Couple leaves Choestoe for New Holland William Bruce Moore and Catherine Souther Moore

Through mountain mists we discern motives as to why people of the late nineteenth century left family and familiar scenes to go to a new location. Sometimes the very survival of families depended on it. Such seemed the case of Catherine Souther Moore (01.16.1869-02.03.1921) and her husband, William Bruce Moore (04.16.1868-08.26.1905).

This couple was married in Union County, Georgia on September 23, 1886. The husband, William Bruce Moore, was from Towns County, Georgia, a son of Andrew and Adeline Greer Moore. Catherine Souther, his bride, was the ninth of ten children born to John Combs Hayes Souther (10.22.1827- 01.04-1891) and Nancy Collins Souther (02.13.1829-07.22.1888).

Catherine had three brothers, William Albert Souther, John Padgett Souther, and Joseph Newton Souther. William Albert married Elizabeth "Hon" Dyer. John Padgett married Martha Clemetine Brown. Joseph Newton married Elderada Swain. Catherine had seven sisters. They and their spouses were Mary Elizabeth Souther who married Smith Loransey Brown; Celia Souther who died at about age 16; Sarah Evaline Souther who married Bluford Elisha Dyer; Nancy Roseanne Souther who married William Hulsey; Martha Souther who married, first, Jasper Todd Hunter, and, second, James Hunter (her husbands were brothers); and Catherine's youngest sister was Ruthie Caroline Souther who married, first, William A. Sullivan and, second, Logan Souther. This youngest sister moved west to Pueblo, Colorado.

Perhaps it was the fact that Catherine's sister, Nancy Roseanne Souther and her husband, William Hulsey, already lived in New Holland that helped Catherine and Bruce Moore decide to move there. Times were hard, and the couple seemed to realize that their chances for a regular income lay, not in tending the land at Choestoe to eke out a living, but to go to New Holland where Bruce could be employed for a regular $1.00 per day salary working in the cotton mill.

In the history of New Holland Cotton Mills, it was indicated that the Pacolet Manufacturing Company of South Carolina established a cotton mill in the village of New Holland, two miles northeast of Gainesville in 1901. There the company built a brick building to house the cotton mill, the weaving looms and other equipment necessary to producing quality cotton cloth. Also on the property secured by Pacolet were mill village houses which could be rented by families who worked in the mill. There was a bold spring, supposedly with health-giving water, that provided drinking water for the houses. Any of the ambitious families who wanted to tend a side-patch next to their rented house could plant a vegetable garden and hope for fresh vegetables in a favorable growing season. The manufacturer also provided a mill village store where families could buy necessary supplies. A school for the children, New Holland Academy, was also established. The whole village seemed a haven for families hard-pressed to make a living in the early twentieth century.

William Bruce Moore and Catherine Souther Moore had seven children as follows: James Andrew Moore (08.05.1888 - 12.29.1909); Nancy Adeline Moore (07.07.1890-?) married L. O. Coker; Mary Ellen Moore (10.25.1891-03.10.1935) married Will Voyles; Emma Mae Moore (04.10.1894 -?) married Arthur Franklin; Katie Evaline Morre (12.23.1896-05.08.1957) married Earl Franklin; Martha Wortie Moore (05.25.1900-05/26.1949) married Bruce Meta; and William Virgil Moore (09.30-1902-05.08.1962) married Thelma Cook.

As already mentioned, in that day the New Holland mill employed men for $1.00 per day. Women worked for fifty cents per day, and children, upon becoming age 12, got jobs for fifty cents per day. In the early years when the Moore family worked there, few health restrictions were intact, and workers breathed the cotton dust from the milling processes. It was an unhealthful environment. William Bruce Moore died August 26, 1905, leaving his wife Catherine to raise their family of seven children on her own. Imagine this mother, tired from a twelve-hour day at the mill, returning home, heavy with grief, and having to prepare a meager meal for her children, do their laundry, and keep the house in order. Another sadness came to Catherine Souther Moore as her eldest son, James Andrew, died December 9, 1909 at age 22. Was his death also caused by exposure to cotton dust in the mill?

On June 1, 1903, a tornado ripped through Gainesville and New Holland. Forty were killed in New Holland. Historical pictures show caskets lined up, side by side, in the New Holland mill, awaiting burial. Some, for which caskets had not yet been secured, were covered in materials that had been woven in the plant. Over three decades later, on April 6, 1936, another devastating tornado ripped through Gainesville, doing much damage to the city and to outlying districts like New Holland. In 1936, President Franklin Roosevelt visited the city, surveying the damage, and promising federal help for rebuilding.

My great aunt, Catherine Souther Moore, did not have to worry about cleaning up from the great tornado of 1936. She had quietly laid down her life on February 3, 1921, dying of what was then known as "consumption," a disease of the lungs brought on by years of breathing the cotton dust in the mills. She was buried in the New Holland Cemetery alongside her husband who had preceded her in death on August 26, 1905.

c 2007 by Ethelene Dyer Jones; published Nov. 1, 2007 in The Union Sentinel, Blairsville, GA. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved

Byron Herbert Reece Interpretive Center receives boost

Those of us who are avid Byron Herbert Reece fans and who appreciate his poetry and prose were elated over the recent grant of $671,072 to be used in development of the Byron Herbert Reece Interpretive Center on the farm about a mile north of Vogel State Park.

For one who struggled both as a farmer and as a writer, the amount, no doubt, would have seemed magnanimous to the humble poet. To make use of the grant from the Department of Transportation Enhancement Funds, money on the local level amounting to 20 percent of the allocated grant must be raised. The Byron Herbert Reece Society is in the process of achieving that goal. Members are confident that people will contribute so that a beautiful center at the former Reece farm along Wolf Creek just off highway 129 South will become a reality.

Thanks to those who worked hard to secure the grant. Reid Dyer and Joy Still representing Hayes, James and Associates assisted with writing the grant proposal. President of the Byron Herbert Reece Society, Dr. John Kay, has exerted time, effort and enthusiasm to the task.

Thanks are due Senator Chip Pearson and Representative Charles Jenkins for their interest in and advocacy of the project. Those from the Georgia Department of Transportation supported the application for the grant and seemed happy that Union County received the money to apply to the Reece Center. These were Harold Linnenkohl, DOT Commissioner, DOT Board member Bill Kuhlke Jr. and DOT Deputy Director Larry Dent. Members of the Byron Herbert Reece Society Executive Board which include Union County Commissioner Lamar Paris, Fleming Weaver of the Forest Service and Ben Hulsey were likewise elated over receipt of the grant.

I can envision the future when the Reece Interpretive Center is completed. Visitors can go there to walk the quiet trails along Wolf Creek and experience some of the ambience Reece himself enjoyed in the invigorating atmosphere of mountains, streams, sky and land, commodities held dear in the mountain farmer’s heart. Perhaps inspiration akin to that Reece had when he wrote his poems will happen again to a promising bard.

I thought of a mutual friend of mine and Reece’s, Mrs. Marel Brown, a Georgia poet and writer. I met Marel Brown through the Georgia Poetry Society of which we were both members. We became good friends. One of the links we had in common was our acquaintance with Poet Byron Herbert Reece. In 1979 Mrs. Brown published a book entitled Presenting Georgia Poets. One of the chapters was about Byron Herbert Reece.

Mrs. Brown tells about meeting Mr. Reece first in July 1940. She was spending a week at Vogel State Park because she had won first place in the Georgia State Parks Poetry Contest for her poem, Sonnet to Indian Springs Park. The reward was a week’s lodging at the state park of her choice. She chose Vogel because she had been told that Byron Herbert Reece lived “about a mile north” of that park. She wanted to meet him because she had read with great interest his poem, His Eye Is on the Sparrow published in the North Georgia Review.

Without a phone at the Reece house for her to make an appointment to see him, she drove from Vogel to the farm. There she met first Mrs. Emma Reece, the poet’s mother.

Mrs. Reece was delighted that another poet had sought out her son, and urged Brown to wait until her son and his father Juan would be in from the fields.

Mrs. Brown writes: “The first time I saw Byron Herbert Reece he was coming over the top of a hill, walking home from an afternoon of farm work on the far side of the ridge. Even silhouetted against the brown earth as he and his father made their way down the furrowed land, I could see he was a tall, slender young man. His pace was the slow, careful gait of the farmer who knows how to walk steady in uneven, plowed ground. He reached the almost level barn lot and approached, a question in his dark eyes.” (p. 60)

From that meeting in July of 1940 until the poet’s untimely death in 1958, Marel Brown and Byron Herbert Reece were steadfast friends. With her connections in literary circles in Atlanta, she engineered several invitations for him to read his poetry publicly with the Atlanta Writer’s Club, at the Druid Hills Baptist Church in “A Night with the Poets,” and at other venues. She tells in her brief biography of Reece how adverse at first he was to reading his own poetry, and even asked her to read for him. She encouraged him, and saw a marked improvement over the years from a shy, almost apologetic reading of his poetry to a voice that undulated with the movement and power of his poems.

With poetry in her prose account of Reece, Mrs. Brown wrote: “To me the pattern of Reece poems reveals the wise farmer in him; he guided his plow against the lay of the land, always. Where the furrows should hug the curve of the hill, they hugged; where the contour changed, his furrows swerved to the natural heave and dip of the uneven soil of what he called ‘God’s Country.’ His variation of rhythm was always in conformity to the underlying substance— never any conscious effort to be bizarre or different. His are true lines, in true rhythms, against the uneven hills of life as he knew it.” (pp. 65-66).

As a member of the Byron Herbert Reece Society, I am excited to think that many can learn more about the mountain farmer Mrs. Marel Brown met that late afternoon in July 1940. It will be good to have a place to visit where he worked the land and experienced the creativity that came from his brilliant mind to produce masterful poetry and prose. Marel Brown ended her chapter on Reece with these words: “Time will surely assay the inevitable truth: Byron Herbert Reece was a farmer first, but a poet always.” (p. 69).

(Note: If you can find a copy of Marel Brown’s book, Presenting Georgia Poets, in a library near you, I recommend that you read it. You will enjoy her keen insight into this mountain farmer/poet whom she called her friend. While you’re looking for her book on Georgia Poets, you might like to check on some of her own books. She wrote nine. A collection of her most noted poems is entitled The Shape of a Song.)

c2006 by Ethelene Dyer Jones; published Feb. 2, 2006 in The Union Sentinel, Blairsville, GA. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Legacy left by the Rev. Charles Edward Rich

Although Rich was his surname, riches as the world knows them were never in abundance for the Rev. Charles Edward Rich, better known as Brother Charlie Rich. He was an humble country preacher, plying his work mainly in Union County, Georgia.

This mountain preacher, Charlie Rich, was born on October 25, 1868 the only son of Solomon Hill Rich, Sr. (1806-1889) and his second wife, Nancy M. Conner (1827-1868). Charlie had seven half-brothers and two half-sisters, children of his father’s first wife. Solomon Rich and Nancy Connor were married October 22, 1865. Nancy was helping to rear the children by his first wife, and hoped to rear her own child, Charlie. But the baby’s mother died in childbirth the day he was born.

Educated in the county schools of Union County, Charlie Rich desired education at a higher level and attended Hiawassee Baptist Institute, graduating from its program of studies. This school was founded by the Rev. George W. Truett and his cousin, the Rev. Fernando Coello McConnell. It was possible for young men to board in the homes of the people or rent a small cabin with two or three neighbor boys sharing expenses and doing their own cooking while they “batched” and went to school. The school was noted for its strong academic program and its emphasis on Bible study, theology, speech and classical studies. It was no doubt while a student there that Charlie Rich felt a strong calling to become a minister of the gospel.

Charlie Rich was ordained to the gospel ministry about 1898 (exact date not known by this writer). His first pastorate was the Choestoe Baptist Church, the first-organized church in Union County (about 1832 with minutes extant from 1834). Rev. Charlie Rich met this congregation for two years during 1898 and 1899. Other churches in the county that experienced his spiritual leadership were Harmony Grove Baptist, Union Baptist and Mt. Zion Baptist (in Dooly District).

He returned for the second time to pastor Choestoe for a longer period, from 1903 through February of 1915. When a new church building was erected there, Rev. Rich preached the dedicatory sermon in June 1918.

The Rev. Rich’s first wife was Nannie Epps (May 27, 1869-July 13, 1906) whom he married February 27, 1890. To them were born six children. These children and their spouses were: Minnie Beulah (1891) married Tom Jarrard and had one child, Bonnell; Francis Marion (1893-1962) married Ella May Welchel and had one son, Francis Marion Jr; Clarence Edward (1895-1947) married Nancy Louise Dyer (1893-1985) and had three children, Ellene Epps, Clarence Edward Jr. and Bill Bluford; Nellie Alma (1897-1918) married Tom Boling. They had no children. Estelle Bessie (1901-1992) married Ralph Conley. Their six children were Charles, Sarah Nell, John, Buddy, Francis and Jim. Irene Stephens (1904) married Benjamin Jefferson Hulsey and had six children: Amanda, Sarah, Mariben, Joyce, Benjamin Jefferson Jr. and Julius.

After the Rev. Rich’s first wife Nannie died July 13, 1906, he married, second, to Rebecca J. Cavender on January 31, 1907. His children were ages 3, 6, 10, 12, 14 and 16 when their mother died. Rebecca helped to rear her husband’s children by his first wife, Nannie.

Rev. Rich had a deep love for the people in the mountains. He encouraged young people to seek education beyond the one-teacher rural schools, where he sometimes taught in addition to his preaching duties. He helped students to get enrolled and settled into studies at the Blairsville Collegiate Institute and the Hiawassee Collegiate Institute where he himself had graduated.

It is said that he preached with vigor and evangelistic zeal. He was often sought out as the summer revival preacher in weeks of protracted meetings after crops were “laid by.” A tribute, written several years after his death and published in the Notla River Baptist Association Minutes of August, 1950, cited his work as a pastor, an evangelist and a promoter of Christian education and missions.

A stained glass window in the present Choestoe Baptist Church building recognizes him as a former pastor of the church. As the sun streams through the window it is a reflection of the influence and outreach of this minister whose life was dedicated to the service of God and to leading people in a Christian walk.

The Rev. Charles Edward Rich died April 25, 1919 at the young age of 50. He and his first wife, Nannie Epps Rich, who died in 1906 when she was only 37, were both interred in the Old Choestoe Church Cemetery.

c2005 by Ethelene Dyer Jones; published July 7, 2005 in The Sentinel, Blairsville, GA. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Nancy Collins Souther, Daughter of Thompson Collins, Sr.

Writing about early settler Thompson Collins and his family is like taking up an enthralling story that you can’t put down until you’ve read it all. And even then, you want to fill in gaps, go farther with the story.

In recent articles we’ve explored the first Thompson Collins, holder of vast acreages, progenitor of many who were born and grew up in Choestoe District and went out from there to make their mark in the world. A son, Thompson Collins, Jr. was a long-time Justice of the Peace. A grandson, Thompson Smith Collins, was known as “the poor man’s friend.” In the first year of my writing “Through Mountain Mists,” I traced the remarkable career of Dr. Mauney Douglas Collins, for twenty-five years Georgia’s state school superintendent and a great grandson of the first Thompson Collins. Chief Justice of Georgia Supreme Court, William Henry Duckworth and his brother, J. Lon Duckworth, corporation lawyer, were descendants of Thompson Collins. The branches go on and on…

This article pays tribute to Nancy Collins (February 13, 1829 – July 22, 1888), eighth of the ten children born to Thompson and Celia Self Collins. Nancy and her sister just older than she, Celia (1827-?) who married James West, were born after their parents migrated from North Carolina to Habersham County, Georgia. Her sister Olive (1831-1853) who married Robert McCoy and died in childbirth, and her brother Ivan Kimsey Collins (1835-1898), who was deaf due to a childhood fever and married Martha Hunter, were also born in Georgia.

Nancy Collins married John Combs Hayes Souther (Oct. 22, 1827 – Jan. 4, 1891), born in North Carolina, the second of twelve children of John Souther (1803-1889) and Mary “Polly” Combs Souther (1807-1894). The Souther family had settled in 1836 on land in the locality of present-day New Liberty Baptist Church. In fact, settler John Souther gave the land for that church and cemetery. The marriage of John Combs Hayes Souther and Nancy Collins on February 6, 1852 brought together two prominent early-settler families.

John, better known as “Jack” Souther, took his bride Nancy to live in the log house he and his father had built for Jack about 1850 on land lot # 150. The house still stands today within sight of New Liberty Baptist Church. The old adage, “It takes a lot of living in a house to make it home” could well qualify that house, for three generations of the Jack and Nancy Souther family lived there over a period of more than a century and a half.

Nancy Collins married one week before her twenty-second birthday in 1852. She no doubt felt pride in the fact that her husband Jack had taught the first school in the Choestoe District. Later he would become ordinary of Union County. He was always an advocate of education and good government. On their farm in Choestoe he practiced good farming techniques for that era and was able to support the family. He made many trips over the Logan Turnpike to take produce to market in Gainesville. Having Thompson Collins as a father-in-law and his own father, John Souther, as advisors, John Combs Hayes Souther was in a good position to make his own contributions to his life and times.

When the Union County courthouse was built on the square in 1899, Jack Souther was an advocate for building it. Timber from his land went into a portion of its construction.

Since Nancy’s father, Thompson Collins, had slaves at the time of her marriage, I wonder if one of them was loaned to Nancy and Jack Souther as their children were born to help Nancy with their care and with her housework. There is no record to verify this assumption, but it could reasonably have happened.

The Civil War came when the couple was ten years into their marriage. Jack Souther was a conscientious objector. In order to evade the Confederate draft, he hid out in caves in nearby Bald Mountain. At night he came out of hiding and tilled the crops. It was not an easy time.

The children born to John Combs Hayes and Nancy Collins Souther were:

(1) Mary Elizabeth Souther (1853-1929) married Smith Loransey Brown (1850-1932)
(2) Celia Souther (1854) died when about sixteen years of age.
(3) William Albert Souther (1856-1945) married Elizabeth “Hon” Dyer (1859-1902)
(4) Sarah Evaline Souther (1857-1959) married Bluford Elisha “Bud” Dyer (1855-1926)
(5) John Padgett Souther (1858-1959) married Martha Clementine Brown (1861-1933)
(6) Joseph Newton Souther (1861-1922) married Elderada Swain (1867-1948)
(7) Ruthie Caroline Souther (1863-1928) married (1) William Sullivan and (2) James Logan Souther (1847-1914)
(8) Nancy Roseanna Souther (1865-1938) married William Hulsey (1862-1946)
(9) Martha Souther (1867-1937) married (1) Jasper Todd Hunter (1863-1897) and (2) James Hunter (1847-1912) [Jasper and James were brothers.]
(10) Catherine Souther (1869-1921) married William Bruce Moore (1868- 1905)

Of the nine children who lived to adulthood and married, the descendants of John Combs Hayes and Nancy Collins Souther became legion. Each family has its own story. In fact, geneology lines sometimes are surprising. Their child number four, Sarah Evaline Souther who married Bluford Elisha Dyer is my grandmother. Sarah and Bluford’s tenth child, Jewel Marion Dyer (1890-1974) married Azie Collins (1895-1945), daughter of Francis Jasper Collins. Nancy Collins Souther was my mother’s great aunt. She is my own great grandmother, as well as my great, great aunt.

When I tell my children and grandchildren about these family ties at Christmas and other family gatherings, they sometimes shake their heads in disbelief. Somewhat like the royal families of England and other countries, our forebears, too, made alliances by marriage that have affected subsequent generations.

Have a wonderful Christmas with your family and remember the true meaning of the season.

c2004 by Ethelene Dyer Jones; published December 16, 2004 in The Union Sentinel, Blairsville, GA. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.