UPSON COUNTY, GA - HISTORY  Franklin Academy by Green, John Miles

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Published in UHS Newsletter  Sept-Oct 2000

This Account of Franklin Academy written by John Miles Greene.


"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
revolutionary 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 slender, 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 America,
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 disciplinarian. 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....