The Rev. John Corn, Another Son of Elder Rev. Adam Corn

We’ve traced the story of Elder Adam Corn who moved to Union County from North Carolina as early as 1839 and of his second son, the Rev. Alfred E. Corn, both of whom were noted as missionaries to the Indians and were instrumental in planting churches in the new settlements to which they moved. The first son of Adam and Hannah Heatherly Corn was John who was born October 18, 1813 near Cullowhee in what was then Buncombe County, North Carolina, now Jackson County. John was already married when his father Adam and the rest of his siblings relocated to Union County, Georgia. John and his wife and one child under five were listed in the 1840 census of Union, but the census taker mistakenly spelled John’s last name as Carne instead of Corn.

John Corn’s marriage to Mary Wade (known as “Polly”) Carter was recorded in Rabun County, Georgia as occurring on November 10, 1836 with the Rev. Robert Wood, also a Justice of the Peace, performing their marriage ceremony. Polly’s parents were Jesse Carter and Lavina Sams Carter. The Carter line went back to Edward Carter from Oxfordshire, England who settled in Pennsylvaniaabout 1682. Before Jesse and Lavina Carter moved to Rabun County, they had lived in Buncombe County near Cullowhee and their daughter Polly and John Corn knew each other then, and probably fell in love. He went to Rabun County to court and marry her in 1836. Polly was about three years older than John, having been born September 20, 1810 on the farm where her parents then lived at the Atkins Branch of the Big Ivy River near Cullowhee, NC. The young couple made their home at first at Cullowhee, but then when Adam Corn, John’s father, decided to migrate to Union County, Georgia to secure land available for settlement there, John and Polly decided to move, too.

We have seen from previous stories about Adam and Alfred that Rev. Adam Corn baptized his two older sons in the Hiawasee River near Macedonia Baptist Church in 1841. John Corn’s license to preach was issued by Macedonia Church on December 17, 1842. Two years later, on November 16, 1844, John Corn was ordained to the gospel ministry by that same Macedonia Church. Serving on the presbytery and ordaining council to question John were his father, Rev. Adam Corn, and neighboring pastors Rev. James Kimsey and Rev. Singleton Sisk.

A very significant event took place in Augusta, Georgia in May of 1845. Messengers gathered from states having Baptist Conventions and cooperating Baptist churches to discuss and act upon the proposal to form the convention and establish a Board of Domestic Missions, of Foreign Missions, of Education and other benevolent entities. Four friends discussed the importance of the meeting in advance, and they were made messengers from their respective churches in Union County to attend the organizational meeting. They had been given credentials for voting on proposals presented at the Augusta meeting. The men rode in Major Josiah Carter’s carriage drawn by two fine horses. With the routes available then from Blairsville to Augusta, we can imagine they went provisioned to camp out along the way since it would have been a several-days journey. In the group were the Rev. John Corn, the Rev. Elisha Hedden, the Rev. Elijah Kimsey and Major Josiah Carter. Major Carter was a brother-in-law to Rev. John Corn, the brother of John’s wife, Polly Carter Corn. Not only did these four men from Union County vote to form the Southern Baptist Convention, but Major Carter himself pledged there to contribute to foreign missions. Not only would he hold true to his pledge, but three of his granddaughters and one great grandson later became appointed foreign missionaries. The long trip to Augusta for these three ministers and one layman had far-reaching effects.

Rev. John and Mary Carter Corn lived in the Upper Hightower section of Towns County, a portion taken in when Towns was formed from Union in 1856. There they had a farm and reared their family: Lucinda Caroline who married Lafayette McKinney and Rev. Will Eller; Hannah Lavina who married Marion Stonecypher; John Heatherly who married Sarah Elizabeth Dillard; Mary Adeline (an invalid) who never married; and Nancy Elizabeth who married Ransom Smith.

Rev. John Corn was pastor of the Upper Hightower Baptist Church in his community for many years. It was said that, because that church was in his home district, he would never accept money for his services. Other churches he pastored were Old Union and Bell Creek in Towns County, and at Franklin and Valley River in North Carolina. He was listed as the first moderator of the Hiawassee Baptist Association when it was organized in 1849.

But farming and preaching were not the only two interests of the Rev. John Corn. When the Civil War was looming and the secession of Georgia from the Union seemed eminent, Rev. John Corn and Rev. Elijah Kimsey were elected representatives from Towns County to attend the secession convention held at the state capitol, then located at Milledgeville, Georgia, a four-hundred miles round trip by horseback from Hiawassee. Each of these representatives voted against Georgia’s seceding from the Union.

Rev. John Corn was a slave owner. He bought two young slave girls from his brother-in-law Major Josiah Carter. Harriet, a slave girl, age 7 was purchased for $750 in 1861, and Susan, age 14, for $1,600 in 1863. He purchased a 17 year old slave lad at a slave auction in South Carolina for $850 in 1862.

When he was 48, Rev. John Corn was drafted into the Confederate Army and served, according to his pension record, as Captain of Company D, 24th Regiment of the Georgia Volunteers. His service lasted from June 21, 1861 through May 22, 1862. When the elder Rev. John Corn resigned his commission, his son John Heatherly Corn enlisted in the Georgia Cavalry, Company A of the Sixth Regiment and served until the end of the war.

In 1874, Rev. Corn was elected as Towns County’s representative to the Georgia Legislature. By then, the state capitol had been relocated from Milledgeville to Atlanta. While inroute to his legislative duties, he became ill and had to return home. He died from complications with pneumonia at his home at Upper Hightower on January 2, 1875. He was interred in the Corn family cemetery at Upper Hightower near his home. Mary Polly Corn died January 14, 1879 and was also laid to rest in the family cemetery.

A special election was held through orders of Georgia Governor James Smith, and Samuel Y. Jameson, the great-uncle of Dr. S. Y. Jameson, President of Mercer University, Macon, was elected as Rev. John Corn’s successor to represent Towns County in the Georgia Legislature. Just as John Corn’s son, John Heatherly Corn, followed his father’s example and served in the Civil War, so he entered politics, becoming Towns County legislator for the 1884-1885 term. John Heatherly Corn also served as postmaster of the Visage post office in Towns County from 1875 through 1913, the entire life of that post office. The Corn families contributed much to early development of both Union and Towns Counties.

c2012 by Ethelene Dyer Jones. Published March 29, 2012 online with permission of the author at the GaGenWebProject. All rights reserved.

Pinnacles of the Past: The Railroad went to Blue Ridge, not Blairsville Blue Ridge, Mecca of the Mountains

The railroad, when it came to the mountains, went to Blue Ridge, Georgia and not to Blairsville, to the disappointment of many in the 1880s. Folks from Blairsville had to go to Blue Ridge to the train station, or to Culberson, NC, when the tracks extended on to there, or to Murphy, NC to catch a train or to ship their farm goods.

Blue Ridge, Georgia was incorporated by an Act of the Georgia Legislature on October 24, 1887.

But the history of Blue Ridge, named after the azure peaks, part of the Southern Appalachian Range that surround the town, had a much earlier beginning than that October day in 1887.

Cherokee Indians had a village and stronghold at the site of the future town. They cleared fields for cultivation and grew maize and other crops. One of the five "civilized tribes" of Native Americans, the Cherokee were advanced in agriculture, a written language and governmental practices.

The first post office in Blue Ridge was established before the Indians were forced west on the Trail of Tears. Seventeen years before Fannin County was formed by an Act of the Georgia Legislature and the bill signed by Governor Herschel Johnson on January 21, 1854, William L. Buchanan was appointed first postmaster of the Blue Ridge station on March 30, 1837. It is likely that Mr. Buchanan was also an Indian agent, dealing in land transactions with the Indians as white settlers moved into the area prior to the Indian removal. Tuckahoe Post Office, which later became Tacoah and then Morganton, was established fifteen days before the one at Blue Ridge, on March 15, 1837, with Benjamin Chastain as first postmaster and Indian agent.

The founder and "father" of Blue Ridge was Michael McKinney whose father, James Isaac McKinney, had settled at Chestnut Gap to the west of Blue Ridge in 1853. There the McKinney family established a mill, a store, a stagecoach stop on the old Ducktown to Ellijay Road, and various other enterprises. Because of serious damage to the McKinney store and mill during the Civil War, the McKinneys returned to their former home in Tennessee at Horseshoe Bend in Roane County. Michael McKinney joined the Confederacy and served in the Civil War, earning the rank of Colonel. He was known as Col. Mike McKinney upon his family's return to Chestnut Gap after the war and until his death in 1925.

In 1886, Colonel Michael McKinney sold out his Chestnut Gap holdings to his eldest son, Robert McKinney, and he and his wife, Hepsey Adeline McClure, and their younger children moved to what would become the town of Blue Ridge. There Michael McKinney established the first business, with a general merchandise store, a sawmill with sale of lumber and building materials, and a real estate business. The McKinney residence was the first built in the newly formed town of Blue Ridge.

Land for the town of Blue Ridge had belonged to an early settler, John Green, a farmer who raised corn and other crops on the location where the Fannin County Courthouse now stands. Mr. Green's son, Elisha, donated land to establish the town of Blue Ridge and worked with Mr. McKinney to survery and plat the town.

Michael McKinney was the mover and shaker in getting the railroad to Blue Ridge. McKinney and Georgia state legislator from the county, Mr. Ben Duggar, negotiated with officials of the Marietta and North Georgia Railroad. Engineer C. R. Walton worked to find the best right-of-way for laying the railroad tracks through Pickens, Gilmer and Fannin Counties and on into Murphy, North Carolina. Through convict labor secured by Representative Dugger, the grade for the tracks was finished in 1885. Col. McKinney and Col. R. L. Herbert of Cherokee County, NC, drove the ceremonial spike linking the northward bound track at Ellijay on January 1, 1886 amidst much festivity and celebration. The engine named "Little Mary" roared into Blue Ridge in 1886, pulling the train into the depot. The railroad shops were located at Blue Ridge from 1886 through 1906, providing jobs for repairmen and other railroad workers. The railroad was a boon to population growth and commercial and residential building.

Blue Ridge soon became a tourist attraction. Mineral Springs, with health-giving chaleate water, was touted as a place where health could be restored. Hotels sprang up in the new town along the twin main streets east and west of the railroad tracks. Homes were opened as boarding houses. Blue Ridge quickly became a bustling town. Horses, buggies, carts and farm wagons crowded the streets. Railroad whistles, the sound of cars switching on the tracks, the sights and smells of steam and smoke combined to produce an atmosphere of prosperity and productivity.

A problem arose concerning county government and judicial business. Lawyers, judges and others coming to the county for "court weeks" traveled by train and lodged at Blue Ridge hotels. They had to hire buggies or other conveyances to travel the dirt road to Morganton, the county seat, to conduct court. This seemed a waste of time and was a great inconvenience to them.

A proposal came to move the county seat from Morganton to Blue Ridge. The vote was taken on August 13, 1895. Two-thirds of those voting favored the referendum. However, those who had long cherished having Morganton as the county seat town did not easily give in to the vote. The dispute was settled by the Georgia Legislature and the vote upheld.

A stately brick courthouse with two stories and a clock tower was completed in Blue Ridge in 1901 at a cost of $14,000. That building burned July 3, 1936. The replacement was completed in 1937. The present new court house was entered in January, 2004.

A lengthy article published in 1887 in The Ellijay Courier described the rapid growth of Blue Ridge. stating that people were moving "from Atlanta, Marietta, Michigan and other places." The climate, land, healthy environment and future prospects of prosperity hailed Blue Ridge as the "mecca of the mountains." The writer further stated that "Messrs. McKinney and Walton, who own the real estate, intend to make a town of that place whether fate so decrees or not."

Although the heyday of the railroad subsided when passenger trains ceased to pull into the depot in 1951, and freight transportation ceased in the 1980's, the Blue Ridge Scenic Railway short run between Blue Ridge and McCaysville draws thousands of sightseers each season. Downtown Blue Ridge has undergone massive renovation and could well be renamed the "mecca of the mountains" for antiques and specialty shops.

Citizens in each generation since the town's founding in 1887 to the present have left a legacy of hard work, entrepreneurship, and determination. "Mecca of the Mountains"? The torch of hope and determination is still flaming, ready to be transferred to those, who like Colonel Michael McKinney, are yet to dream of what Blue Ridge can become.

And it's still a pretty good place for folks at Blairsville to travel to, even though the only train operative there now is the Blue Ridge Scenic Railway.

c 2008 by Ethelene Dyer Jones; published July 17, 2008 in The Union Sentinel, Blairsville, GA. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.