UPSON COUNTY, GA - BIOS  Green, John Miles

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Published in UHS Newsletter  Sept-Oct 2000



JOHN MILES GREEN, EARLY UPSON PREACHER-TEACHER




John Miles Greene easily qualifies as one of the
dominant figures on Upson County's early educational
stage. [He is not to be confused with his cousin John
Miles Stewart Greene.] John Miles Green served this
community in many ways during the mid portion of the
19th Century.

His parents were Thomas Bass Greene, who served in the
Revolution ary Army, and Patience dark Wyche of Morgan
County, Georgia.   Thomas' father was James W. Greene
who, according to the Early History of Upson County,
Georgia, came from England and settled in Virginia. His
mother, also a Virginian was Elizabeth Bass.

Thomas and Patience came to Upson County in 1830 and
were staunch members of the Methodist Church. They had
ten children, John Miles, bom in 1828. was their third
child, .

As a youth, from 1836-1844, he attended the Old
Franklin Academy in..the southern end of our county.
After wards he graduated from Emory in Ox ford in 1848.
Following a popular pat tern of the day, he became a
school teacher-preacher. In 1913, the Rever end R. W.
Rogers remembered the Rev. Greene, "[He]...was a
cultured Chris tian gentleman. As a preacher he was not
popular. His sermons were full of thought and religion,
but his delivery was poor, and because of this, he did
not attract the average hearer, hence his congregations
were always small. [However]...he taught successfully
at Thomaston and at Oak Grove."

Somewhere around 1857 he married Mary S. Colquitt of
LaGrange. John and Mary reared a family of six chil
dren. They are listed in the Upson cen sus records of
1860 and 1870, but had disappeared from these records
by 1880.

Reverend Greene probably began his school teaching
career in Culloden. A December 1851 advertisement in
the Georgia Journal and Messenger re veals that by that
time the Male Acad emy in Thomaston was under his
"superintendence and instruction." He became.the first
teacher at Oak Grove after its establishment in 1856.
For years he was in and out of Thomaston as a teacher.

What sort of subjects did the Rever end teach? A school
ad for that period lists subjects like reading,
spelling, arithmetic, as well as Latin, Greek, French
and logic..

Shortly before the Civil War he purchased the Female
Academy and had complete control of the Male Academy.
When he went away to war, his wife and several other
teachers operated the schools. Before his departure for
mili tary service, he pioneered co-education in Upson
County. With so many youth going into the military,
boys and girls were combined into one school for a
while. Nottingham and Hannah list the Reverend Green as
serving in Company D, 13th Georgia Regiment. One of his
modem kinsmen states that he also served as the
chaplain of the 32nd Georgia Regiment. About five years
after Reverend Greene purchased the Female Academy, he
resold it to the trustees and gave up the male school.
It was probably during his time of owner ship, or
immediately thereafter, that the Thomaston schools were
used as hospi tals for wounded from the Battle of
Atlanta.

After the war's end. Reverend Greene returned to
teaching. In 1870, he was once again teaching at the
Female Academy, but unfortunately he devel oped some
health problems and Victo ria Thurston had to take his
place for a while. By March of 1871, he returned to
education and took the oath of office as Upson County's
School Commis sioner

In 1872, a reorganization within the county government
relating to schools saw Greene's friend J. C. McMichael
replace him as the county school com missioner in 1872.
At this time the Reverend Greene became the first
County School Superintendent and served until 1876. At
the same time, he took over the Male Academy and con
tinued to promote education. Joining hands with Baptist
pastor T. H. Stout, who then led the Female Academy,
the two men organized a local teachers as sociation in
a meeting at the Court house during June of 1872.

In the late 1870's, the Reverend. Greene's name
disappeared from local records until a newspaper
article, pub lished in the Times on September 15, 1899,
tells how he had moved away several years previously
but was then engaged in writing a history of the "13th
Georgia Regiment of which he was a member." It is
presumed that Rev. Greene moved to Texas; for in 1902,
he wrote to the editor of the Times asking why the
newspaper had not yet reviewed his book Prose and
Verse. In the letter he tells of living in Linden,
Texas.

Reverend Greene's book, one of his lasting
achievements, has some interesting accounts telling
about life in early Upson County. Mr. Gordon Holstun
undoubtedly had access to one of these books for he
quotes from it extensively in his 1940 Master's thesis,
"A History of Education in Upson County, Georgia."
Mr. Judson Roberts of Ball Ground, Georgia, a kinsman
of Rev. Greene, says that the Library of Congress has
a copy of this book. It's contents need to be examined
for Upson County history.


A better picture of school life in the early days of
Upson County could not be found than that given by John
M. Greene, the first county school superin tendent of
education. Mr. Green taught in the various schools of
Upson for nearly twenty years, and at one time was the
owner and operator of the Tho maston Female Academy.
The time frame of the following sketch centers on 1836
when Georgia was in the first stages of Georgia's
progress and devel opment as a state. On account of the
sparsity of its population, schools were few, and those
were confined to towns and thickly settled communities.
Teachers were scarce and those were principally
foreigners or from New England who came to the South to
en-lighten the young. In his History of Education in
Upson County, Georgia, Gordon R. Holstun quotes the
follow ing paragraphs from Rev. Greene's book, Southern
Prose and Poems, 1901. Gordon R. Holstun

"This beginning and excerpt of my school life was over
60 years ago It was among the read hills of Middle
Georgia, where the skies are bluer and air sweeter, and
the scene of my boy hood and of the riper years of my
man hood, with all their enduring associa tions, and
there, in its sacred rail repose the ashes of my mother
and father and other kindred.

The old familiar school house, the humble, re-painted
building where I learned my letters and began the
ascent of the ancient hill of knowledge, rise up as
clear and vivid as when reviewed in the first fresh
hours of childhood. I see the chimney, one at each end
of the long structure, I see the two doors in front and
the glass sash of the two win dows beyond which I sat
with boyish diligence and anxious heart and conned my
lessons for the hour. I scan again the inside of the
school house, with its long writing desks fastened to
the walls of the building, and the long benches in the
rear of them, each with its row of pupils facing the
wall. There too still stands at the front the large
post-oak with its scared trunk and tortuous stem,
seated under which oft I took, my re past at noon.
There also appears the spring that received its crystal
waters from the hill side, with the chinquapin tree
over-shadowing it, as when oft with my playmates I
loitered there with boyish dalliance.

There adjacent also is the solemn graveyard, where
after life's fitful fever was over the first white
settlers of the soil were laid to sleep.

There comes up the recollection of the still loneliness
of the locality of that schoolhouse. There was no
beauty of grove or landscape to charm the eye, nor
human habitation with its enlivening sights and sounds
of rural industry to animate the mind. The founders of
the school gave it the name of Franklin Academy.   It
was called after the American rage, the statesman of
revolu tionary fame, and the philosopher, who drew
electricity down from the sky. Before the mind pass in
retrospection the throngs of boys and girls, young men
and gouty ladies who as pupils, attended the Academy.
Those ere the days of republican simplicity of man ners
and of homespun dress—noble manly were the bosoms that
throbbed beneath the copperas roundabout, or the Jeans
coat of homemade cloth. The faces that peered from
under the fly bonnets were as sweet and fair as the
buds and blossoms of the rose, as they peed out from
their green hoods in summer.

In the forefront, and the central figure in the picture
of this dream of my child hood days is the master or
teacher. He rises up in the memory as he was then, the
same tidy and ever well-dressed person, of medium
height, form slen der, lithe and well-knit, complexion
fair and blue, eyes blue, full and luminous, hair
glossy black, with locks smooth and combed to the front
over the ears, hands fair and soft, and finger nails of
extreme whiteness, always kept sharp ened to a point.
There was never a spec to be seen on his clothes, He
was an Irishman and his name of Christopher Flanagan.
It was said of him that he was educated for the office
of a Roman Catholic priest. He had come to Amer ica,
and for some reason had drifted to the South to engage
in teachings school, he had the reputation of being a
fine scholar and expert in the manage ment of youth. He
was a rigid discipli narian. There was no coaxing or
per suading of pupils to proper behavior or to the
learning of lessons. The com mand was given and the rod
was em ployed to enforce obedience. True to his Irish
nature he was bland in disposi tion and spoke in a
smooth and easy tone of voice. He did not always punish with a switch, but sometime with the stroke of a
rule on he hand or with his sharpened finger nails
pinched and then boxed the ears of the culprit. These
modes of punishment inflicted on his discipline the
stigma or cruelty and tyr anny. To his credit it may be
said that when he inflicted punishment upon a pupil he
did not seem to be prompted to do it by a morose and
irritable temper (as many teachers do) or by callous
sensibilities, or for the love he bore to learning, but
from a sense of his obliga tion as teacher to make the
pupils leam their lessons and to observe good be
havior. He required a reputation as a model teacher and
taught not only in Georgia but also...in Alabama....