Charlton County Settlements

Saint George

Memories Are Foundation For Small Georgia Town
By
LaViece Smallwood


Times-Union Special WriterSome describe it as the most peaceful spot in Georgia while others say it is the most desolate spot in the state. Some insist it is the perfect spot to spend a leisurely day fishing from the cool sloping banks of the winding St. Marys River while many argue there is too much else to see to waste time basking in all that quit. Then there are those who remember it chiefly as home and the source of some of the best memories in anybody’s world.

They are talking about St. George. It is a sparsely populated, secluded community, southeast of the Okefenokee Swamp.

The people who live there know its history. They point with pride to newspaper clippings, yellowed and brittle with age, penned by curious reporters awed by scenes from a past that was scarcely touched by modern times.

Few residents, if any, remember the old St. George. They consider “what we’ve heard” almost unbelievable compared to the populated community of 400 today. But official records show that once, back in 1904, 9,000 acres of land were purchased as a colonization project by Indiana newspaper published P.H. Fitzgerald. He was trying to promote emigration to the South.

By 1906 almost every train entering the newly incorporated City of Saint George brought in settlers. They came from as many as 26 states. Buildings were erected at the rate of one a day and the resident population soon reached 1,000 with 54 businesses being established. There was a bank, school, hotels, newspaper and churches. St. George soon became the leading town of Charlton County.

During this prosperous growth period, Fitzgerald was indicted by a federal grand jury for violation of postal laws and the Colony Company failed to meet obligations to the people. Most settlers from other states returned to their former homes. Despite an effort by the remaining people to undertake the project, lack of industry to support the town caused the economy to fail. The political infighting that followed prompted the Georgia General Assembly in 1924 to abolish and repeal the city’s charter.

Today, the city consists of an elementary school (high scho0ol students commute by bus to Folkston) an IGA grocery, a café, two general stores and a post office. Other evidence of a once-thriving city can only be found in history books.

For whatever reason a few of the settlers who came stayed. The local people, most of them descendants of the original settlers, are glad they did.

“I wouldn’t leave here unless I was carried out in a pine box,” said 80-year-old John Arthur Barker, the area’s first rural mail carrier. Barker said he was 16 years old in 1917 when he drove a pair of mules down from Wilcox County.

“My daddy was a cattleman running ahead of the stock laws but he ended up a farmer hers,” said Barker.

Sara, Barker’s wife of more than 50 years, came to St. George from Pennsylvania.

“My granddaddy had advertised for a wife and found one, so I came down to visit him and met Arthur,” she said.

During their courtship, Mrs. Barker said, she once left a message at the local boarding house where Barker lived.

Later Barker was told, “that foreign girl came by here and left a message for you but we couldn’t understand her.”

The Barkers live three miles south of St. George. They raised nine children on the 1,000-acre farm purchased by his father for $4 an acre. Other than the price tag, little else has changed. The Barkers, until a few years ago, shared a telephone line with 18 of their neighbors.

Most of those who remained in St. George grubbed a living out of the earth and nearby rivers and streams. Area employment, mostly pulpwood mills and turpentine industries, netted the wage earners from 25 to 50 cents a day, and hard times forced many into the higher – if dangerous – income provided by moonshining.

Alec Hodges would leave home hours before daybreak and walk eight miles down an unpaved country road to his 35-cents-a-day job.

Alec’s wife Dorothy rose early to prepare her husband’s breakfast on a two-burner wood stove and pack a gallon syrup bucket with enough food for the day.

“I’d put grits in the bottom, then a piece of fried meat, pour in the gravy, put in a sweet potato or two and some mustard green and biscuit sandwiches,” she said.

“Oooooeeee, that was good,” said Hodges.

“But now it would probably kill people to eat like that,” she said.
“No, they just think it would,” he said.

“Well, anyway, we ate a lot of macaroni and tomatoes back then because you could buy a big box of macaroni for a nickel and we’d grow and can our own tomatoes,” she said.
In the late 1930s Hodges got a job driving a truck for $1.50 a day.“Boy howdy, we thought we were rich,” he said.

Eventually the illegal moonshine whiskey business began to flourish in the area and some local residents saw their first opportunity to make what they termed “some real money.”
“I went to stilling to make a decent living,” said Hodges. “I spent day and night out there in the creeks making it. I made it off and on for 20 years and then got caught my last days making it by the revenuers with my britches down.”

Hodges said he was raised in a house where cracks were so big “I could see the moon and stars” through them. His father, who died last year at the age of 93, crawled “on his hands and knees” to plant a garden at age 90.

Hodges said he was the grandson of Bashie Heath, a full-blooded Indian girl. She was left in the area during the 1800s by her parents.

“She had eight children by three different men, so there are a lot of us tough half breeds around here,” he said.

Roxie Chesser Renshaw as an “Islander” from deep within the treacherous Okefenokee Swamp, far removed from even the fringes of civilization. She was one of 13 children born to Robert, a son of the Island’s homesteader William, who sought refuge there from the law in 1858. Roxie’s life centered almost exclusively around her own family and those of aunts, uncles and cousins.

“Until one day one of my cousins brought Walter onto the island,” she said.
It took Walter Renshaw 1 1⁄2 hours to ride by horseback from St. George to court the 15-year-old Roxie in the seclusion of the swamp. He often traveled in weather so cold he had to break ice to come through the slough.

On the day they planned to marry, Roxie had to attend her uncle’s funeral.
“There weren’t no telephones so I couldn’t call and let him know so I just left a note on the door where I’d be,” she said. He came on over to the Island cemetery and that’s where we married, right outside the gate.”

“I didn’t have nothing but a hat and some shoes and they both had a hole in ‘em,” said Walter, “but we’ve been happy together.”

Eight of their 12 children are living.

“We were sharecroppers and moonshiners,” said Roxie. “I’ve carried many a 5-gallon jug of shine on these little old shoulders. We finally got caught by the revenuers who tore up our still and poured it all out,” she said. “We lost $1,000 right then and there.
Inside their modest St. George home are original pieces of hand-carved furniture made by Renshaw’s grandfather. Using the skills she learned as she grew up in the swamp, Roxie crafts many of the items she uses today, including toys for children and brooms made from palmetto fronds. The Renshaws butcher and smoke their own meat, grind corn into grits and meal and milk their cow daily for fresh milk and butter.

“Just ain’t no way to get us out of St. George,” they say.

Lula Thrift has lived in the Georgia Bend section of Charlton County all of her life, watching people and years come and go. “As far as the world’s concerned, it’s just as sweet and good as it ever was, but it’s the people that lives in it, honey,” she said recently at her home near Moniac.

“There’s dope and all that drinking and this old hippie hair. Ho. Bi siree, that’s not for me. I’m just plain old fashioned and that’s all there is to it. I talked to my children and told them just how us old people were brought up. And they best heed it,” she said. “It was a sight more peaceful back in the days of my family.”

When Lula married the man she loved in 1915 at the age of 16, she thought that was all there was to marriage.

“My mama never told me anything about men, for if she had of I probably never would have gotten married.

“I didn’t know what I was stepping into. I thought I was marrying for love. I just pure loved the man. I didn’t know what else I had to do. I didn’t know about – well, you know, sex. Nobody knew nothing about such thing like that in them days,” she said.
“Mama kept all such stuff like that away from us children,” she said. “All she’d ever tell me was that if I ever done anything wrong when she got through with me I’d be sorry. But she never told me what wrong was. I’d ask her and she still wouldn’t tell me. After I married and found out what it meant it was too late, for I’d done jumped into the fire.”

The 82-year-old widow of Nathan Thrift chuckled. The fire crackled in the fireplace next to her cane-back rocking chair while she reminisced in the comfort of the cozy home Nathan built for her in 1919.

“You know how much this old house cost?” she said. “Twenty-five dollars. That’s all, but honey, it’s home and I love it. Why, Nathan hauled the lumber on an old mule and wagon from the sawmill. It ain’t nothing but fat lighter wood, honey, but it won’t rot away as fast on us and the termites won’t eat it at all. It’ll be here a lot longer than me,” she said.
The small compact home where she has lived for more than 60 years is nestled beneath towering pecan and gall berry trees.

“We paid 75 cents apiece for them and Nathan set them out to shade us when we moved here,” she said.

Glass window panes now replace the wooden window shutters and insulation keeps the house much warmer than before. Modern bathroom plumbing is successor to the outdoor wooden privy.

To the right and left of her within a block or two are the modern homes of three of her five children. One son, a bachelor, still lives at home.

Gone is the house down the road where Mrs. Thrift grew up. “It just plumb rotted away, honey.”

But memories of the old clay fireplace where she helped prepare three hearty meals a day remain.

“Poor Ma. I think she finally did get her a little two-burner wood stove,” she said.
“I miss Nathan, I really do. He’s been gone about 35 years now, but I loved him. You see, honey, it was a good thing I did, too, for I didn’t know about all them other things.”
There is still plenty of land in St. George just waiting for “settlers” said one area resident.
“Most of ‘em have a good reason for coming and it’s usually to get out of high utilities and taxes in Jacksonville,” said another.

“Not so,” said newcomer Grover Whitfield. “My wife threw me out the door and I came here to find peace.”

[Four pictures accompanied this article, with the following cut lines:
“Lula Thrift still lives in the house her late husband built for her in 1919. The home located in Charlton County, Ga. cost him $25 to build,”
“Roxie Chesser Renshaw and her husband Walter pass the time on the front porch of their St. George, Ga. home. They were sharecroppers and moonshiners. Jug in foreground was used years ago for ‘shine.”
“Dorothy and Alec Hodges have decorated the wall of their bedroom with clippings and pictures from newspaper stories written about their family. In foreground is a 100-year-old family Bible.”
“Sara and John Arthur Barker live three miles south of St. George, Ga. Until a few years ago, the Barkers shared a telephone party line with 18 of their neighbors.”]

Florida Times-Union
December 30, 1981