James Nix Settles in Norwood, Colorado

Young James Nix from Choestoe found work at various trades in the Western states. He rented acreage and farmed. He worked at sawmills in the great forests of Washington state. But he always felt the call back to Colorado. His Uncle Bill Souther and he got jobs with a land surveying group. At first they worked for $1.50 per day, but then the payment advanced to $50.00 per month and $5.00 each per month for two mules. The men and their mules were given “room and board,” albeit the “room” was in whatever encampment the W. H. Wheeler Surveying Company had on their work schedule.

James Nix wrote, “We started out from Placerville to Hastings Mesa, east of Dollar Mountain on Smeck’s Toll Road when we learned of President Garfield’s assassination.” James A. Garfield was shot July 2, 1881 and lived until September 19, 1881. On the La Plata River assignment, the Uncompaghre Ute Indians went through on their move to the Uinta Reservation. The Indian Chief, Ouray, died while the Indians were at the La Plata.

By August 1881 they were surveying the Gurley Reservoir area and Wright’s Spring. The areas they surveyed had only Indian trails and pinyon, cedar and sage flats. It was the “wild west” of broad unexplored, unsettled spaces.

It was about November, 1881 when James and his Uncle Bill Souther went to Disappointment Valley to locate claims they were making. The Disappointment Valley of Colorado, near Norwood, was to play an important role in the Nix and Souther settlements and for others who had migrated there from Choestoe in Union County, Georgia.

Then the uncle and his nephew tried their luck at trapping. They caught bear and other animals and sold the pelts. Winters were severe. Survival skills were in high gear all the time. At one time someone burned Bill Souther’s cabin and all their equipment and supplies for winter were lost.

James Nix’s sisters and mother married, thus relieving James somewhat of their care. His sister Martha Jane Nix married November 2, 1882 to Thomas H. Sullivan. He was another of the Choestoe men who migrated to Colorado. James’s sister Nancy Ann Nix married Alfred Lafayette Sullivan in 1883. James’s widowed mother married William John Bankston at Norwood, Colorado on March 11, 1884. She had been a widow for over nineteen years, having buried her first husband, James’s father, William Nix, who died at Choestoe on March 17, 1864.

James married Ione May Copp, niece of Mr. Henry Copp, on January 2, 1890. James and Ione met when she was visiting her uncle who founded the Norwood, Colorado post office and store. Ione May was from Missouri. They first met in April, 1888. It was love at first sight. James tells how he found many reasons to go to the store and post office after Miss Copp went to Colorado to live with her uncle and aunt. James writes about how he and Miss Copp and nine other young men and ladies took a ride up Baldy to Lone Cone for an outing and picnic. While there, a thunderstorm formed along Naturita Creek far below them. James Nix said it was the second time in his life he had been above a storm to view it. The previous time was before he left Union County in 1873. He and some young men had climbed to the top of Bald Mountain, and far below them, in Choestoe Valley, lightning flashed, thunder rolled and rain pelted, but on the mountain the sun was still shining.

James Nix built a two-room cabin for his bride at Norwood. It had a dirt roof and sod floor. Through the sagebrush, he dug down twenty feet into the soil to find water for a well. He worked for the Naturita Canal and Reservoir Company. James wrote that as their means increased, they built onto the original two-room cabin, made it into a large two story house, and added two rooms on the west. There nine children were born to them. Five lived to adulthood, but four died in infancy.

When James Nix died at the age of 88 on March 2, 1947, the Norwood Star wrote of him:

“Mr. Nix was one of the few remaining pioneers of Wright’s Mesa. He helped to settle a wonderful section of the west. His life, spent mostly in Colorado in the early days of struggle for survival of the fittest, stands as a monument to the ‘Carving of the West."

Those who read James Nix’s memoirs are inspired by the courage of a Georgia mountain woman who had a vision of a better life for her children, and especially of a son in his early teens when they left Union County who shouldered responsibilities for himself, his mother and his two sisters in a strange and daunting land.

c2004 by Ethelene Dyer Jones; published July 22, 2004 in The Union Sentinel, Blairsville, GA. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Young James Nix Settles Into Life in Colorado

Elizabeth Souther Nix Bankston (1834-1924) was the fifth child of John Souther and Mary "Polly" Combs Souther. As a widow, she traveled from Choestoe to Colorado in 1873 and settled there with her son James and daughters Martha Jane and Nancy Ann. Her brother, William Souther (right) was already in Colorado. On March 11, 1884, Elizabeth married John Bankston of Norwood, Colorado.

Elizabeth Souther Nix left Choestoe, Union County, on March 24, 1873. The widow of William Nix (1837-1864), she anticipated that a better life lay ahead in Colorado for her and her three children, James, almost 14, Martha Jane, 12, and Nancy Ann, 10. Her brother, William Souther, was already in Colorado, and he no doubt influenced Elizabeth to move west to what they considered the land of promise.

A record of the journey was made in the form of memoirs from James Nix who saw the move as a great adventure. Last week’s column covered their journey by wagon from Choestoe to Cleveland, Tennessee, and westward by train from Tennessee to Colorado, including their itinerary and the wonders James and his family saw along the route.

When they arrived in Denver, Colorado on April 8, 1873, only fifteen days after they had departed Choestoe, they received a cold welcome. Three to four inches of snow was on the ground. Seeing it spread across the prairie with herds of buffalo running in it was “a wonder” to the young lad. The story continues:

James Nix recounts how they took the narrow gauge D & R G train from Denver to Pueblo, Colorado. “It looked like a toy train,” he wrote. At Pueblo they hired mule teams and wagons and “pulled south to Apache Creek” where they camped for two days. From there they went northward to Muddy Creek to join other members of the Souther family. James got a job working at what he called a “mixture of ranching, sawmilling, and cowpunching.” His work brought the lad, the main breadwinner for the family of four, fifty cents a day and a soddy for them to live in. There they remained until about January of 1876.

The family’s next move was to St. Charles, Colorado, eight miles southwest of Pueblo. He hired out as a work hand on a farm there. They were at St. Charles when the Custer Massacre took place in the Black Hills on June 25, 1876. He noted in his memoirs, “Those were exciting times.”

The Atkinson, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad extended its line to Pueblo, Colorado in March of 1876. Instead of the dinky line the family had taken three years previously from Denver when they arrived in Colorado, James wrote: “Now it seemed that Pueblo was connected to the world by a real railroad.”

The grasshoppers descended on the crops in late summer, 1876 and did so much damage that the farmers were greatly discouraged. His mother, by that time, had been able to purchase the land they lived on. But with the loss of crops from grasshoppers, they made the decision to move to “sunny Kansas.” With their team and wagon and sparse household goods, James, his mother and two sisters went down to the Arkansas River, to Los Animas, Granada, Fort Dodge, Great Bend, Hutchinson, Wichita, and Union Center. There a heavy snowstorm overtook them. He does not explain how they kept from freezing as they camped out in the storm, but they survived. After the storm abated, James looked for work. The family only had $5.00 remaining of the money they had when they left Colorado. He wrote, “We started out one afternoon after the storm lifted, hoping and praying to find work. But prospects looked dim.”

They came in sight of a nice two-story farmhouse at the Elk River. James asked the owner for permission for his family to camp by the river. Seeing that there were womenfolk in the wagon, the kind man invited them to the house where they were fed. They brought their sleeping rolls from the wagon and bedded down that night in the front room of the farmhouse. The next morning, the man, whom James calls only “Mr. Fred”, asked James and his family to remain and assist him with the rest of the corn gathering and husking. He even allowed the Nix family to live in his old house which Mr. Fred was then using as a place to store the gathered corn. They quickly moved the corn to a shed, cleaned out the house, and settled into it. James notes, “This was a bonanza. The house had a fireplace. You seldom saw a chimney on a house in Kansas in those days. Mr. Fred offered me fifty cents a day to help him with his corn crop.” When the corn was finished, he employed James to herd cattle, using one of the Souther horses.

In the spring of 1877, James rented eight acres from Mr. Fred down in Corley County, thirty miles south of where they had wintered.

But the summer of 1877 brought ague and fever to James and his sister Martha Jane. James recovered well, but his sister remained weak. He took her by wagon to Benton County, Arkansas where they bought a load of apples. They peddled the apples along the route back home and made more than enough money to cover their trip. The change of venue and the adventure of that trip helped Martha Jane get over her depression from the severe fever.

In the spring of 1878, James rented acreage from Isaac Todd. John Thomas, another Georgia transplant to the west, rented Mr. Fred’s acreage. It was in the summer of 1878 that his mother received $50.00 from Georgia (probably on sale of some of her land there). They bought cattle with the money and were successful with the crops that summer in Kansas.

“Uncle Bill Souther, my mother’s brother, came to visit us in the fall of 1878 and stayed over the winter. In May, 1879, we sold out what we had and started for the state of Washington,” James wrote. As they made their way westward again, they retraced the route through Wichita, Kansas and on to Pueblo, Colorado. They went up into the Greenhorn Mountains to visit relatives, James’s uncles, Bill Sullivan and John Thomas. These kin had gone west from Choestoe after the Civil War.

Elizabeth Souther was evidently not afraid of work. Nor was her son, James. By May, 1879, he was twenty years old. Since age 14 when his mother, two younger sisters and he had arrived in Colorado, he had been the major breadwinner for the family.

c2004 by Ethelene Dyer Jones; published July 15, 2004 in The Union Sentinel, Blairsville, GA. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

A Trip West in 1873 - From the Memoirs of James Nix

James William Nix pictured in 1881,

8 years after he left Georgia for Colorado.

Pictured beside him is his fiancée, Iona May Copp.
The couple married January 2, 1890 in Norwood, Colorado.

Elizabeth Souther Nix had the spirit and determination of a true pioneer. She set out from Choestoe District; Union County, Georgia on March 24, 1873, nine years after her young husband, William Nix (1837-1864) died and was laid to rest in Old Choestoe Cemetery. That cemetery also contained the grave of her second born child, John B. Nix (1860-1862).

In her research of what we call “the western Southers,” Diana Lee Greagar found an invaluable document that lends much light on a young widow’s trip with three young children as they migrated west. The account is in the form of memoirs written by Elizabeth and William Nix’s eldest son, James, who was born December 26, 1859 in Choestoe and died in Boise, Idaho March 2, 1947. James was not quite fourteen when he, his mother Elizabeth, and his sisters, Martha Jane (1861-1949) and Nancy Ann (1863-1899?) left Choestoe going west.

Elizabeth Souther and her three children were in the company of others from Choestoe who were likewise heading west. Her brother, William “Bill” Souther had already gone west to Colorado. Evidently his letters home had put a spark of hope in his sister’s heart. Nine years after her husband William’s death, Elizabeth looked at the mountains surrounding the small farm on Choestoe where she had tried to eke out a living for herself and her three children since Will’s untimely death. Unknown lands beyond familiar hills and valleys seemed to beckon her. She hoped there was a better way to make a living than her small farm on Choestoe afforded.

Jim wrote in his memoirs: “Father and Mother lived on Town Creek in Choestoe District on a high knoll or ridge overlooking a small valley where brother and sisters and I were all born and where I put in my happiest childhood days. Our school house and church when we left that part of the country was named Liberty.”

James Nix had recollections of the Civil War as it affected Choestoe. He mentioned the “rallies” and the “mustering days” when able-bodied men volunteered for service, or, if opposed to joining with the Confederate forces, either hid out in the mountains to escape service or, if aligning with the North, went to Tennessee where they joined the Federal Army. Jim Nix does not write whether his father lost his life due to the war or through natural causes in 1864. James also remembered what he called “the miserable pilfering parties” that robbed Choestoe homesteads. “The Union Army ran them out near the end of the war,” James wrote.

The Nix family loaded their wagon with enough provisions to get them from Choestoe to Cleveland, Tennessee, several days journey over the narrow road along the Ocoee River Gorge then used to transport copper ore from the mines around Ducktown and Copperhill, Tennessee to the railroad in Cleveland. Since others from Choestoe were in the wagon train (unfortunately Jim does not name the other families in his memoirs), Elizabeth and her three children had some protection as they camped along the way.

In Cleveland, they “stayed for a few days,” (still camping out in the wagons) where they dickered with the railroad for fares west to Colorado. James wrote, “Finally, the different families, consisting of quite a number, got them down to $35 dollars a ticket and baggage free.” Think how long Elizabeth Souther Nix must have saved up to have that amount of money in 1873 for herself and three children to go west. Being an enterprising woman, she no doubt found a place in Cleveland to sell her mule team and wagon to add a little more cash for the journey west.

James Nix gives their itinerary from Cleveland, Tennessee: “We took the train for Colorado by way of Chattanooga, Tennessee, Mobile, Alabama, and Corinth, Mississippi where we lay over for a few days.” Layovers meant more outlay of cash for the young widow and her three children. They would have found lodging in a boarding house or hotel of that day. Meals would have been another cost, for it is not likely that Elizabeth would have had a means of preparing food for them. At Corinth they did some sightseeing. He wrote, “We looked over the breast works thrown up in the Civil War.”

Next on the rail stop was Union City, Tennessee and then on to Columbus, Kentucky. There they had to cross the mighty Mississippi River by boat, which ferried the railroad coaches across. Although James Nix writes only matter-of-factly about this experience, we can imagine the excitement felt by a fourteen year old lad and his sisters, Martha Jane, 12, and Nancy Ann, 10, as they saw the great river from the windows of their railroad coach as the ferry laboriously edged to the western bank of the Mississippi.

“Then we took the Iron Mountain to St. Louis, Missouri, where we stayed a day and looked it over, such as the piers and abutments of the Eads Bridge (to be),” he wrote. The Eads Bridge was under construction in 1873. James continues, “But only the telephone wire was stretched across it at that time, and that was a wonder to me.” He had not known telephones in Choestoe Valley in his childhood. Certainly that technological advancement would have been “a wonder” to the curious lad from Choestoe.

From St. Louis the next major stop was Kansas City. They had taken the Wabash Railroad. The Missouri River had risen from the spring rains and melting snow and a washout had occurred. The people, livestock and baggage had to be transferred from the train. “We finally got to Kansas City, Kansas,” he wrote, “and laid over again.” He wrote about “the main interest there” being a prairie dog on a chain used to entertain passengers. The animal could burrow under the side of the platform and was a diversion for travel-weary passengers, especially the children.

“We left Kansas City, as I recall, about ten at night over the Kansas-Pacific Railroad for Denver, Colorado. We traveled that night, the next day, and night.”

They arrived at the Denver, Colorado rail depot about 9:00 a. m. on April 7, 1873. Since March 24, when they had left Choestoe, the Nix family had been traveling fifteen days, not a bad record for that time. “It snowed about four inches the night we got to Denver,” James wrote. “After daylight we could see buffalo running across the rolling prairies from our train, which was a wonder to me.”

[To be continued.]

c2004 by Ethelene Dyer Jones; published July 8, 2004 in The Union Sentinel, Blairsville, GA. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

That Spirit of Independence of Our Forebears

July 4 is all about celebrating America’s independence from England. We read anew how the fathers of our country met in Philadelphia and poured over the terms of The Declaration of Independence drafted by Virginia’s representative to the Continental Congress, Thomas Jefferson, then aged 33 and among the youngest of the delegates. That paper is a highly valued document and one that still inspires present-day patriots to appreciate the spirit of independence that is a trademark of American democracy.

We note July 4 as the birthday of the Declaration of Independence. Actually, it was on July 2, 1776 that this resolution was adopted in the Continental Congress: “These United Colonies are, and of right, ought to be Free and Independent States…absolved of all allegiance to the British Crown.”

After review and some changes, the final version of the Declaration of Independence was adopted by the Continental Congress. Yet only two men actually signed it on the famed date, July 4, 1776. These were John Hancock, president of Congress, and Charles Thomson, secretary.

The Declaration was read publicly on July 8, 1776 in Philadelphia. Washington’s troops, then in New York, heard the document read on July 9.

Except for Hancock and Thomson, the remainder of the fifty-six signers added their signatures to the document on August 2, 1776. Great measures were taken to keep the identities of the signers a secret to prevent their arrest and even death at the hands of the British and the American Loyalists.

Life was not easy for those who pledged “their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor” because they believed in freedom. Several of the signers were chased from farms and homes and had their property confiscated. Other signers, along with their spouses, were imprisoned. John Martin of Pennsylvania died from mental anguish when former friends shunned him. Francis Lewis’s wife died in prison.

Dr. Benjamin Rush, a medical doctor and social reformer and one of the signers wrote in a letter to fellow signer John Adams: “The 4th of July has been celebrated in Philadelphia in the manner I expected…Scarcely a word was said of the solitude and labors and fears and sorrows and sleepless nights of the men who projected, proposed, defended, and subscribed the Declaration of Independence. Do you recollect your memorable speech upon the day on which the vote was taken? Do you recollect the pensive and awful silence which pervaded the house when we were called up, one after another, to the table of the President of Congress to subscribe what was believed by many at that time to be our own death warrants? The silence and the gloom of the morning were interrupted, I well recollect, only for a moment by Colonel (Benjamin) Harrison of Virginia who said to Mr. (Elbridge) Gerry at the table: ‘I shall have a great advantage over you, Mr. Gerry, when we are all hung for what we are now doing. From the size and weight of my body I shall die in a few minutes, but from the lightness of your body you will dance in the air an hour or two before you are dead.’ This speech procured a transient smile, but it was soon succeeded by the solemnity with which the whole business was conducted…Let us, my dear friend, console ourselves for the unsuccessful efforts of our lives to serve our fellow creatures by recollecting that we have aimed well.”*

We sometimes fail to relate the events of history to time lines in the history of our county and the state of Georgia. Union County was formed in 1832. America’s freedom had been declared only fifty-six years before. Westward expansion had sent aspiring men with a pioneering spirit to the American frontier to settle. “Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” meant freedom from cities that were becoming crowded to places where family farms could be carved from the wilderness. On new lands people could exercise their bent for independence and make their own niche in the annals of history. Many of us can trace our roots back to some of the citizens who were in Union County when it was formed. Our forebears, almost as much as the signers of the Declaration of Independence, were fired with the spirit of freedom and saw it available for the taking in lands opened up for settlement. Life was not easy. They faced the unknown and hard work. But then, is independence ever easy? Is freedom ever free?

On this 4th of July, it is a good time to remember and be thankful for our legacy of independence. Jefferson believed that given the right reasons, people could govern themselves and that educated citizens could and would safeguard democracy. These tenets are as important today as they were in 1776.

[*The letter of Dr. Benjamin Rush to John Adams is cited from David Colbert’s Eyewitness to America (New York: Pantheon Books, 1997), p. 84.]

c2004 by Ethelene Dyer Jones; published July 1, 2004 in The Union Sentinel, Blairsville, GA. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

In Tribute to Our 40th President, Ronald Wilson Reagan

Regardless of your political affiliation, you no doubt were greatly touched, as was I, by the state funeral of our 40th president, Ronald Wilson Reagan (1911-2004). We saw proceedings on live television for almost a week of tribute, first in California, then in Washington, DC, and the return to California for a sunset service at the Reagan Library. It was as if we citizens had a front-seat view of the pageantry of a presidential funeral. The dignity of the proceedings made me proud to be an American and renewed my faith in a country he called “a shining city on a hill.”

To me, the review of the life and service of our 40th president brought history into perspective. Many were asked, “How would you rate Ronald Reagan as a president?” Without fail, most of those asked responded with accolades that enumerated his greatness.

From humble roots he rose to be president. Ronald Wilson Reagan was born in the small town of Tampico, Illinois on February 6, 1911. He had an older brother, Neil. His parents were Jack and Nelle Reagan. His father was a shoe salesman who moved around to small towns in Illinois to keep a job. Jack Reagan had a major problem with alcoholism. When Ronald was a boy of eleven, he came home and found his father on the porch of the Reagan home. He thought his father had passed out from over-imbibing, as indeed he had, but Jack Reagan was dead. The lad managed to move his father’s body inside the house and awaited his mother’s return from work. His mother was a seamstress and a Christian from whom Ronald learned hard work, the Bible and a desire to do something worthwhile with his life. He was able to get a scholarship to Eureka College in Illinois where he graduated in 1932.

His career prior to entering politics included radio announcer from 1932-1937 and Hollywood film actor from 1937-1954. Perhaps his most notable role was that of George Gipp, star half-back in the film about Notre Dame’s great football coach, “Knute Rockne, All-American” in 1940. This role gave him the nickname, “The Gipper.” He starred in some 50 films and served as president of the Screen Actors’ Guild where his love of persuasion and politics were nourished.

He was host and acted in the General Electric Theater, a TV production, from 1954-1962. He was married from 1940 through 1949 to Jane Wyman, actress. Children from that marriage were Maureen (died of cancer, 2001), Michael and Christine (born prematurely and lived one day, 1947).

On March 4, 1952, he married actress Nancy Davis. Their children were Patti (b. 1952) and Ronald (b. 1958). It was Nancy who was to become the beloved first lady of California and the first lady of America, standing by her beloved “Ronnie” through years of public service and his last decade as he was afflicted with Alzheimer’s.

In November, 1980, he was elected president of the United States over incumbent Jimmy Carter, receiving 51.5% of the popular vote. At his first inauguration January 20, 1981, the Iranian hostages were released. In his first term, he was shot in an assassination attempt on March 30, 1981. On July 7, 1981, he appointed Sandra Day O’Connor of Arizona to be the first female justice in the US Supreme Court. She participated in his funeral, by his prearranged request, reading a portion of a sermon by Colonial preacher John Winthrop from which came Reagan’s term for America, “a shining city upon a hill.”

During his first term, the infamous strike by over 11,000 air traffic controllers ended with them being fired by the president Terrorism was evident in the October 23, 1983 suicide truck-bombing in Lebanon when 241 U. S. Marines lost their lives. Two days later, U. S. troops were sent to the island of Grenada to tackle a leftist coup there.

He was reelected on November 6, 1983 to his second term, winning over former Vice President Walter Mondale with almost 60% of the popular vote.

Using hard-nosed tactics in dealings with Russia, he called it “an evil empire.” His Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) was often termed “Star Wars,” but led to the eventual demise of the Russian Communist Regime and the end of the Cold War. His dealings in summit conferences with Russian leader Gorbachev led to the arms agreement, the breakup of the USSR, and later the removal of the Berlin Wall. He stood boldly near the end of his presidency at the Brandenburg Gate and said: “Come here to this gate, Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” Two years later, the wall came down. A portion of that wall is now at the Reagan Memorial Library in Simi Valley, California.

Blights on his second term were the Iran-Contra deal in which Oliver North was dismissed and arms went to the Nicaraguan rebels in exchange for hostages held by Iran. Reagan later apologized, stating the action was a “grave mistake.” Sweeping tax cuts initiated by President Reagan were popular with citizens but led eventually to the largest budget deficit in the history of the nation when he stepped down at the end of his second term.

Seeking to summarize the worth of Ronald Wilson Reagan as a president, many have seen him as a leader of integrity, honesty and faith and one who restored America’s belief in itself. “Morning in America” was one of his famous mottoes. He saw the nation as “a shining city on a hill.” Dinesh D’Souza became senior domestic policy analyst on President Reagan’s staff. His book about the president has sold over 200,000 copies. In it he praises Reagan for giving the American people the opportunity to live their lives. D’Souza states: “I think all of us can learn from Reagan’s confident leadership. His unshakeable faith in closely held principles, his vision of a better tomorrow, and his belief in the worth of every human being should inspire us all.”

I watched the proceedings of the state funeral with interest and respect. Since the funeral, I have accessed various websites with Reagan eulogies and tributes. At the website http://rememberedbyus.com/Ronald Reagan, I found that those who wish to send a personal message about our 40th president can do so, and light a candle in his memory. This is what I wrote:

“For the period when President Ronald Reagan served our country, we did not always realize the magnitude of his zeal, his spirit and his service. Now, in retrospect, we see that he was a great president and one who restored faith in America and in freedom. May we hold to his ideals and persist in making America that ‘shining city on a hill.’ God bless his family and may his legacy be remembered with respect and deep appreciation.”

On December 1, 1988, President Reagan wrote this farewell message:

“When I saddle up and ride into the sunset, it will be with the knowledge that we’ve done great things. We kept faith as old as this land we love and as big as the sky: A brilliant vision of America as a shining city on a hill. Thanks to all of you, and with God’s help, America’s greatest chapter is still to be written, for the best is yet to come.”

c2004 by Ethelene Dyer Jones; published June 17, 2004 in The Union Sentinel, Blairsville, GA. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

William Jasper Cotter and Cherokee Removal

Two weeks ago this column told of the Rev. William Jasper Cotter, Methodist Episcopal Church South minister, who was sent to a charge in 1846 at Blairsville. He and his wife Rachel resided in a cabin in Union County and from there he went out to twenty preaching stations in North Georgia, Western North Carolina and Eastern Tennessee.

He gave invaluable insight into his life and times in his memoirs which he entitled My Autobiography. His descriptions of places and events were clear and incisive. He was living with his parents in Murray County, Georgia when the Cherokee Indian Removal occurred in 1838. His parents were John Vance Cotter, born November 28, 1789 in Union District, South Carolina and his mother was Mary Ann Nall Cotter, born June 12, 1796 in Chatham County, North Carolina. The Cotter family lived in Hall County, Georgia where son William Jasper was born November 16, 1823. They moved to Murray County in 1832 and settled in the area of the Carter Plantation (now Carter’s Lake area) along the old Federal Road.

In his life story, the Rev. Cotter gave vivid accounts of what he saw and experienced as the Cherokee were rounded up and moved west.

When he was a teenager, he was hired as a delivery boy to haul loads of corn to some of the posts where General Winfield Scott’s soldiers were encamped. He saw first-hand much of the action of rounding up the Indians and holding them in forts awaiting the removal to Oklahoma.

From his book we read: “On a mild May morning, two men stood at our gate. Dismounted from his large, raw-boned white horse, his bridle rein on his arm, stood General Scott, with White Path, an Indian, for whom White Path Gold Mine (in Gilmer County) was named. There was neither a white man nor an Indian there, only two old soldiers who had met at the battle of Horseshoe Bend. Chief White Path exhibited a medal that General Jackson had given him for his bravery in the battle.” (p. 42)

A quartermaster in General Winfield Scott’s army, Colonel W. J. Howard, boarded at the Cotter’s house. It was from him that the young Cotter received his orders to deliver loads of corn to the soldiers. The going rate for corn at that time, under the inflated economy and the dire need for corn, was one dollar per bushel. Young Cotter returned almost every day he hauled a load with five dollars for his father. One day, he returned with thirteen dollars. He hauled the corn on an ox-drawn wagon.

He remembers: “It was a hard day’s work, starting early and getting back late, and this was the daily round.” When he was not hauling corn, he was engaged to move the household goods the Indians had been forced to leave in their cabins when they were taken to the forts. Five or six soldiers went with Cotter as guards. The soldiers forced open the cabin doors and left Cotter to load the meager goods. He recalled that he could load “the stuff of two or three families at one load.” The soldiers left him to the sorry task of loading. He wrote, “The soldiers galloped away, leaving me in worse danger than anyone else; for if there had been an Indian hiding out, I would have been the one to suffer.” (p. 40)

The situation gave Cotter great concern. Cows and their calves had been apart for days and the calves were starving. Cotter turned them together. Chickens, cats and dogs scattered at the approach of the soldiers and Cotter and his ox team. Indian ponies stood under shade trees fighting flies. Bells around necks of cows and ponies made an eerie music in the spring air. Dogs howled mournfully for their owners. As cabins were emptied, the doors were left ajar. Cotter commented, “To have seen it all would have melted to tenderness a heart of stone.” (p. 40)

Cotter saw fields of corn the Indians had planted. It had been a warm spring and they had seeded the fields early, maybe with the idea that if they proceeded with life as usual the removal would not occur.

Cotter emphasized that the Indians were not mistreated in captivity. “From General Scott down, every soldier and citizen looked upon them with an eye of pity. The Indians were neither prisoners nor captives. They were defenseless wards of the government, cared for and fed from the commissary stores.” (p. 43)

According to Cotter’s account, the Indians were not crammed inside the forts. They were encamped outside the forts awaiting the move to Ross’s Landing. Cotter saw the children and youth playing and “happy as larks.” When the move began, the ill and infirm were transported by wagons. As a first-hand observer of the action, Cotter stated that published reports of Indians having to survive on roots and berries were untrue. “They felt no fear of the soldiers, realizing at once they were their protectors. Not one of the Indians could have been tempted to leave the camp a mile. I am persuaded that more than half of them were glad and ready to go.” (p. 45)

Yet even with the humane treatment of the Cherokee that Cotter observed, he noted that a pervading sadness lingered like a pall. The vacated Indian cabins and deserted animals stood in stark contrast to the cultivated fields with crops of corn and beans growing in the spring warmth.

In addition to hauling loads of corn from his father’s farm to the army camps, young Cotter was also hired by Colonel Howard on occasion as a messenger boy to take papers from Murray County to Fort Hartzell in Ellijay. It was a journey of about seventeen miles across rugged mountains. The lad encountered a huge man with a gun and feared for his life. But the man did not fire his gun at Cotter. The lad spent the night in the mountains, cold and lost, but the next morning he determined which direction he should go and he and his horse arrived at the fort safely.

William Jasper Cotter was fourteen when he worked as a delivery and messenger boy during the Indian Removal. What he saw made such a lasting impression on him that he could write his eye-witness accounts in his autobiography when he was an old man of about ninety. He died in Newnan, Georgia on January 4, 1922.

c2004 by Ethelene Dyer Jones; published June 10, 2004 in The Union Sentinel, Blairsville, GA. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

A Gold Prospector Named Hamby

Stories abound about those who hoped to make their fortune from gold found in Union County mines. One told by the late Preston Turner and Robert Corn is about a mysterious fellow named C. A. Hamby who spent eighteen or more months prospecting along Coosa Creek.

The story goes something like this. It was a cold rainy morning in 1937. Robert Corn was with his father, John, and a neighbor, hunting on Duncan Ridge. There they came upon a man digging along a creek bank. He was unkempt, dirty and looked like a hobo. The hunters learned from him that he had made himself a temporary shelter from bark but would like a more permanent place to stay while prospecting for gold.

The Corn family took him in. They learned his name was C. A. Hamby, he had been born in Western North Carolina, and that he had spent fourteen years teaching in an Indian school in Oklahoma. Mr. Hamby spent most of his days during the next eighteen months out on Coosa Creek and elsewhere digging for gold. He brought in a pound nugget that was assayed at a value of $420.00. In those days, with the nation trying to recuperate from the Great Depression, that was no small find.

With John Corn’s help, Hamby boxed up and shipped forty-five pounds of quartz to a mining company in London, England. The company assayed the ore and made a proposal that if other ore were as rich in gold as the sample, the England Company would finance up to a million dollars to set up mining operations in the area. They instructed C. A. Hamby to purchase mineral rights so that the project could move forward.

As happens with the best laid plans, history interfered and England declared war on Germany on September 3, 1939. That London Mining Company could not proceed with plans to finance a gold mine in Union County.

However, Mr. Hamby seemed to have an alternative plan. After his eighteen months of prospecting, he told the Corns that he was going to Seymour, Indiana. He knew a wealthy lady there who could finance the venture. He would go, possibly marry her, and then return with the necessary equipment to mine the rich vein of ore he had found. The nuggets had rich gold on one side and were white on the other side.

On November 2, 1939, John Corn walked with his boarder to Owltown Gap. Hamby was carrying a small pouch of gold nuggets and had only the clothes on his back. The men bade each other farewell.

Later in the day, Mr. W. H. Nix saw C. A. Hamby. He was carrying two heavy suitcases which he did not have when he left the Corn residence. Hamby boarded the bus at Harve Davis’s store, still with the two suitcases in tow.

On November 10, 1939, John Corn received a letter from C. A. Hamby. He had, indeed, reached Seymour, Indiana, and there the “wealthy lady” had become his wife. She had agreed to finance the mining venture. He asked Mr. Corn to hire ten to fifteen men to begin mining operations. He would be back soon to supervise the operations.

Who was this wealthy lady? Her name, if ever known in Union County, has been lost to time. But it is reported that she, herself, came to investigate the situation. She said that C. A. Hamby had borrowed $450. 00 from her to go to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania or to Virginia to purchase mining equipment to send to Union County. As he left her in Indiana, he had the same two heavy suitcases with which he was seen leaving Union County.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation was called into the case. Four men, two in New York and two in San Francisco, were caught trying to smuggle raw gold out of the country. That raw gold, by the nature of its golden patina, was identified as gold from Coosa Creek. Was one of these four men the mysterious C. A. Hamby? Or had he been robbed of his heavy suitcases, maybe even murdered? Were others trying to make a fortune from his eighteen months of prospecting and hiding his gold-filled ore?

The unfinished story of Prospector Hamby and his gold cache lies somewhere in the hidden records of mountain mists. Perhaps someone with a propensity for a novel will delve a little deeper and come up with a like-life story of the Corn family’s boarder who made off with two suitcases of Union County gold ore.

[The sources referenced for this article are “Sketches of Union County History, Volume III” (1987), pp. 22-23 and “Mountain Relic, 1980”, pp. 38-40.]

c2004 by Ethelene Dyer Jones; published June 3, 2004 in The Union Sentinel, Blairsville, GA. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.