Georgia Natural Wonder #66 - Macon (Part 2) - Ocmulgee River - Antebellum Macon. 1130

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Georgia Natural Wonder #66 - Macon (Part 2) - Ocmulgee River - Antebellum Macon

Today we take a deep dive into the early history of the great city of Macon. We start with the continuing history of the Ocmulgee River.

Nineteenth-Century River Traffic and Trade

In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, wagon and stagecoach trails followed the old Indian trails along the Ocmulgee, linking settlements and frontier forts like Fort Hawkins along the east bank. By the 1820s numerous ferry landings linked settlements in the newly opened western territories with principal roads from Monticello, Clinton, and Milledgeville (the new state capital) on the Upper Ocmulgee, and from Marion, Hartford, and Jacksonville on the lower leg.


Ocmulgee River Race 1978.

Commercial river navigation of this era depended upon log rafts loaded down with field and farm produce and guided by pole-handling crews who rode their lumber "down to Darien," where it could be sold to sawmills. These raftsmen played a major role in Georgia's economy, yet their story survives primarily through rafting folklore. As cotton production expanded into the rich Lower Ocmulgee bottomlands, steamboat navigation offered the fastest route to coastal markets.



Because the river was frequently narrow and winding, and unnavigably shallow in the dry months, however, it had never been particularly well suited to commercial boat traffic. The best that steamboats could do in the 1820s was to make the trip partway from the coast and transfer their goods to poleboats, which could be pushed the rest of the way to Macon by slaves. The first steamboat reached Macon in 1829, and the first commercial steamboat to make the full Darien-to-Macon run arrived in 1833. In late 1835 three steamboat companies operated on the river, and by the end of the decade there was a steady flow of traffic transporting cotton and lumber to the markets of Savannah and Darien from the wharves of Macon, Hawkinsville, Abbeville, Jacksonville, and Lumber City, and from the river landings of prosperous Ocmulgee River plantations.



With the building of the railroads in the late 1830s and early 1840s, the Ocmulgee's importance for shipping cotton traffic from its rich bottomlands to the coast dwindled. The lobby for channel improvements and proposed canals was diverted to the raising of capital for the railways, and the first great era of Ocmulgee River traffic was all but over by 1847-48, when barely 1 percent of Macon's cotton shipments to Savannah were by boat.



What the rails took away from the river in cotton, they would return in part in pine trees. In the Ocmulgee region below the Hawkinsville - Dublin road, longleaf pine forests thrived in the wiregrass belt, and in the mid-eighteenth century the lumber industry found that these "yellow" or "Georgia" pines provided the perfect substitute for the now-depleted northern white pine. In the immediate post–Civil War (1861-65) period, the destruction of the central Georgia railroads by Union general William T. Sherman's army meant that the river again became an important means of commercial transportation, particularly for the independent lumber manufacturers, who did not have a great deal of capital.



The rebuilding of the railways fed the timber and naval stores industries in the Oconee basin by bringing in equipment for cutting, milling, and turpentine distillation. River traffic remained the cheaper, more available means of transportation for many saw millers and turpentine men. Each year between 1870 and 1900, steamboats again regularly traveled the Ocmulgee laden with cotton bales, although their major cargo by now was barrels of rosins and gum spirits. In 1889 the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers reported nine steamboats running regularly on routes originating at Hawkinsville, Abbeville, and Lumber City. Meanwhile, thousands of raft runners from the Ocmulgee - Oconee region made the downriver journey in ways not too different from their pioneer predecessors, "drifting" bunches of hewn timbers out of the river-basin swamps and creeks and then tying them together to make the 175-foot-long rafts they guided downriver.

Power, Water Supply, and the Environment: The Twentieth Century and Beyond

Large timber companies eventually depleted the pine forests, and their regular wages lured raftsmen from the irregularly navigable river. Thus, even in their peak years of operation in the 1880s, the Ocmulgee steamboats were no longer coastal transportation so much as they were mere feeders for rail hubs. After 1895 Ocmulgee River commercial navigation decreased yearly, by 1909 steamboat traffic to Macon had ceased, after 1924 there was no regular traffic, and by 1944 commercial traffic on the Ocmulgee had ceased altogether. Proposals to increase the Ocmulgee's navigability arose occasionally in the twentieth century, but none materialized into projects of any proportion beyond periodic efforts on the part of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to remove snags and obstructions.



By the end of World War I (1917-18), Georgia's vision for the Ocmulgee concentrated on the river's potential for supplying electric power and water for homes and business, and waterfront recreational areas for an expanding population. Of the reservoirs built within the Ocmulgee River basin today, Georgia Power Company's hydroelectric plant at Lloyd Shoals Dam (built 1910) in Butts County and its Plant Scherer thermoelectric facility near Juliette are the largest impoundments.


Julliette

Lake Jackson, which is formed by the Lloyd Shoals Dam, has 135 miles of shoreline and more than 4,700 surface acres that are heavily used for recreational boating and fishing. Until World War II (1941-45) Lake Jackson was the state's largest lake, and its waterfront was rapidly developed. For economic and environmental reasons, the Lloyd Shoals Dam and Lake Jackson would remain the first and only major impoundment project on the main stem of the Ocmulgee. Later reservoirs—such as Lake Juliette on Rum Creek and the Lake Tobesofkee Recreation Area on Tobesofkee Creek—have been built on creeks with pumping mechanisms that enable them to periodically draw allocations off the Ocmulgee's channel flow.


Lake Jackson

In 1995 there were fifty-two public water supply facilities providing an estimated 234 million gallons per day to 1,360,000 people in communities throughout the Ocmulgee River basin. Self-supplied (private) industries and businesses withdrew slightly less, approximately 200 million gallons a day. Major users were thermoelectric plants, irrigation (for crops like cotton, corn, soybeans, and peanuts, as well as for nurseries, athletic fields, and golf courses), and large industries (paper and pulp mills, textiles, clay and gravel mining, and chemical manufacturers). The majority of water supplies in the Upper Ocmulgee watershed (the region draining into the river basin from Macon northward) were surface-water withdrawals. The region below the fall line mostly depended on groundwater obtained from aquifers beneath the Lower Ocmulgee watershed (from Macon to the Oconee River), but an estimated thirteen municipalities along the lower reach were permitted to discharge wastewater into the Ocmulgee, according to 2001 state statistics. At the end of the twentieth century, growth in population and use presented Ocmulgee River users at both ends of the basin with a growing problem of reduced stream flow and increased pollution.



Concern over the Ocmulgee's ability to withstand expanding use began before World War I. In 1913 Bibb County enacted legislation regulating the Macon area's discharge of sewage waste into the Ocmulgee River. Meanwhile, the Ocmulgee's value as a source of fish and wildlife was generally recognized—the world-record (22 Pounds) biggest largemouth bass had been caught in Montgomery Lake, an oxbow lake near Jacksonville, in 1932 - and efforts to preserve the basin's natural resources began with the establishment of the Piedmont National Wildlife Refuge in 1939. The refuge was established on 35,000 acres of uplands pine forest to protect the habitats of various animals, including endangered red - cockaded woodpeckers.



In the 1990s conservationists initiated efforts to construct an Ocmulgee "greenway," a series of riverfront parks linking protected wildlife areas and historic sites along the river between Jackson and Warner Robins. Along the easternmost of the Ocmulgee's source tributaries, the Alcovy River east of Covington, another greenway project arose in the 1990s to protect the Piedmont river system with extensive hardwood swamps, including the northernmost inland example of a tupelo gum swamp. In 2000 Bond Swamp National Wildlife Refuge, home to endangered bald eagles and songbirds, became the second national wildlife refuge in the Ocmulgee River basin. Located six miles below Macon and linked to the proposed greenway, Bond Swamp encloses one of the few bottomland hardwood swamps not displaced by farm or pine plantations in the state.



As the twentieth century ended, outdoorsmen, conservationists, and environmental scientists came to the Ocmulgee River much as the Native Americans and white settlers before them had done, looking to it for sustenance and a greater connection to the natural order of life. As they did so, governmental agents and local communities from Lawrenceville to Lumber City were engaging in discussions about the allocation of the Ocmulgee's water supplies for the twenty-first century.

Macon Georgia

Macon, the seat of Bibb County, is the retail, medical, financial, educational, and cultural center of a still predominantly rural section of middle Georgia. According to the 2010 U.S. census, the population of Macon was 91,351, a decrease from the 2000 population of 97,255. In a 2012 referendum, voters approved the consolidation of Macon and Bibb County, and Macon became Georgia's fourth-largest city (just after Columbus). The two governments officially merged on January 1, 2014.



The city was established at the point where the Upper Coastal Plain rises to join the Piedmont, above which the Ocmulgee River is no longer navigable. That location makes it one of the South's fall-line cities. While river transport was eventually replaced by rail, which a century later took a backseat to the intersection of two interstate highways, Macon's location at the heart of Georgia's transportation corridors has shaped its course even more than its mild climate and ample water resources have.



As the commercial hub of a productive agricultural region, the city's fortunes were tied to a southern cotton culture that brought substantial wealth, war, and subsequently genteel poverty for its first 100-plus years. Not until the infusion of people and monies that began with military preparations for World War II (1941-45) was the stage set for a stronger, more diversified economy. Robins Air Force Base in Warner Robins (sixteen miles south of Macon), the largest industrial complex in the state, drives the region's ongoing growth. The fifty-square-mile city has a strong-mayor form of government with a fifteen-member legislative council.



Early History

The land that became Macon/Bibb County was Indian Territory until 1821, nearly as pristine and undeveloped as Hernando de Soto found it when he rode through in 1540. Land-hungry Americans were eager to plow it into cotton fields. In 1821, demoralized by their defeat at the 1814 Battle of Horseshoe Bend, the Creek Indians finally relinquished the area between the Ocmulgee and Flint rivers, as well as the Ocmulgee Old Fields, which had been withheld from the 1805 cession. Shortly thereafter the state legislature began carving the new land into counties and authorized the laying out of a town on the Ocmulgee's west bank. With dozens of families already living around Fort Benjamin Hawkins, the 1806 frontier outpost on the east bank that had served as post office, trading "factory," and military supplies distribution point for more than a decade.



Fort Hawkins guarded the Lower Creek Pathway, an extensive and well-traveled American Indian network later improved by the United States as the Federal Road from Washington, D.C., to the ports of Mobile, Alabama and New Orleans, Louisiana. A gathering point of the Creek and U.S. cultures for trading, it was also a center of state militia and federal troops. The fort served as a major military distribution point during the War of 1812 against Great Britain and also during the Creek War of 1813. Afterward, the fort was used as a trading post for several years and was garrisoned until 1821. It was decommissioned about 1828 and later burned to the ground. A replica of the southeast blockhouse was built in 1938 and still stands today on a hill in east Macon. Part of the fort site is occupied by the Fort Hawkins Grammar School.  In the 21st century, archeological excavations have revealed more of the fort's importance, and stimulated planning for additional reconstruction of this major historical site.



As many Europeans had already begun to move into the area, they renamed Fort Hawkins "Newtown." After the organization of Bibb County in 1822, the city was chartered as the county seat in 1823 and officially named Macon. This was in honor of the North Carolina statesman Nathaniel Macon, because many of the early residents of Georgia hailed from North Carolina.


Nathaniel Macon

The city planners envisioned "a city within a park" and created a city of spacious streets and parks. They designated 250 acres for Central City Park, and passed ordinances requiring residents to plant shade trees in their front yards.





The city thrived due to its location on the Ocmulgee River, which enabled shipping to markets. Cotton became the mainstay of Macon's early economy, Cotton was selling at twelve to sixteen cents a pound, and 69,000 bags of cotton were poled down the Ocmulgee River to Darien; there were three new banks with capital of $1 million, and merchandise in stores was estimated at like value. Farmers came to Macon from more than sixty miles around to do business, and money was plentiful.



As spreading cultivation lessened rainwater runoff, however, the Ocmulgee River narrowed, and navigation soon proved impossible without constant dredging. Realizing that rail offered the best protection for their mercantile interests, Macon entrepreneurs convened a statewide meeting that led to the legislature's decision to build track from the Chattahoochee River to Chattanooga, Tennessee—extending the reach of the Monroe Railroad they had previously launched. The same men also convinced the city of Macon to buy 2,500 shares of stock in the Central Railroad, so as to connect Macon to Savannah. Other railroads followed, and by 1860 Macon had secured its place as the intrastate center of Georgia's 1,400 miles of track.



Commerce remained the backbone of Macon's economy, but by 1860 manufacturing had gained a foothold: there were several foundries, brickyards, and tellingly, a cotton mill. Its population having grown to 8,132 (15,952 in the county), Macon was the fifth largest city in the state. Real estate was valued at $4,717,551, and personal property (most of it in slaves) at $10,279,574.



While some of Macon's most influential citizens held Unionist views, news of South Carolina's secession from the Union in December 1860 was nevertheless greeted with yells of excitement, firing guns, ringing bells, and a torchlight procession through town; preparations for defense began immediately. During the American Civil War, Macon served as the official arsenal of the Confederacy.



The Confederacy's need to manufacture the goods of war led it to engage in ambitious plans, including that of the national armory in Macon, Georgia. Considering the "non-industrial nature" of the South, it's construction, which began in 1863, was remarkable. It never fully realized its potential by the time of the war's end.


A photograph of the recently captured Macon Arsenal taken in June, 1865.

Accordingly, Macon's relative safety encouraged thousands of people from the surrounding countryside to take refuge in the city. Macon served the Confederate cause other than by doing battle: it was a depository for Confederate gold, and its arsenal, laboratory, and armory manufactured tons of needed ordnance. Macon's Camp Oglethorpe held prisoners of war who were officers, and many of its buildings became hospitals for wounded soldiers arriving by rail from battlefields to the north..



It was used to confine Union military officers during the last full year of the Civil War, 1864. The officers survived well. No ill-treatment was noted by the over 1,600 officers confined at Macon. Only one officer was shot and killed by a Confederate sentinel for crossing the dead line. The camp was located south of Macon on a sandy incline formerly used as the county fair grounds. Shelter was provided for the Union prisoners as well as water and wood for heating. The old Floral Hall, a one-story frame building located in the center of the fair ground, was used to house 200 men. A stockade 16 feet high and similar in construction to the Andersonville stockade, surrounded the enclosure. A raid on Macon in late July by General George Stoneman's cavalry persuaded Confederate authorities to remove prisoners from Macon to Charleston and Savannah. By the end of September 1864 the prison virtually ceased operation.



Macon City Hall was converted to a hospital for wounded Confederate soldiers.


Macon City Hall, constructed in 1837, served as the temporary state capitol during the final months of the war. This photograph of the building was taken in 1894.

The Union General William Tecumseh Sherman spared Macon on his march to the sea. His troops had sacked the nearby state capital of Milledgeville, and Maconites prepared for an attack. Sherman, however, passed by without entering Macon. Macon-area military action was limited to an unsuccessful if dramatic 1864 assault from the east by an inept Yankee general bent on freeing Union prisoners while Union general William T. Sherman attacked Atlanta (just one stray cannonball fell inside the city limits).



The city was taken by Union forces during Wilson's Raid on April 20, 1865. When news of Confederate general Robert E. Lee's surrender at Appomattox, Virginia, arrived in Macon, General Howell Cobb's prompt and cooperative surrender ensured that the Union troops occupied the city without destroying it.


The ambulance carrying recently captured Jefferson Davis passing through Macon, Georgia.

The Macon Telegraph wrote that, of the 23 companies which the city had furnished the Confederacy, only enough men survived and were fit for duty to fill five companies by the end of the war. The human toll was very high.

Architectural Bounty

General Sherman passed to the east of Macon on his way to Savannah, sparing the city from the destruction that Union soldiers caused on their march to the sea. The pace of economic activity in Macon frequently meant adapting rather than replacing structures as patterns of commerce and living changed; as a result the city has an extensive inventory of fine old buildings, many of great historic and/or architectural significance.



One hundred and seventy sites and eleven neighborhood districts, covering 2,717 acres, and approximately 5,500 structures are listed on the National Register of Historic Places.



Two homes, the Hay House (open to the public) and the Raines-Carmichael House (private) are National Historic Landmarks.


Raines-Carmichael House

Antebellum cotton wealth is still visible in what writer Bret Harte described in 1874 as "lordly houses of the great slave-owners" in the Intown and Vineville historic districts, which provide a sharp contrast to the simple frame "shotgun" houses occupied by blacks in nearby Pleasant Hill.



Greek revival, Italianate, and Queen Anne predominate, but there are many other architectural styles as well.



Macon's commercial history is written in brick and stone upon its mercantile buildings downtown. Its devotion to religious expression can be seen in the Gothic, neo-Gothic, Romanesque, and even Byzantine-influenced houses of worship located in all sections of the city.



Several house museums provide glimpses of Macon's architectural and cultural past: the Cannonball House and Museum on Mulberry Street, the only Macon home damaged during the brief 1864 assault on the city, interprets the Civil War.



Worth a visit, the Cannonball house.



The 1840 Sidney Lanier Cottage on High Street is the birthplace of poet Sidney Lanier and the headquarters of the Middle Georgia Historical Society.



Sidney Clopton Lanier was born on February 3, 1842 in Macon, Georgia. Soon after his birth, his family moved to the town of Griffin, and then they returned to Macon when Sidney was six years old. As a child, he loved the outdoors. His rural Georgia surroundings were perfect for a boy who was content to spend hours on a tree limb in the woods, or pass an afternoon with a fishing pole along a quiet river. As he grew up, Lanier taught himself how to play the flute, and he developed a talent for writing, especially for poetry. His passion for nature and the rural countryside of his youth are woven into much of the music and literature that Lanier would create throughout his life. He did very well as a student, and at 14 he left his hometown of Macon and headed off to Georgia's Oglethorpe College, where he graduated at the top of his class.



Within a year of his graduation, Lanier heeded the call of the Confederate Army, and he signed on for duty in the Civil War. He served as a scout, and then as an officer on the seas aboard a blockade runner off the coast of North Carolina. His maritime adventures came to an abrupt halt when he was captured by Union troops and imprisoned in the fall of 1864. Prison conditions were poor, of course, and the year that Lanier spent in prison seriously damaged his health. When he was released from prison, he returned to civilian life, married, and fathered four sons. He held several jobs as he tried to support his family and still pursue his love of literature and music. As a result of his wartime experiences, Lanier produced his only novel, Tiger Lilies, which was published in 1867. During the next several years, Lanier worked on his poetry, and he wrote a string of poems that captured the beauty of his beloved Georgia countryside. He saw some success as his poetry began to be published, and he continued to weave the landscape of rural Georgia together with his moral values, producing works that beautifully capture the essence of Lanier's South.



Lanier's interest in music and writing guided him throughout the rest of his life, even as his health continued to deteriorate. In 1873 he moved to Baltimore, Maryland to join the Peabody Orchestra as the orchestra's first flutist. In 1879 he joined Johns Hopkins University as a lecturer in English literature. During these years, he continued to write and publish his poetry. Many people consider Sidney Lanier to be the greatest Southern poet of his time. His work is lyrical and brimming with the imagery of the South that he loved. To sample his work, click here to purchase Poems of Sidney Lanier. It is a "feast for the soul" for anyone who would like to become immersed in the 19th century American South.



Sidney Lanier died at the young age of 39. His confinement in prison during the Civil War evidently led to his contraction of tuberculosis, and he fought it throughout the rest of his life, but finally succumbed to the disease in 1881.

The Hay House on Georgia Avenue, an elaborate 1855 Italianate villa remarkable for having been among the first homes in the country to incorporate indoor plumbing and central heat, also houses notable art and furnishings.





Hay House was used in original Superman Movie –Christopher and Margo.



Mercer University's Woodruff House, an 1836 Greek revival–style mansion atop Coleman Hill, is open during festivals and special events.



The Sherpa Guides talk about some of the antebellum homes a bit more.



Woodruff House

The Woodruff House built in 1836 for a railroad financier and banker, this Greek Revival plantation mansion was later owned by Col. Joseph Bond, one of the South's wealthiest cotton planters, who in 1857 made the world record setting cotton sale of 2,200 bales for $100,000. Bond was the state's largest cotton grower and most successful planter, but he was killed at age 44 by a former overseer fired for mistreating a Bond slave. Bond is buried in Rose Hill Cemetery, his plot marked by a large monument carved in Italy from Carrara marble.



During his occupation of Macon in 1865, Union Gen. James Wilson resided here, and Confederate President Jefferson Davis and his family were entertained here in 1887, when Davis' daughter Winnie was given a 16th birthday ball. Today the home is owned by Mercer University and is only open to tour during the Christmas season and during the Cherry Blossom Festival in March.



Hay House

The Hay House is one of the finest antebellum homes in America, and a must see if you visit Macon. Open to tours, this unique, elegant Italian Renaissance Revival Villa mansion contains 18,000 square feet on four levels in 24 rooms, crowned by a three-story cupola. When it was finished in 1859 after five years of hard labor, it was declared "The Palace of the South."



A sophisticated water system allowed the house's three indoor bathrooms to have hot and cold running water. Gas lighting illuminated the interior, and an ingenious ventilation system kept the house cool in the summer, while a central heating system, along with 19 fireplaces, warmed the house in the winter. The house also had an elevator and intercom system. Furnished with many treasures of fine art, furnishings, and antiques, the house features some of the finest decorations of the day with stained glass windows, exquisite plasterwork, gold leafing, grained woodwork and some of the country's finest examples of marbleized and trompe l`oeil finishes. The builder of the house, William Butler Johnston, was a successful banker. He is buried in Rose Hill Cemetery.


View of Woodruff House from cupola of Hay House.

In 1862, the Confederate Treasury established a major depository at Macon, and Johnston was the receiver of Confederate deposits. Macon became the most important depository in the South, second only to Richmond. Legend states that a hidden room in a staircase in the house stored the Confederate gold. When Stoneman fired on Macon, he aimed at the prominent cupola on the Hay House. The shot instead hit the Holt House, now known as the Cannonball House. The Hay House is open to tours and has a bookstore and gift shop.

City Hall/Capitol, Women of the Confederacy & Confederate Monuments

Built in 1836, the current Macon City Hall first served as a bank, then a fireproof cotton warehouse, the capitol of Georgia, a Confederate Hospital, and then City Hall. It was the temporary capitol of Georgia from Nov. 18, 1864 until March 11, 1865, when the last session of the Confederate general assembly of Georgia was held. The capitol came to Macon when Sherman's army threatened Milledgeville on his "March to the Sea." A picket on guard in the portico of the capitol was shot when Gen. James Wilson entered the city on April 20, 1865.



Considered to have the tallest soldier on a county confederate memorial in the state, the 37- foot tall monument was dedicated on October 29, 1879. The soldier alone stands ten and a half feet tall, and is placed on a stepped Stone Mountain granite base. More than 35,000 citizens turned out to hear Gov. Alfred H. Colquitt, the hero of Olustee, introduce the speaker, Col. Thomas Hardeman, a Macon citizen and notable orator. Confederate veterans reportedly cried at Hardeman's moving speech. A sealed copper box in the cornerstone of the monument contains a letter from Jefferson Davis and Confederate, U.S. and foreign currency.



The beautiful women's monument erected in 1911 has the inscription "Erected to the memory of the women of the south by their husbands, fathers, sons and daughters." It displays women nursing the sick and spinning thread for the Confederacy. A bas relief on one side shows a peaceful, bucolic farm, the other side shows the farm in flames. This was the second memorial to the women of the Confederacy in the state, with the first erected in Rome.



Old Cannonball House & Confederate Museum

Built in 1853 by Judge Asa Holt, this beautiful antebellum house is considered an outstanding example of Greek Revival architecture of the Old South. It became known as the Cannonball House after it was struck by a cannon ball fired by Union cavalry forces under Gen. George Stoneman during the Battle of Dunlap Hill on July 30, 1864. Stoneman, located approximately 3 miles east on the Clinton Road, fired the shot which "struck the sand sidewalk, passed through the second column from the left on the gallery and entered the parlor over a window, landing unexploded in the hall. Its course may be traced by the mended column, a patch in the parlor plaster, and the dent in the hall floor." Stoneman was later captured 25 miles north of Macon on August 3.



The unlucky Holts thought they could avoid the Yankees by fleeing to their plantation in Jefferson County, but they were right in the path of Sherman's "March to the Sea." Their plantation home, used by Union officers, was spared, but all their livestock was slaughtered, their granary and cotton gin house and warehouse were burned with 200 bales of cotton, all their household goods stolen, food confiscated and well ropes and buckets destroyed. Worse, Asa Holt was hanged three times, as Union troops tortured him to learned where they thought he had hidden gold. He survived each time, revived by servants, although the third time he was described as being "barely alive."



The home was bought in 1863 by the Sidney Lanier Chapter, United Daughters of the Confederacy, and is managed by them today. Two rooms honor the founding of the first two sororities in the United States — Alpha Delta Pi and Phi Mu — at nearby Wesleyan College. The servants quarters and kitchen behind the house serve as the Macon Confederate Museum and have many interesting and rare relics. The house and museum are open to the public.

First Presbyterian Church

Built in 1858 with a 185-foot steeple, poet Sidney Lanier was a member of this church. Local legend tells the story that when U.S. Gen. James Wilson occupied the city shortly after Appomattox, he ordered that the U.S. flag be hung over the front door. The minister refused to hold the service and was replaced by a colleague who read a Psalm: "For they that carried us away captive required of us a song and they that waste us required of us mirth." The congregation left by the back door to avoid the stars and stripes.



Losses from the war were more than military and political. In 1870 real estate values were comparable to what they had been ten years earlier, but personal property—reflecting the emancipation of slaves—totaled only $2,697,590, a drop of 74 percent. More painful, there were 487 new widows and 913 new orphans in the city.



OK dang - 8AM - gonna have to cut this off. Will need a 4th and final part of this Fall Line Natural and Historical Wonder of Georgia. Afterall,  tomorrow is another day. In keeping with today's Old South theme our GNW gals.