To Consolidate Schools or Not? That was the Big Question in 1916 and Later ( A History of Education in Union County, Part 3)

I began my teaching career in the same school I entered as a first grader when the new two-teacher Choestoe school building opened. Back in 1936, we were so proud of our new white weather-boarded school building, a great improvement over the previous old building that stood on the same spot near Choestoe Baptist Church.

When the school had first opened there in the 1830’s, classes were held in the log church building. Then the two-room building specifically for school was built, with an upstairs where the Lodge met in “secret” quarters. I do not have statistics for many of the years of Choestoe School, but in 1933, three years before I began as a first grader there, 69 students had been enrolled and C. J. Dyer and B. H. Rich were the teachers.

I did not attend school in the old building but was a proud first grader in 1936 when the new building opened with its shiny white paint outside, its tall windows, the “lower” grades room for students in 1st through 3rd grades, and the “upper” grades room for students in grades 4th through 7th grades.

Each classroom had its own “cloak” and supply room where we hung our coats on pegs and put our lunch pails on shelves. Extra textbooks and a few school supplies were also stored in the cloak rooms. The classrooms were heated by a wood heater and patrons (including my father, J. Marion Dyer) supplied the wood for the stoves. We brought our water supply in a bucket from a spring on church property until, about my third year there, a well was dug in the schoolyard and a hand pump (which always had to be primed) was installed. We each took our own cups with our lunch pails in order to have one for water when we were thirsty.

Mrs. Mert Shuler Collins was my first grade teacher and encouraged me to read, read, read. I already knew how to read when I entered school, having learned at my mother’s and my older siblings’ knees, probably pestering them so much that they felt to teach me to read for myself would be better than to spend so much of their valuable time reading to me. My aim in first grade was to read every book in the cabinet in the corner of the classroom where extra books were housed just for the students’ pleasure. I didn’t reach my goal that year, but remember the chart with many stars that represented each book completed.

Several teachers held the wonderful Choestoe School together in my first through seventh grade journey. My beloved teachers were Mrs. Mert Collins, my sister, Louise Dyer, Mrs. Opal Sullivan, Mrs. Bonnie Snow and her husband (as a substitute), Mr. Lon Snow, and Mrs. Florence Hunter. These opened for me the remarkable world of learning.

When I entered Union County High School in 1943 as an 8th grader and freshman, I had not suffered one whit from receiving my elementary education in a two-teacher country school.

By the school year 1949-50 when I began as an eager first-year teacher at Choestoe School, enrollment was down so that it was a one-teacher school. I had pupils in every grade first through seventh, a total of twenty-five students in all, with the largest enrollment being 5th grade with five pupils. The school did not have kindergarten, but those just starting out were in “Primer,” where they learned in the first few months the rudiments of reading so that they could progress through Primer and First Grade in their first year at Choestoe. In retrospect, I wonder how I, a brand new teacher, managed seven grades and taught the students even the minimum of what they needed to learn at their specific grade levels. Looking back on my thirty-plus years as an educator, I still remember the wonder and challenge of that first year in what had been reduced to a one-teacher school. I had begun in that building as a first grader; my fist year of teaching was in the Choestoe School; and it was ripe for closure and inevitable consolidation which came at the end of that year.

Returning to the 1916 report, Mr. M. L. Duggan, Rural School Agent for Georgia, gave recommendations following his three-month survey of education in the county. He listed schools and gave reasons for and against consolidation of the 43 schools he found operating at that time.

The Blairsville Collegiate Institute was going well in 1916 with 150 pupils enrolled in eleven grades. H. E. Nelson was principal, and taught mathematics and English. His wife, Mrs. H. E. Nelson, taught history, science and Latin. Miss Addie Kate Reid taught the intermediate grades. Miss June Candler taught primary grades. Music teacher was Mrs. Maud Haralson and Miss Etta Colclough taught Home Economics and also served as a sort of county home economist, visiting in homes and assisting women in proper methods of canning and preserving foods from their gardens and farms. The private institute had eight full months of uninterrupted instructional time and was doing well, indeed. From 1916 through its closure at the end of the 1929-1930 school year, it was to have fourteen more successful years of operation before it became the Blairsville—and subsequently---the Union County High School.

In the district around Suches in 1916, Mr. Duggan found three schools: Zion had Mr. G. W. Garrard as teacher, classes were in a church building, he had no equipment and only seven students. Mt. Lebanon School had Mrs. Ray Pruitt as teacher, met in a ceiled, unpainted building, had oiled floors, homemade desks, blackboards, a sandbox, and maps, charts and pictures. The pupils in five grades numbered 55. The Mt. Airy School met in the church building with 27 pupils and C. T. Lunsford as teacher. Mr. Duggan highly recommended that these three schools be consolidated, that an increase in taxes make Mt. Lebanon a “standard school,” and that students all attend Mt. Lebanon, which would be only about three and one-half miles for those farthest away.

A look at the 1933 county school statistics reveals that his recommendation was not accomplished to that date. Mrs. F. F. Pruitt was listed as teacher that year at Mt. Lebanon with 33 students and Mr. J. H. Lunsford, also there, with 30 pupils. Mt. Airy was still operating in 1933 with 20 pupils, and Zion with 23 pupils had Ms. Eula Berry as teacher. The schools at Suches were finally consolidated when Woody Gap School opened in the fall of 1940 near the homesite of Georgia’s Civil War governor, Joseph Emerson Brown. Today Woody Gap is considered an “isolated” school because of the mountains separating the district from Blairsville and the distance in travel prohibitive for pupils who would be transported.

[Next week: Continuing the look at 1916 and later school developments.]

c2004 by Ethelene Dyer Jones; published August 19, 2004 in The Union Sentinel, Blairsville, GA. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Continuing the History of Education in Union County (Part 2)

With school beginning for the 2004-2005 school term, it seems appropriate to review some of the history of education in Union County over the 172-year period since the county was formed in 1832. Last week’s column brought us roughly to 1916 when Mr. M. L. Duggan, Rural School Agent for Georgia, visited the county and submitted a lengthy report with recommendations for improvements for the school system of the county.

Mr. Duggan began his report by giving information about the county: “The taxable value of the county, as returned for 1916, totals $1,003,879.00, of which about one-third is owned by non-residents. Most of this non-resident property consists in large tracts of original forests held by foreign corporations. The United States Government also has acquired a considerable area for the Appalachian Forestry Reservation.”

Population in the county in 1916 was reported as 6,918. Of that number, 2,114 were white school children and 19 were Negro school children. Mr. Duggan commented that “the mountain slopes are covered in hardwood timber, and abound in mineral wealth.”

He noted the “water power that goes wasting everywhere.” Cattle and hogs abounded and the valley soil was fertile. Apple trees grew to large size and produced immense crops of finest fruit with a minimum of care. He lamented that few of the rich resources of the county had been tapped, and that no railroad “touched the county” for easy transport of products to market. “The one greatest need of the county is first-class public highways,” he wrote. “Good roads will facilitate consolidation of the schools and in many ways bring prosperity that will enable the people to support their public schools more liberally. Good roads and good schools always go together, and neither will much precede the other,” he concluded.

He made no mention of the fact that people in the southern portion of the county still hauled their farm produce in covered wagons drawn by mule teams over the Logan Turnpike through Cleveland, Georgia to markets in Gainesville for sale and barter for needed goods not grown on their mountain farms. Those trips took two days going southward, one day for trading, and two days for the return trip.

Those in the northwestern part of the county likewise hauled their goods by mule team but went to the train stations at Culberson or Murphy, NC, or perhaps to Blue Ridge or Mineral Bluff, GA. It was not until 1925 that Neal Gap opened and the first paved road over the mountain to Blairsville was available for the few motorized vehicles available.

The 1916 report on education revealed 43 public common schools (for white students) in the county, and one high school at the county seat in Blairsville, partly supported by the State Baptist Mission Board. This was the Blairsville Collegiate Institute [the subject of previous columns], founded in 1904, and jointly supported by Notla River Baptist Association, the Georgia Baptist Convention, and the Home Mission Board. This boarding school operated from 1904 through 1930, when properties were deeded to the Union County Board of Education and the public high school opened in the fall of 1930. Tuition and board were charged, but students also had opportunities for work-study programs.

Mr. Duggan stated that the “common schools” were located too close together, some just a mile and a half apart and seldom more than three miles, and that there seemed to be no delineation of school districts. The County School Superintendent, T. E. Patterson, was paid “the minimum wage allowed by law,” and could not be expected to do much supervision, receiving such small remuneration for his services. Besides the superintendent, elected members of the Board of Education in 1916 were A. T. Sullivan, chairman; Bart Swanson, Norman Allison, James Seabolt and C. E. Rich.

Mr. Duggan’s report indicated that “teacher elections” were held by patrons in the various school districts. These appointments of teachers, evidently not necessarily approved by the County Board of Education, “degenerated into political contests, and have worked serious injury to the schools.” He recommended standard opening and closings of schools. Much of his survey was done in August of 1916, the month he was told that “most of the schools would be open.” However, he found that many communities were also having “protracted meetings” at the churches—with buildings used also as school houses---and that school could not go on simultaneously with revival meetings. In his third recommendation about schools, Mr. Duggan stated that a uniform opening of schools should occur, and that “the school term should not conflict with the protracted meeting season.”

Item 5 in Mr. Duggan’s recommendations urged “the citizens of the county to vote a local school tax of two or three mills for the further improvement of their schools. “Their children are worth it.” He further noted, “Much of this (tax) burden would fall upon non-resident property owners who will willingly bear it. The entire county would benefit greatly.”

In assessing Mr. Duggan’s report and recommendations, I thought how the millage has increased through the years, but how “non-residents” still bear a portion of the “burden” of taxes and “willingly bear it” for the privilege of owning mountain property within the confines of Union County. Certainly the county schools and students have benefited from this upward progress for education.

Consolidation was a strong word used by Mr. Duggan. He thanked the School Board, the Superintendent, and the Grand Jury for complete cooperation in his August, September and October, 1916 survey of the schools in the county. We can almost imagine his progress through each district of the county as he visited the 43 scattered schools, and as he was present at the court house in each of the three monthly meetings of the Board of Education to hear their plans and to present his findings. Knowing the scarcity of roads and of vehicles in which to travel in 1916, Mr. Duggan probably went from place to place by horseback—or perhaps by horse and buggy. He found lodging in the homes of patrons within each school community. He wrote, “Every encouragement and facility was cordially offered me in making a very thorough educational survey, and there is strong and growing sentiment all over the county for better schools. The Grand Jury strongly endorses any serious effort to that end, and the county Board of Education is awake to the situation. The county is ripe for educational progress, and we confidently predict immediate and rapid improvement in the system and in the schools.”

[Next week: A look at recommendations and problems of consolidation.]

c2004 by Ethelene Dyer Jones; published August 12, 2004 in The Union Sentinel, Blairsville, GA. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Education in Union County

The yellow school buses are running and students gather in classrooms at Blairsville’s primary, elementary, middle and high schools and at Woody Gap School in Suches. Two locations now mark the public education arenas of Union County schools. Administrators, teachers, students and parents are anticipating good results from the 2004-2005 school year now beginning, with “no child left behind” as the major motto for operation. Learning will be promoted with the latest innovations to entice and motivate students to achieve.

A brief review of education in Union County can only elicit the old evaluation of “We’ve come a long way” since the early days of public education.

Union County was formed in 1832. In 1833, a year later, the Georgia Legislature permitted Union County to take a census in order to determine the potential school population and the portion of the tax funds that should be devoted to education. That census report was released in 1834 as the first census of the county. The legislature approved a school for the county to be known as the Blairsville Academy. A sum of $335 was set aside in 1835 designated for the academy. It was incorporated in 1836. Records show that the first trustees of the Blairsville Academy were John Sanders, Richard Holden, John Butt, Jr., Moss Anderson and Thomas Collins. Even though established in part by the $335.00 in tax monies, the school was also sponsored by churches of the Baptist, Methodist and Presbyterian denominations in the county. The academy went along rather well for a time, but eventually dispersed because of differences in how to operate it.

Also in those early years of the 1830’s, one-room schools were provided in certain areas of the county, as the Blairsville Academy was not accessible for students who lived in the outlying districts unless they could go to Blairsville and board in homes to attend the school. Some of the one-room schools were held in log church buildings with someone in the community who could pass the teacher’s certification test (mainly with an ability to “cipher”—do arithmetic--- and who had adequate facility in penmanship, reading and spelling) to head the school. If no church buildings were available for the one-teacher community schools, they might have been held in the home of a concerned citizen of the community, with neighboring children going to that home, paying a small fee, and being instructed. At most, instruction periods were only for a maximum of four months per year, much of that arranged around periods of farm work.

In 1880 and 1881, two schools were operated in Union County that were supplemented by funds from the George Peabody Foundation. In 1882 a boarding school at Blairsville began operations. This may have been a resumption of the earlier academy incorporated in 1836.

Records are incomplete on School Commissioners (as the chief administrative officer was called before about 1875) and School Superintendents. However, the following names and their approximate terms of service have been preserved: Before 1888, Thomas Butt served as Superintendent of Union County Schools. Others following him and their approximate terms of service were Frank Duncan, 1888; A. V. Clement, 1896; C. S. Mauney, 1900; T. L. Patterson, 1912.

John B. Black who served as Ordinary of Union County showed in his February 19, 1865 report that 1,000 children between the ages of 6 and 18 were enrolled in Union County Schools. Eight schools were operating, with five male teachers and three female teachers in employment. The academy was in session in 1865, but no specific enrollment for that school was given. This report, coming near the end of the Civil War, is somewhat amazing in its scope and shows that, despite the hardships of the war years, Union County citizens still managed to provide educational opportunities in eight schools for 1,000 children.

In 1916, an extensive visit to Union County and a survey of its scattered schools was made by M. L. Duggan, Rural School Agent for Georgia. He signed his report on October 15, 1916. In future articles, I will pinpoint some of the highlights of his 1916 report. Within his report was an appeal for free textbooks for the children. It was item # 6 in his recommendations:

“Much of the funds paid for maintenance of the public schools is being wasted because so many of the children are unsupplied or poorly supplied with necessary text books. We would, therefore, recommend (if the local school tax is adopted) that necessary text books for the first four grades be supplied (loaned) to all children. This can now be done under the recent Yeoman’s Bill.”Mr. Duggan ended his report with this appeal: “We submit the bulletin to those interested in the better education of ALL of the children of the county with the earnest hope that each will be willing to make serious efforts and considerable sacrifices to that end. The future of the county depends directly upon the character of its public schools. Better public schools and better public roads are the prime needs of the county, and the attainment of either will powerfully accelerate the accomplishment of the other. With general interest in the welfare of the children. -M. L. Duggan.”

From 1916 to 2004, eighty-eight years have passed—over eight decades of progress on working at the weaknesses Mr. Duggan cited in his 1916 report. Since Union County was formed in 1832, there have been 172 years of upward struggle. Today the county has a school system of which citizens can be justifiably proud. Progress has not been easy, nor has it come without “serious efforts and considerable sacrifices.”

May 2004-2005 begin with high hopes and noble purposes for present-day Union County schools.

c2004 by Ethelene Dyer Jones; published August 5, 2004 in The Union Sentinel, Blairsville, GA. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Uncle Buddy Turner's Long Life

Lewis B. Turner lived a long life in Union County. Born in 1852, he was a child when the War Between the States raged.

In fact, it was his recollections of the hard times during that conflict that one of his favorite stories was based. He liked to tell how he was hanged twice in the same day and survived.

A Home Guard group went to the Turner home in the Dooly District demanding shirts and pants. Lewis’s father stood up to the Home Guard and said to them, “If there’s a gentleman in this group, you will return the clothes.” Their captain, not wanting to be mislabled “dishonest,” commanded his men to return the clothes.

Mr. Turner took them and after the Home Guard left, he hid the clothes in a safe place. Later some of the men came back and demanded of young Lewis Turner that he show then where the clothes were hidden. The lad refused to reveal the hiding place.

For his non-cooperation, they placed a rope about the 10-year old lad’s neck, threw it over a ceiling joist and began to tighten the rope. When he was almost choked to death, the ruffians let the boy down to his feet. Again they questioned him and demanded that he get the pants and shirts for them. He refused and they made a second attempt to hang him. They lowered him again after his adamant response that he would die before he told the secret hiding place of the men’s clothes. Finally the Home Guard went away and let the tough little fellow alone.

The Home Guard was hard on the Turner family because Lewis’s older brother had joined the Union Army. The whole family held Union loyalties. When his brother was attempting to come home on furlough, the Home Guard killed him.

In 1908 when Buddy Turner was 56 years of age, he founded the Lewner post office in the Dooly District. Needing a name for the new post office, he decided to name it for himself by taking the first syllable of his given name and the last syllable of his last name. The new post office was thus named Lewner. It was located about a mile from the Fannin County line alongside Dooly Creek. For thirty-eight years, until March 12, 1937, he was postmaster. He took care of the mail for about 100 families within the radius of the post office. He was succeeded by Miss Zelma Auberry who served for 18 years until the post office was closed February 15, 1955 and the mail was routed through the Loving post office in nearby Fannin County.

Buddy Turner was not one to travel far from his home. He was content to farm his acres and exchange the time of day and talk politics with his post office clientele. But the time came when Uncle Buddy had to go to the big city of Atlanta. It was the time of prohibition and the revenue officers were seeking to find and flush out the illegal whiskey operations hidden in mountain hollows and coves.

Buddy Turner was a witness to a case brought to trial for a man accused of producing moonshine liquor. The trial was held in Federal Court in Atlanta. Uncle Buddy had to go to Atlanta and give testimony. He didn’t tell whether the government or the moonshiner won the case. Life in the big city seemed foreign to the humble postmaster from Lewner, Georgia. He was glad to return to his mountain home following the trial.

Lewis C. “Buddy” Turner lived a life close to the soil. He delighted in seeing his gardens and crops produce well. He knew how to trap and snare animals. He hunted for deer, rabbits, squirrels and wild turkeys to help supplement his family’s farm-grown produce.

When he died August 12, 1949, he had lived though two world wars and could remember every war back to the Civil War that America had fought in. He lived to the ripe age of 96 and was interred in Oak Grove Cemetery in Dooly District not far from the place where he spent most of his life. The Lewner post office he founded continued to operate for over five years after his death. Those who went to Lewner to get their mail and post outgoing mail talked about the life and influence of Uncle Buddy Turner, a true mountain man.

c2004 by Ethelene Dyer Jones; published July 29, 2004 in The Union Sentinel, Blairsville, GA. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Rev. William Jasper Cotter, 1846

The Rev. William Jasper Cotter was assigned by the Methodist Episcopal Church South to a circuit-riding charge that included twenty preaching stations, with one in North Carolina, one in Tennessee and eighteen in Georgia. From Rev. Cotter’s autobiography finished when he was ninety-three years of age and published posthumously, we learn much of early history of Union and surrounding counties.

Rev. and Mrs. Cotter (her name was Rachel) set out for their Blairsville charge from Walker County, Georgia. He told of “unforeseen difficulties and dangers on the way, rivers to cross and mountains to climb.”

The Cotters had their household goods and personal effects on a wagon drawn by a single horse. At the ford of the Conasauga River, rains had evidently brought the river to near-flood stage. In trying to cross, the horse hesitated but finally got the wagon to the opposite side. The vehicle was full of water. Mrs. Cotter had to spread out their clothing and bedding on bushes to dry before they moved onward.

Taking the best road available, called the Westfield Turnpike, the Cotters moved on across Cohutta Mountain. A jolt from a rock outcropping in the road damaged a wheel. Night was coming on. They sought shelter in a crude cabin with a floor of dirt and puncheon. The woman there received them warmly and provided the best she had of food and a place to lie down. Rev. Cotter remembered that her husband came home drunk at midnight. He wrote later of her,

“The scene of the lone young woman there impressed me as partaking of the morally sublime.”

Seeing that his wagon was beyond repair, and with no machine shop available to assist him, Rev. Cotter went back to the White Path Gold Mine in Gilmer County where he purchased a carry-all. With that vehicle and their faithful horse, they were on their way again. That night they arrived at Morganton, Georgia where they were warmly received into the home of Elijah Webb Chastain, who at that time was a member of the U. S. Congress and was a leading citizen of the area.

They reached Blairsville the next day and were welcomed by a local preacher, the Rev. Thomas M. Hughes, who took the Cotters into his home until they could get their own dwelling outfitted.

A cabin which had not been occupied for some time was secured for the Cotters’ first house at the Blairsville charge. Rent was twelve dollars a year. Since the cabin was in need or reroofing, the owner allowed the first year’s rent to go for roofing, which Rev. Cotter did himself. (At that time, he would have made the roof shingles by riving them from felled trees, splitting the shingles off one by one from sections of the logs cut the same length.) He also rechinked and daubed the house to make it more habitable. Rachel Cotter was able to purchase some feathers and made a feather bed. With the other household goods brought with them, they settled into life at their Blairsville charge. He wrote of their first day in the cabin: “We moved in, took our first meal, established a family altar, and, being tired, a good night’s rest followed.”

The cabin was on two acres of land, and soon the Cotters planted a garden and a patch of corn which did well that first year and helped with their food supply.

It was in that cabin that the Rev. William Jasper and Rachel Cotter’s first child was born, a son whom they named Goudey Halliburton Cotter.

During that first summer of 1846, Rev. Cotter attended Camp Meetings and preached at them. They were at Young Cane, Hot House, Cherokee (in North Carolina), Fighting Town, Gaddistown and Choestoe. Outlaws were prevalent, especially along the state line. He sometimes feared his horse would be stolen and he would be harmed as he traveled. He reported that the camp meetings were attended by great crowds and during that first summer “one hundred and twenty-seven members were added to the church.” About mid-year, an able local preacher, Brother Elrod, was assigned to assist the Rev. Cotter.

He wrote of problems at the Choestoe Camp Meeting in 1846. “Gold mines had just been discovered,” he wrote, “and soon many people were settling in the area where gold was mined. There was no law nor order. Large crowds attended the meeting and gave trouble.”

He told of circulating anonymously among the crowd and hearing vile language and threats. The vigilance committee for the camp meeting had discovered whiskey on the grounds and broken a large jug. Of course, that action did not sit well with the naysayers.

Saturday came, the time for the Quarterly Conference at Choestoe. The Rev. Reneau, who was assigned to Choestoe, could not be there, and so the Rev. Cotter had to preside. The conference proceeded well. Afterwards, Rev. Cotter was left alone in the arbor which sat on a little rise with open glade behind it. He saw seven men walk down the glade and approach the tent. One took a pistol out, fingered it, and put it back in his pocket. The men walked away.

Later, at the time for services, Rev. Cotter saw four of the seven men enter the arbor (tent) and take seats on the slabs toward the back. Rev. A. J. Reynolds was the preacher for that service. His subject, delivered with typical ‘fire and brimstone’ passion, was about the woes that came upon those who desecrated the place of worship. He used as illustrations a desperado in the Revolution who killed a Baptist preacher and cut out his tongue. The perpetrator was found, tried and sentenced to death. He was offered the opportunity to confess and pray before his death, but his tongue could utter no words. Rev. Reynolds proceeded with other examples of people who had not escaped the wrath of God. Rev. Cotter wrote that “The power of the Spirit came upon the congregation. Sixteen were converted that night.” But not the four men who had come to scoff and maybe even to use a hidden pistol. Later, hearing of their demise, Rev. Cotter learned that one of the men was blown up on a steamboat, one was killed by lightning, one was stricken blind, and the fourth perished in a miserable death.

[Source: The Autobiography of the Rev. William Jasper Cotter. Edited by Charles O. Jones, DD. Published in 1917 by the Methodist Episcopal Church South Publishing House. A copy is in the Emory University Library.]

c2004 by Ethelene Dyer Jones; published July 29, 2004 in The Union Sentinel, Blairsville, GA. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

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.