About "How Firm a Foundation" -- First Baptist Church History Book

Recently off the press is the beautiful book recounting the history of First Baptist Church, Blairsville.

Serving on the committee to research, write, design and publish the book were Ed and Doris Durban, Eva Decker, Mary Sue Moon, James Hooper, Tina Hourihan, Carol Rabun and Alan Morgan. They readily acknowledge that many more contributed to the book, making it a compendium of local and area history as well as the story of a faithful group of people who have lived and exercised faith in this place since at least 1875 or earlier.

It is an unusual book. Seldom do you see a church history book that is bound in what I like to call a “coffee table” format, one so comely and physically appealing in a book that you will want to place it in a prominent place in your home. Cover and contents, color and design—all invite the reader to enjoy.

The committee could not find an exact beginning date for First Baptist Church, Blairsville. They learned it was already founded and functioning as early as August 12, 1875, the earliest written records about the church. On that date, three messengers from the church—Isaac Petty, E. Boling and A. Carpenter—were representing Blairsville Baptist Church at the annual meeting of the Notla River Baptist Association and were so recorded in that body’s written minutes.

How long before 1875, or just when or by whom the church was founded has been lost in the mists of time and the absence of recorded information. The committee is to be commended for the sources they consulted to bring as much information as possible to readers about the church’s existence, growth, work and influence in the community and to the ends of the earth.

Old land deeds of August 29, 1883 reveal that a gift of two acres of land on Lot 303 was made to Blairsville Baptist Church Trustees by Jacob Luther Colwell. The Trustees receiving the land on behalf of the church were John A. Christopher, J. W. Meeks and Jessie Y. Walker. Later, in another gift of land from the same Land Lot 303, Mr. Jacob Luther Colwell gave another acre of land on January 8, 1890. On this land a house of worship was erected.

Early pastors, from a list made from memory by J. L. “Uncle Boney” Colwell in 1944, provided insight to first leaders in the absence of recorded minutes of the church’s first decades. Thumbnail biographies of these pastors are given, together with pictures when available.

The title of the book, How Firm a Foundation: A History of the First Baptist Church, Blairsville, Georgia, lends a hint of one of the unique features of the book. “How Firm a Foundation” is the title of a beloved church hymn appearing first in 1787 in London in John Rippon’s “Selection of Hymns.” It was beloved, too, by the first settlers who practiced the “faith first delivered to the saints.” They sang the songs they had learned in the mother country when they gathered to worship. In the seven chapters of the book, the committee used a hymn contemporary to and beloved in that particular historic period. This feature, combined with the history of the period and extensive pictures, many in color, provide a readable, interesting and composite picture of Baptist Church life and the context of events in which the church worked and ministered.

The dust jacket cover has these words about the book: “This is not your average church history book. This is a book about people—Christian men and women who, through dedication and commitment to God and each other, built the First Baptist Church of Blairsville. It is a story, not of a building, but of individual lives bound together within a community of God.” – The Book Committee; Ed Durbin and Doris Durbin, Editors and Writers.

As a researcher and writer, I will return to this book time and again as I seek information about people whose brief biographies and remembrances are included in the book. The excellent index makes the book an easy-to-use reference source. For inspiration, I will read testimonies and remembrances included in the book by various people I have known. In this way I can reconnect with people who made a difference in my own life.

Thanks are certainly in order to the church body itself for calling for and voting to publish what Honorable Zell Miller calls “a golden treasure-trove.” Thanks, a thousand-times over, for the persistence, digging, and hard work of the committee that brought the book to fruition. We think of crowns being a reward of our faithful service and coming after our transition to glory. But with this earthly work, the compilation and publication of How Firm a Foundation, your crown, faithful committee, is in our hands, ready to use, a glowing tribute to your efforts. All who read and appreciate the book will be basking in the glow of your shining crown.

c 2009 by Ethelene Dyer Jones; published Sept. 17, 2009 in The Union Sentinel, Blairsville, GA. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Ebenezer Witzel Family in Union County by 1834

The Ebenezer Witzel family was in the 1834 census of Union County, Georgia, a special listing of citizens called for by Act of the Georgia Legislature in 1833 and completed on March 24, 1834. Of the population of 903 in the county in 1834, the Witzel household numbered five.

Ebenezer Witzel was the only male in his household, with his wife (whose name we do not learn until 1860 as Minerva) and three female children. They were still in Union in 1840, and had grown to five children, all females under the ages of fifteen.

We do not know what happened to the Ebenezer Witzel family in 1850. Maybe the census taker missed going by that family’s dwelling. But by 1860 and thereafter, the Ebenezer Witzel family was recorded in the new Fannin County (formed in 1854 from parts of Union and Gilmer).

Maybe I should call these early settlers whose names are listed in the 1834 census of Union County as “First Families.” In a sense, they were the first families to take up residence and carve out a living amidst the hills, valleys and ridges of Union.

Witzel is an unusual last name, one that catches the eye in a list like a county census. It is listed Witzel, Wetzel, Whitzell and other similar spellings. German in origin, it means a descendant from “Wizo”, a sort of slang name for “Wild Forest.” Could it mean, then, that the original Witzel immigrants to America came from the Black Forest of Germany? It is known that Johannes Geog Wetzel settled in Pennsylvania in the 1700s and his descendants migrated from there to various states.

According to the 1860 census of Fannin County (where we find the Union County Ebenezer Witzel of the 1834 Union census) he was a farmer, owned his own land evaluated at $2, 500 and his monetary assets were $1,000.

He had been born, according to the 1860 census, in North Carolina, and his wife, Minerva, had been born in South Carolina. He was 53 years of age and she was 41. They had two children remaining at home in 1860—John, age 14, and Hulda (Oregon?), age 10.

Did the Witzel family move from Union County to Fannin County? Probably not. It is possible that they lived on the same land they owned in Union in the 1834 and 1840 census listings. Why they were not “found” in the 1850 census is a matter of speculation. In 1860 they were in Fannin, possibly on the farm they had occupied in Union.

Ebenezer and Minerva Witzel, one of the “first families” of Union lived in a section of the new Fannin County called Sugar Creek. There Ebenezer had established the first iron forge to operate in the new Fannin County. This writer does not know the date of the iron forge’s opening, but it is very likely that it was in operation first in Union County before Fannin was founded in 1854. The iron mill was a large trip-hammer forge weighing several hundred pounds. It was operated by water power from a dam Ebenezer had built on Sugar Creek.

There this enterprising man also established a sawmill, likewise operated by water power. The sawmill was of the old type called a sash saw and worked in a vertical up-and-down motion.

To show how the Civil War adversely affected private business, the 1870 census shows that Ebenezer Witzel’s property evaluation had gone down to $1,000 and his monetary assets to $800. The reduction was probably from several factors like the actual cessation of iron manufacture (his forge did not operate during the Civil War) and his saw mill, from the poor economy after the war, and from Witzel’s deeding portions of his farm to his children as they married and established their own homes.

By 1870, Margaret Witzel, Ebenezer’s mother, had come to live with Ebenezer and Minerva. It is interesting to note that this 83-year old lady, born in North Carolina, had her occupation listed as “knitting socks.” Making socks from wool in 1870 was an important element of in-home production.

Ebenezer Witzel, born in North Carolina in 1807, died in Fannin County in 1871. His body was laid to rest on his own land. His was the first burial in what is known today as the Curtis Family Cemetery just off Curtis Road in Fannin County. There his wife, Minerva, was also laid to rest when she died October 4, 1904. It is believed that an unmarked grave in the old Curtis Cemetery may be that of Ebenezer’s mother, Margaret Witzel. The Witzel property was bought by Richard Ivy Byrd Curtis and became known in later years as the Curtis homeplace and Curtis Cemetery.

I did not find any Witzel marriages listed in early Union County marriage records. Next door in Fannin County, however, some thirteen Witzel and Wetzel marriages are listed between the years of 1854 and 1901. These marriages are of descendants, children and grandchildren, of the early settlers Ebenezer and Minerva Witzel who made their way to Union before 1834.

c 2009 by Ethelene Dyer Jones; published Sept. 10, 2009 in The Union Sentinel, Blairsville, GA. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

The Mountain Way: 'Putting Up' Grape Juice and Jelly

Last week we recalled the mountain ways of preserving foodstuffs for winter use, with a general look at the processes of drying, pickling, barreling, canning and mounding-up to preserve foods for winter and early spring use.

Today I invite you to “go purple” with me and come along on a trip back in time to the old grape arbor, to the creek bank to gather fox grapes, and to that work of making grape juice and jelly for winter use. Purple has always been the color for royalty, and as we looked at our cans of purple grape juice and the small glasses of jelly, we could anticipate a feast fit for royalty supplemented and abetted by these two tasty preserved items.

My Grandpa “Bud” Collins had a grape arbor. He grew Concord grapes. The vines were staked “to a fare-you-well,” which in mountain vernacular meant the lush vines were well-trained along a sturdy grape arbor. It was a happy day for me—like play, not work—when I was allowed to accompany my Aunts Ethel and Avery to the grape arbor to gather the harvest. I can remember still looking up to see the luscious clusters of ripe grapes hanging like purple gold from the vines with broad leaves that ran along the whole length and breadth of the scaffold.

As a small child, I was allowed my own small bucket and a step stool on which I stood to gather grapes. I was warned in advance, “Be careful; don’t wiggle or you’ll fall off the stool!” My aunts gave me instructions on how to reach to the end of the cluster and gently pull off the whole bunch of grapes. I would soon have my small bucket filled and feel quite an accomplishment at my help with this valuable harvest.

Then came another work-play task I enjoyed. I was shown how to wash the grapes in pans of clear water. We didn’t have running water at that time, so we drew cool buckets from the deep well, using the “well bucket,” rope and windlass. We always washed the grapes twice to insure they were clean, and always “looked” them to remove any insects that might be hiding somewhere on the grapes.

The next step was pulling the grapes from the cluster, making sure no stems remained on them. In the pot, the grapes were covered with water and put on the Home Comfort wood stove to simmer. It was customary to use a wire potato masher to crush the grapes as they boiled so that the juice could be readily released from the hulls. After a proper length of time of cooking, the grapes were set aside to cool some, and then they were strained through clean cheesecloth to save just the royal purple juice. This was placed in one-half gallon Mason fruit jars, sealed with a “rubber ring and can top,” the kind of sealer we had for the jars in those days, and the whole cans were submerged into a hot water bath until processed—just a few minutes, maybe ten, for juice. If the juice was too tart, some sugar was added to the juice in each jar and stirred to dissolve, before processing.

When the sealed jars cooled, they were taken to the cellar and stored on the shelves there awaiting winter use. What a treat it was to get a half-gallon of grape juice and taste its tangy goodness in the dead of winter. How pretty the jars looked, sitting in their assigned place in the well-ordered cellar. This royal-purple drink took its honored place beside the other many jars of preserved food from summer’s bounty.

Some of the grapes were turned into jelly or jam. When the juice was made, it was matched, cup-for-cup with white sugar and boiled until it “jelled.” Sure-Jell, which has been a marvelous find for jelly-making in the latter half of the twentieth century, was never heard of when I was young and helping with the jelly-making. We simply boiled the sugar-juice combination until a drop of it into water in a cup would indicate to the practiced eye that the jelly was ready to put into sterilized small jars and sealed over with melted wax to await those future treats with jelly and butter on a hot biscuit. Yum, yum. Can’t you just imagine how that tasted on a snowy morning in December or January?

Fox Grape harvest came in the fall. It was harder to gather these grapes, for they were wild and grew on vines that had climbed trees in our forest, especially along branch or creek banks. My younger brother Bluford became an expert fox grape gatherer, for he could “skinny up” a tree, with a bucket strapped about his waist by a belt, ready to pluck those grapes from their tall hiding places. We would take two or three buckets on our treks to find and gather fox grapes. Once home again with our treasure from the forest, the same processes as with Grandpa’s Concord grapes was followed to make juice and jelly from these wild grapes. They had a tartness that distinguished them from the tame Concord grapes, and the color was not quite as royal purple as those from the arbor.

I was age fourteen when my mother passed away. I found myself of necessity having to be “chief cook and bottle washer”—as well as canner and preserver—around the Dyer household. Looking back now, I often wonder how I was able to do adult work and still go to school. It wasn’t easy, but I had been taught well: “Whatever thy hands find to do, do it with thy might” and “Work is honorable; do it to the best of your ability and without complaining.”

Every time I purchase grape juice in today’s modern super market or get a jar of Smucker’s grape jelly or jam from the grocer’s shelf, I think back to those days of yore when I thought nothing of gathering grapes, processing them, and enjoying the products of my labors, that mountain way of “putting up” against the hunger and cold of winter months.

c 2009 by Ethelene Dyer Jones; published Sept. 2, 2009 in The Union Sentinel, Blairsville, GA. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

The Mountain Way -- 'Putting-Up' Foodstuffs for Winter Use

With the economy in a downslide and the future uncertain, conditions may behoove us to go back to some old mountain ways of insuring our family’s welfare in the long, cold months of late fall and winter.

We call it “putting-up,” the processes we used to preserve food for future use. There were many of them used by frugal mountain folk, industrious people “to the Nth degree”, as we say here, to save what we grew and gathered by the sweat of our brow to grace our tables in winter’s cold. Drying, pickling, barreling, canning and mounding-up were a few processes that come to mind.

Drying included stringing green beans twice. First, “stringing” them to remove just that, the strings from white half-runners, our favorite variety to grow in the mountains. Then came stringing the unbroken beans by pushing a threaded needle through the middle of each until a goodly string was saved. Next came the drying process—hanging the “strung” beans from a nail in a safe, clean, out-of the way place or over a rafter in the attic to await winter’s need for them. The end product of this process had an interesting name, “Leather Britches.” When the housewife-cook was ready to prepare a “mess” of them, she washed them thoroughly, soaked them until the dryness gave way to plumpness as the beans hydrated again, and then cooked them slowly (in an iron pot) with a piece of “fat-back” pork meat.

Drying included many mountain products, among which were October beans (somewhat like present-day Pinto beans), peas of various sorts—the early spring sweet peas to make split-pea soup, several varieties of “field” peas, as black-eyed peas, Crowder peas, and purple-hull peas. These were shelled, dried in the sun, and put into bags to await winter meals. On my Daddy’s farm, we grew a lot of peas, and the dried peas were “beaten out” on a tarpaulin on the ground, and when the peas were thus out of the hull, they were put into a bucket, and held up and “winnowed” to blow the husks out. Then the beautiful dry peas were ready to store, labeled by kind, for winter use. Sometimes we sold a few bushels of the winnowed peas, what we would not need. The extra money for a few bushels of peas always helped out in our shortfall of cash.

Drying fruits was another skill. We used scaffolds on which we dried fruits—apples and peaches cut into slices, and dried carefully in the sun for several days with a screen-wire covering over the scaffold to prevent insects from harming the fruit. The scaffolded fruit was always brought inside at night to prevent its getting wet with dew.

One of the most delectable desserts imaginable was dried-fruit (apple) cake, with the layers stacked several high and a mixture of cooked dried apples with sugar and cinnamon added, spread on each thin cake layer for icing.

Pumpkin was dried, too, much like green beans, by stringing strips on a thread and hanging this cache to dry. The country cook knew how to turn dried pumpkin into pumpkin pies or how to add just the right amount of dried pumpkin to winter soups with potatoes, onions, carrots and stew meat, to make the soup delicious. The drying process guaranteed winter use of pumpkin, for this product, unless properly preserved, would not last through the winter. It had a short “shelf life” in the pumpkin shell.

Pickling was another process altogether. We pickeled beans, corn, cabbage and cucumbers, to name a few vegetables thus preserved. For these “putting-up” processes, we had to have crocks, or ceramic churns, in which to layer, process and then store the prepared vegetables.
Beans and corn were cooked (separately) until done. Then they were placed in churns with salt between each layer and set aside until “pickled.” The pickled product was then washed, and in more recent years, canned. But a long time ago, the products were washed off and returned to the crock pots, covered with clear water, to lessen the saline taste. The cabbage were chopped, and place raw, in layers of salt, in the pickling churn. The housewife knew, by daily examination, just when the process of pickling the kraut was finished, and washed the cabbage thoroughly and either returned it to the pottery jar with fresh water to await winter’s need, or else canned it. Cucumbers were helped along in the pickling process with a seasoning of dill herb and salt in much the same manner as the cabbage from which kraut was made.

Barrels of fresh apples were preserved by wrapping each in a piece of newspaper and storing in what we called “the apple barrel’—a wooden barrel made from upright wooden staves and secured by iron bands. Likewise, green tomatoes were wrapped in newspaper and stored in the “tomato” barrel. We usually had these stored apples and tomatoes to feast on through Thanksgiving and maybe until Christmas or after.

It was a happy day for the mountain housewife when Mason jars became available. At first they had a tint of green, but when food was placed in jars and sealed, and cooked a long time in a water bath (pressure cookers were a twentieth-century invention), the food the jars contained was a welcome addition to the winter menu. As a point of pride, each housewife who set her jars in neat rows, arranged by category of food along her cellar shelves, had a virtual showcase of accomplishment. One of the country ways and pastimes was to visit from farmhouse to farmhouse and see each lady’s handiwork in the cellar, her assurance against winter hunger.

Mounding for food preservation purposes was mainly the task of the man of the house. He prepared an outside place for the vegetables that could be “buried” for the winter. Potatoes, both Irish and sweet, turnips, carrots and cabbage were “mounded” up, covered in straw, and then with dirt and a plank roof overhead to protect them from freezing in the winter temperatures. When a “mess” was needed, he went to the appropriate mound to retrieve vegetables for his household.

All of these methods of preserving the harvest from the farm have not included sorghum-making, that fall festival of sweetness from sorghum cane, which, at the Dyer farm was a September and October activity for the whole community. My father, Jewel Marion Dyer, was the “syrup-maker” for a broad area. The syrup, when made, was stored in tin buckets of half- and gallon-size. This product was our main money crop to pay taxes and get fall and winter clothes and shoes. It was also our “sweetener” when sugar was scarce, and could be used to sweeten the best gingerbread imaginable and various other desserts, as well as being eaten as a food itself with farm-fresh butter and hot biscuits on a cold winter morning. And have you ever tried sorghum syrup over kraut? If not, you might like to taste this evening meal dish with pork sausage.

Both ingenuity and necessity led our forebears to find various means of preserving and providing food for their families in days gone by. Maybe we need to relearn these lessons for this twenty-first century.

c 2009 by Ethelene Dyer Jones; published Aug. 27, 2009 in The Union Sentinel, Blairsville, GA. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Eight Crow Family Households in Union Listed in 1834 Census

Examining the 1834 Union County census for early settlers, I discovered eight families with the surname Crow. These were, as listed from the census, with numbers following the names indicative of count of males (first) and count of females (second) recorded in each family when the census was finished on March 24, 1834.

William L. Crow 3 – 4
John L. Crow 3 – 4
Isaac (?) Crow 2 – 2
Peter Crow 2 – 1
James Crow 4 – 4
John Crow 4 – 4
William Crow 2 – 3
Thomas Crow 3 – 4

The total count of Crow residents in 1834 numbered 23 males and 26 females. Out of a population of 903 registered in the census, these 49 people with the same family surname definitely represented a goodly proportion of the citizenship of the county.

With my curiosity thoroughly whetted, I went next to the Marriage Records of Union County, Georgia, 1833-1897, a very handy printed reference book that serves me well when I need to look up information. Thinking I would find many marriages of Crow citizens, I was disappointed to find only these registered listings:

Crow, Clarinda S. to Alfred Nicholson on May 26, 1872 by Charles Crumbley, MG.
Crow, Millisa to Jeremiah Kittle on Dec. 23, 1841 by J. M. Rogers, JP.
Crow, Thomas to Elizabeth Logan on Sept. 23, 1837 by John Martin, JIC.

(Note: For those wondering about the abbreviations following the marriage officers’ names, MG is Minister of the Gospel; JP is Justice of the Peace; and JIC is Justice of the Inferior Court.) To have three marriages registered from Crow family members over a period of sixty-four years of county records, especially with the forty-nine Crows living in the county in 1834, seemed a bit strange to me. Did they not register marriages?

Then I thought, perhaps some of the Crow families were Indians, since all the exodus of Native Americans had not occurred when the first census was taken. Crow sounded a bit like an Indian name, such as Chief Crow, perhaps.

My next tool was the excellent book, Cemeteries of Union County, Georgia (c1990). I searched for Crow entries in the book and the cemeteries where interred. Again, I found only three entries of marked graves of Crow family members in comparison to the number who were registered in the 1834 census. Another question was raised by what I discovered in the cemetery book listing. Here is what I found:

Crow, E. A. - b. 1835, died 1841, Choestoe 1 Cemetery
Crow, Francis M., - no birth date, died August 20, 1841, Choestoe 1 Cemetery
*Crow Indian Children, no birth or death dates, buried Indian 1 Cemetery.

I proceeded to look up the Indian Graves section in the book and read this explanation: “Two graves about 100 yards above the Roy Townsend residence in Coosa District are said to be those of Indian children. The Indian family name was Crow. This story has been handed down from older generations from the Pre-Civil War years.” (p. 249).

This Indian Cemetery, only if containing two graves and those of children, seemed to support somewhat my theory that some of the Crow families listed in the 1834 census might, therefore, have been Native Americans—Cherokee Indians.

That took me on a search for Crow as an Indian name. I found another surprising fact. Crows are a western states Indian group. Crow is a tribal name, a break-off from the Sioux Indians’ Hidatsa Group native to the Missouri River region of America. When the Crow broke from the Sioux, the Crow tribe went westward mainly to the Rocky Mountains area of Colorado. So if any Indian families had the name Crow in Union County, Georgia they were likely given the name due to their raven hair or characteristics considered appropriate to a crow.

Looking up the origin of the surname Crow and Crowe, I discovered that it is Anglo-Saxon in origin, an anthromorphic name, with characteristics resembling a crow, having to do more with character traits than appearance, although the early Crow families may have had very black hair. As early as 1100, Crow families lived in Norfolk and Suffolk in East England. Ailwin Crowe in 1180 was on the “Pipe Rolls of Warwickshire” England. He lived from 1154-1189, and was known as a “Builder of churches.” The first Crow I found migrating to the Southern colonies was Adam Crow, age 19, who sailed from London on the ship “Thomas” and landed in Virginia in 1635. Adam was followed the next year, 1636, by Henry Crow who also settled in Virginia. Adam and Henry were probably the progenitors of the Southern Crow families that migrated to North and South Carolina and into North Georgia. Others listed in the northern colonies were William Crow who arrived in Plymouth Colony in the early 1620s and John Crow in Charlestown, Massachusetts in 1630.

One of the Crow men in early Union County served as a public officer. The first county officers were installed on March 20, 1833 when the county was a little more than three months old (founded Dec. 3, 1832). These were, according to the marker on the old courthouse square: James Crow – Sheriff; Arthur Gilbert – Clerk of Superior Court; Joseph Jackson – Clerk of Inferior Court; James Gaddis, Sr. – Coroner; and Joseph Chaffin – Surveyor. John Thomas was the representative to the Georgia Legislature and had been the one to suggest Union as the name for the new county, stating, “There are none but Union men there.”

c 2009 by Ethelene Dyer Jones; published Aug. 20, 2009 in The Union Sentinel, Blairsville, GA. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Another Turner Family in Union by 1850

Bailis Earle Turner

(1805-1899)

Last week we traced an early settler in Union County, Jarrett Turner (1806-1857) and his wife Sarah Collins Turner, who were residents of Union County when the first census was taken in 1834.

Today, we look at another Turner family who migrated to and settled in Union County a bit later than Jarrett Turner. The name of this early citizen was Bailis Earle Turner (1805-1899) who lived on Dooly Creek. When a portion of Union County was taken to form Fannin County in 1854, Bailis and his family were residents of the new county without having moved at all.

Were Jarrett and Bailis Turner related? Brothers, maybe? Or cousins? This writer does not know for sure. Both Jarrett and Bailis were born in South Carolina. Jarrett was the son of Micajah Turner, but in the genealogical records available so far concerning Bailis, they indicate that his father’s first name is unknown. However, we have found that Bailis’s grandfather was Captain George Turner (1738-1804) who was a Revolutionary War leader.

Bailis Turner claimed “Black Dutch” ancestry, stating that he descended from Protestant Germans who lived in the Black Forest area and migrated to America to escape religious persecution.

Bailis Turner was born in the Broad River section of northern Spartanburg County, SC. From Spartanburg, this family of Turners moved next to near the line of Buncombe County, North Carolina.

There Bailis met and married his first wife, Elizabeth (“Betsy”) Darnell, daughter of Daniel and Sarah Darnell. When the 1850 Union County, Georgia census was taken, Bailis was 44, his wife Elizabeth was 41, and they had children Avaline, 19, William, 17, Jesse, 14, and Leander, 11, all born in North Carolina. The last four listed were born in Georgia: Delila, 8, Murray, 5, Bailis, 3, and a baby, age 1 (also listed as Avaline—which raises the question: Did they name two daughters Avaline?). Betsy Turner died in 1851. Bailis married, second, his wife’s sister, Eleanor, called “Nellie.” Altogether, Bailis was the father of thirteen children.

In 1854, when a new county was formed, Bailis and his family were within the confines of Fannin County. The War Between the States saw this Turner family with divided loyalties. Son Jessie joined the Confederacy and lost his life in Atlanta in 1863. Miles and Murray went to Tennessee and enlisted in the US Army. Leander Marion Turner (Nov. 20, 1838-November 28, 1911) first enlisted in the Confederate Army. He deserted, and having changed his loyalty, went to Tennessee to join his brothers Miles and Murray and enlisted in the U. S. Army. William, born about 1833, was in the Southern army, loyal to the Confederacy.

When Murray, Miles and Leander were home on leave from the Union Army, they were out picking blackberries on their father’s farm. A roving band of raiders known as the Home Guard and led by Harrison Martin overtook them. Miles and Leander ran from the raiders and escaped. But Murray, hard of hearing, did not hear the approach of the ruffians. He was captured, killed, and his boots taken. Miles was later overtaken and captured. His friend in the Home Guard begged for mercy for Miles, and they let him go.

When the war was over, Miles Turner married, first, Amy Jane Patterson on January 9, 1868 in Fannin County, Georgia. The oldest marked grave in the Oak Grove Baptist Church Cemetery between Union and Fannin Counties is that of Amy Jane Turner (Feb. 10, 1855-March 17, 1896). Miles Turner married, second, on November 28, 1897 to Missouri Abercrombie (Nov. 4, 1865-Sept. 3, 1943). Miles was born November 22, 1846 and died May 8, 1937. He received a military pension for his service in the War Between the States. The 1910 census of Fannin County lists the children still at home with Miles and Missouri Turner as May, 20; Casey, 17; Homer, 11; Howard, 8; Hurman, 6, Hattie, 4, and baby Willie, newly born.

A younger son of Bailis and Nellie Turner was named Lewis (Nov. 12, 1852-Aug. 12, 1949). He was only twelve when a group of raiders went to the Turner house demanding to know where clothing and food were hidden. Others in the family had fled and young Lewis was left to confront and answer the raiders. He told them he would never reveal the hiding place of his family’s goods. The raiders tied a rope around Lewis Turner’s neck and strung him up to a joist on the porch of the Turner home. They let him down, thinking the punishment would force him to tell. The brave boy was adamant in not telling. He was strung up a second time, and the raiders left the boy hanging. As soon as the raiders were gone, his mother and sisters came out of hiding and gently lowered the boy and revived him. “Uncle Buddy” Turner as he was known in his later years often told the story of how he was hung twice in the same day and survived to tell the story.

This same Lewis Turner, “Uncle Buddy” got a permit and opened the Lewner Post Office in Union County near the Fannin County line. He named the mail site Lewner, using the first syllable of his first name and the last syllable of his last name. It opened April 21, 1908 and operated through February 15, 1955. He was buried in the Oak Grove Cemetery.

The ancestors of Bailis Turner endured the rigors of the Black Forest in Germany and persecution that led them to come to America to seek freedom. His grandfather, Captain George Turner, fought bravely to win America’s independence from Great Britain. Bailis Turner and his family endured the black times of the Civil War as they farmed and tried to keep a divided loyalties family together. Throughout Union, Fannin and beyond are descendants of this family who have distinguished themselves in many walks of life by exemplifying characteristics of determination and courage.

c 2009 by Ethelene Dyer Jones; published Aug. 13, 2009 in The Union Sentinel, Blairsville, GA. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Jarrett Turner Family in Union By 1834

Examining the first census of Union County, Georgia is a source of fascination. The census was completed on March 24, 1834. At that time Union County was geographically larger than now, containing land that became Fannin County in 1854 and Towns County in 1856. The total population of the two-year old county of Union was 903 in 1834. Listed as a head of household was Jarrett Turner with two males and three females in the family.

Moving to the brand new Union County had some enticement for this young couple. Jarrett Turner and his wife Sarah Collins Turner moved along from Habersham County with her parents Thompson and Celia Self Collins. The children Jarrett and Sarah had in their family in 1834 were daughter Celia, born in 1831, named for her Grandmother Collins; Nancy, born in 1832; and son Francis, a baby, born in 1834. The couple had married in Habersham County, Georgia July 19, 1830.

Turner is an English or Scottish occupational name meaning "the maker of objects of wood, metal, or bone" by turning a lathe to shape them. Jarrett Turner had lived in District Ninety Six in South Carolina before migrating to Habersham County, Georgia. His father was Micajah Turner, born about 1775 in Virginia and died about 1871 in White County, Georgia. Jarrett Turner was born in 1806 in South Carolina and died in 1857. Some reports are that his parents Micajah and Nancy were buried in the Tesnatee Baptist Church Cemetery in White County. Jarret and Sarah Collins Turner were buried in the Old Choestoe Cemetery, Union County. Sarah Collins was born about 1812 in Buncombe County, North Carolina

Jarrett Turner and his father-in-law, Thompson Collins, cleared land and farmed along the rich creek bottoms. Some of the land they farmed had already been used to grow maize, pumpkins and other crops by the Indians who had left the land just prior to the white settlers moving in. The major exodus of all Indians did not occur until 1838, so the Turner and Collins families may have had Indian neighbors when they first settled on the land they acquired.

Jarrett and Sarah Collins Turner had a large family of thirteen children. They were:

(1) Celia Turner (b. 1831) married William Jackson Hood.
(2) Nancy Turner (b. 1832) - no record of her marriage
(3) Francis Turner (b.1834) - lived in Lumpkin County, GA
(4) Elizabeth Turner (b. 1836) - no record of her marriage
(5) Ruth Turner (b. 1837) married Bluford Lumpkin Dyer
(6) James Turner (b. 1840) married Elizabeth Dyer
(7) Sarah Turner (b. 1842) married Rev. John Henry Lance
(8) Phoebe Turner (b. 1845) married James H. Lance
(9) Micajah Turner (b. 1847), named for his Grandfather Turner - no record of marriage
(10) Olive Turner (b. 1849), married Joseph G. Dyer
(11) Marion Turner - birth date and marriage unknown
(12) Thompson Turner - birth date and marriage unknown
(13) William "Bill" Pruitt Turner (b. about 1854, White County, GA) married Margaret Harkins on December 24, 1870.

Many claiming kinship to the first Turner family in Union still reside in the county today. Among Jarrett and Sarah Collins Turner's descendants are people of many occupations. Some remain close to the soil and still enjoy farming. Several followed careers in education and counseling. Others entered business and professional work.

Like the occupational title from which their surname derives, they make their work count through diligence and service.

c 2009 0by Ethelene Dyer Jones; published Aug. 6, 2009 in The Union Sentinel, Blairsville, GA. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.