise almost track-less forest. In speaking of deer hunting the old folks
spoke of going a driving. Deer and turkey have disappeared from this section in
the last thirty-five years.

   The blast of the hunter's horn is a thing of the past, and the deep bay of
the deer hounds is music we will hear no more. The old hunter's guns are but
rusty relics and the majority of the old-time nimrods are moulding- in the dust.

SNAKES.

   Rattlesnakes were very numerous, as were all varieties of snakes, but none
were so dangerous as the old rattler. It is said, that some of the old pioneers
had seen rattlesnakes on the dirt floor under their beds.

   All believed that the old rattler could charm or hypnotize his prey, many
believed he could hypnotize a person if given the chance.

   All knew that certain death lay hidden in his fangs. Very few persons were
bitten by rattlers.

   The pure leather shoes, home-made and tanned, were pretty good protection
against snakes, but they said rattlers' fangs would stick through even this
leather.

   Both highland and water moccasins thrived, multiplied, and almost filled the
land and streams, and it seems they were hated worse than rattlers.

   One Sunday morning before the Civil War, a crowd of young warriors marched
down a stream known as Double Run and in a very few miles killed several hundred
moccasins.

A. H. BRISBANE'S RAILROAD THAT WAS GRADED BUT NEVER COMPLETED.

   Mr. A. H. Brisbane and Mr. Nelson Tift came from Connecticut to South
Georgia, prior to 1842. In that year Mr. Brisbane, as a resident of Irwin
County, was granted two hundred and fifty-five, four hundred and ninety acre
lots of land, making a total of one hundred and twenty-four thousand, nine
hundred and fifty acres of land. In the same year Mr. Nelson Tift as a resident
of Baker County was granted ten four hundred and ninety acre lots, or a total of
four thousand and nine hundred acres of land in Irwin County.

   Grants to land then did not cost more than from five to ten dollars per lot,
so we see after all there was not much money invested.

   We do not know for what purpose other than pecuniary gain, Mr. Brisbane
bought this land but have heard that it was purchased with money procured from
the Catholic Church, to build a railroad and to establish Catholic towns and
communities.

   Mr. Nelson Tift was the founder of Albany, and probably persuaded Mr.
Brisbane to begin the construction of a railroad from Albany to Waresboro, to
intersect with one then under construction from Brunswick to Waresboro.

   Mr. Brisbane procured a force of Irish Catholic laborers and had the proposed
route surveyed, but there is no record that the road was ever chartered. Having
gone North and procured from the Catholics aid to his enterprise, he gave
Catholic names to the towns along the route. Old Isabella was to be called St.
Bernado, a Catholic name.

   Mr. Joseph S. Davis of Albany, whose father was a member of the Albany bar at
the time told him, that it seemed that the financial arrangements were never
completed and as they were grading East of Isabella the laborers rebelled and
tried to mob the officers of the road who barricaded themselves in an old shanty
and bravely held the mob at bay until Rev. Jonathan Davis of Albany quickly
raised and led a company to the rescue.

   Mr. D. H. Davis of Ashburn, remembers hearing his grand-parents tell of the
rescue of Brisbane and his party from the Irish mob. I have heard that on each
pay day, they would leave their money with Mr. Brisbane for safe keeping and you
can imagine their feelings when they learned that their money was all gone. Mr.
Samuel Young of Wilcox County, Mr. Nas Henderson of Irwin County and Mr. Samuel
Story the grand father of Mr. D. H. Davis and a resident of Worth County,
managed to get Mr. Brisbane away from the mob and he was hidden for several
months in Mr. Story's home.

   Mrs. Brisbane was a very stout Irish lady and would drink lots of water. As
the old settlers used gourds she would very frequently call for a calabash of
water.

   Dr. F. W. Schnauss, writing in the Valdosta Times, says that he interviewed
one of Mr. Brisbane's Irish laborers by name of McCarty who lived near Turners'
Ferry adjoining the lands of Preacher Thomas Young, and procured from him
information to the effect that Mr. Brisbane went before an Irish society in
Charleston, S. C., and unfolded his plan of making this a great Roman Catholic
settlement. The society gave him five hundred dollars to get grants for one
hundred lots, each to be granted in the name of some particular Irish Catholic.

   Brisbane procured the money and went to Milledgeville, but the secretary of
Estate, McCarty said, was an honest man and wouldn't grant the land to Brisbane
in his own name, but after seeing the Governor of the State, who at that time
was Governor C. J. McDonald, and as the financial condition of Georgia was not
very good, Mr. Brisbane finally got the land granted in his own name and went to
the Catholic Bishop at Charleston, S. C., and unfolded his plans of a Roman
Catholic settlement and mortgaged one hundred lots of land for ten thousand
dollars. He then came back and paid the laborers off who readily had rather have
the money than the land.

   Many years afterwards a Catholic Bishop from Charleston, S. C., came down and
sold thirty of these lots of land to Mr. H. H. Tift for ten thousand dollars. It
seems the Catholic Church came into possession of nearly all the Brisbane land.
Mr. A. J. Wilson of Rebecca, Ga., heard Mr. Smith Turner who for a number of
years before had been Sheriff of Irwin County, say that the East end of the old
Brisbane railroad was graded by a rich slave owner, near Savannah, Ga., who used
as laborers his negro women and children and the people who lived along the
proposed line, to help the cause along, would sell them provisions for which
they were never paid.

   Many of the Irish laborers remained. Some settled in Wilcox County, some in
Coffee County and many in old Irwin and for many years afterwards there were
many Irish peddlers and ditchers throughout this section.

   The failure of Brisbane to build his railroad and to perfect his plans for a
Catholic dominated section of South Georgia, perhaps was a blessing to us in
disguise, for it was only a few years after the Civil War before another but
successful effort was made to build a railroad from Albany to Brunswick. Mr.
Nelson Tift, who then owned the old Brisbane right-of-way, priced it so high
that the road was built elsewhere and Mr. Tift lost by pricing it too high.

   The "grades and fills" along the proposed route still are the sad and silent
tokens of Brisbane's financial failure but nearly all the old settlers
considered Brisbane an honest man, but as one whose plans could not materialize,
as the war clouds were gathering and Northern capital didn't want to invest
their money in Southern enterprises. Thus about the year 1857, Mr. Davis of
Albany said, was the final crash and henceforth there was to be no Brisbane
railroad.

   Mr. J. M. Hamans, a naval stores operator at Irwinville, is authority for the
information that some of the trestle across Alapaha River is still standing,
pinned together with pegs and well preserved.

   (The author is indebted to Jos. S. Davis of Albany, and Dr. F. W. Schnauss of
Valdosta and many others for information.)

A POEM ON SOUTH GEORGIA.

   Just before the outbreak of the Civil War Dr. E. M. Pendleton rode on
horseback from Valdosta to Macon, traveling the old road that had been used as a
dray line from Macon and Montezuma to Troupville, where they hauled goods on
mule wagons for a number of years before. Night overtook Dr. Pendleton long
before he reached Uncle Lott Whiddon's home where he was to spend the night "to
sit in the light of the cottager's smile."

   On this long stretch of road where no one lived he thought "'Tis a lonely
land the land of the pine." The following poem, "The Land of the Long Leaf
Pine," written from the memories of that trip, was not only a poem, but a
prophecy. The poem first appeared in "The Southern Ladies Book," a magazine
published in Macon before the Civil War:

The Land of The Long Leaf Pine.

Have you been to the land of the long leaf pine, 
The land of the cypress, the holly and vine?
Where the waters are clear and the skies are bright, 
And the gloomiest hour is the still twilight?

Have you passed thru the shades of the dark green trees 
Of a clear, cold night and heard the wild breeze 
As it comes like the sound of the distant roar 
Of the billowy tread on the lone seashore?

'Tis a solemn time for the traveler then,
When he feels he is far from the haunts of men, 
And the wind still moans in sad minstrelsy
Thru the towering pines like the murmuring sea.

Have you heard the owl hoot from his lofty nest, 
With his large fierce eyes and his feathered crest? 
And the green frog laugh in his swampy bed, 
And the screech owl chant a dirge for the dead?

'Tis a lonely hour for the traveler then,
As he dashes on thru bog and fen,
And the terrible screech of the dismal owl
Still breaks on his ear like the wild wolf's howl.

And the firefly flits in his feverish face,
To show him the terror and gloom of the place
And the whip-poor-will wakes up a mournful strain, 
Which echoes back over valley and plain.

'Tis a lonely land, the land of the pine
As the long leaves wave in the sullen wind,
And the moon shines down with a flickering light 
Thru the dark green trees in the clear cold night.

And the traveler thinks of the robber's den, 
And he starts at the fancied tread of men. 
And reins up his steed for a desperate race, 
With the firefly flashing still in his face.

Have you heard the watchdog's distant bay, 
As he barks at the moon and the Milky Way, 
Or the hunter's horn as he winds up the chase, 
And calls his fleet hounds back from the race?

'Tis cheerful sound for the traveler then, 
For he feels he is near the abode of men, 
And now after many a weary mile,
He can sit in the light of the cottager's smile.

And rest till the rosy morn is up, 
And Aurora dips her rosy cup
In the sea and casts her smiles around 
Over misty wave and dewey ground.

'Tis a noble land, the land of the pine
As you view it well in the bright sunshine, 
When the owl has flown to his hollow-nest, 
And the frog puts on his muddy vest;

And the firefly's lamp can shine no more
And the winds have hushed their dismal roar, 
And the lone whip-poor-will has flown away 
To deeper shades from the light of day.

'Tis a beautiful land, the land of the pine,
Of the bay and the cypress, the holly and vine
As they flourish and bloom in their evergreen pride, 
On the ocean's shore and the mountain's side.

But the sound of the axe is heard by day,
And the tall pine groves are wearing away,
And the time will come when the autumn breeze 
Shall sigh no more thru the evergreen trees.

                      -Dr. E. M. Pendleton.


Additional Comments:
From 

HISTORY
TURNER COUNTY

By
JOHN BEN PATE
Author of The American Genealogy of the Pate Family
AMBOY, GA.
1933
STEIN PRINTING CO.
STATE PRINTERS
ATLANTA, GA.


File at: http://files.usgwarchives.net/ga/turner/history/other/gms176historyo.txt

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

File size: 20.1 Kb