Charlton County Settlements

Saint George

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By
Lois Barefoot Mays


Established as a “colony city” by a northern newspaper man, the town of St. George has had a most unusual history.


P.H. Fitzgerald, a newspaper editor from Indianapolis, Indiana, had already successfully colonized the town of Fitzgerald, Georgia. In December 1904, when his son John P. Fitzgerald found 9,000 acres of land for sale in southern Charlton County, they bought it and planned to start up another colony town. This property was near to the village of Cutler, along the Georgia, Southern and Florida Railroad.

The City of Saint George was originally laid out by Ed Mahan, a surveyor. He drew up plans for over 1900 small lots for businesses and almost 2,000 residential lots. This area was surrounded by 265 five-acre lots and these in turn were enclosed by 128 forty-acre tracts. Fitzgerald’s newspaper printed up large ads that were distributed over most of the northern states. Some of the lots were bought by Union veterans of the Civil War, who longed to take advantage of the warm winters in the sunny south. The property deeds were allotted at a public drawing that was held in St. George in February 1905.

Many of the lots sold during the next two years, and settlers started arriving almost daily from 26 different states on the GS&F trains. One thousand residents soon called St. George home, and they established 54 businesses. A subdivision adjoining St. George was named for Captain Parker, an old Union veteran. It attracted a number of old soldiers who were on federal pensions, and most of them are buried in a special section at the St. George cemetery.

From 1906 to 1907, St. George was the largest town in Charlton County, but one of the most important ingredients for a prosperous village was missing. There was no form of industry to provide jobs for the residents. Then legal problems began to plague the enterprise. When the colony company refused to make promised improvements the newcomers attempted to form a new county with St. George as the county seat, but their plan failed. Two new railroads abandoned their plans to pass through St. George, when they could not get the financial backing they needed. Attempts to promote truck farms to grow produce to sell in nearby Jacksonville also failed. Many of the new would-be sellers became discouraged and returned to their original homes. Some, however, remained in Saint George, determined to bring to life their dreams of a successful community.

Fitzgerald had advertised that his 1904 Colony Co. was incorporated but he had failed to file the necessary official papers. None of the promised public improvements were made, and no streets were opened. These things had been promised in the transactions he made when he sold the land. Angry landowners filed a suit in December, 1906, which led to the federal indictment of P.H. Fitzgerald, for violation of the postal laws. (He pled guilty and was fined $1,600.00.)

A receiver, Mr. Jesse W. Vickery, was appointed, and under court order he sold off the rest of the Colony lands. The money received from this sale paid for a brick school house for St. George.

The citizens incorporated their little city of St. George in August 1906, and elected the first city officials: John Harris as Mayor; T.W. Wrench, Clerk; James A. Sage, Treasurer; H.C. Myers, Tax Assessor; A.F. Carmichael, Marshal; and E.T. Torode, Amos Bennett, D.C. Welch, J.W. Strickland and A. H. McConahie as Aldermen. The leaders of St. George moved quickly to have the streets graded, drainage ditches dug, bridges built and trees planted.

The most important structure in the village was Union Hall, a building erected by the people for church and school purposes. A three-teacher school operated upstairs and downstairs until 1910, when the new brick school was finished. John Harris, the editor of the St. George Gazette, began his illustrious career in education when he was selected principal. In 1924, the second half of the brick building and a school auditorium was constructed and the small “field schools” of Toledo, Wilkerson and Stokesville were consolidated with St. George, bringing the student enrollment to its highest point. (A fire destroyed this building in 1937 and the following year the present school was erected.)

St. George had a bank, two newspapers (the St. George Gazette and the St. George Outlook), a hotel, a Northern Methodist Episcopal Church and a post office. The first post office was known as Battenville, then McNeil, then Cutler and finally St. George.

For the next eighteen years the City of St. George prospered, until the population declined and the charter was rescinded by the state legislature in 1924. In 1967, a telephone exchange was built in St. George, at last bringing the grateful residents local and long distance telephone service.

The recent popular trend of building homes near the St. Marys River has brought new growth to the area, with many new families and an increase of students in the school. Staunchly independent and loyal to their community, the people of St. George have carved out a set of customs and family traditions all their own, bound tightly to their school and churches. The trend toward consolidation of government and educational institutions threatens small towns like St. George, but the residents of lower Charlton County are likely to be more than a match for them. Other small towns could learn a lot from St. George and the way its people work together to accomplish their goals.