The Background
After his earlier letter extolling Southwest Georgia’s advantages for Northern emigrants, W.H. Parkins (1836-1894), Atlanta’s first architect, wrote the following letter to The Albany News (Albany, Georgia) in May 1879.
In his second letter, Parkins repeated the central argument from his first—it’s no more convincing here.
“Where is the country… that can present a better field for intelligent immigration than this?” Parkins asked rhetorically. Clearly, Atlanta’s masturbatory boosterism had rubbed off on him.
Wallace Putnam Reed (1849-1903) later described Parkins as “a straightforward man,” and you can detect a matter-of-fact sensibility in his words despite the obligatory bullshit. Certainly, Parkins acknowledged the region’s shortcomings, albeit indirectly:
“They may say there is no society, no schools, no markets close at hand.”
That’s still a fairly accurate assessment of Southwest Georgia.
Parkins was neither a great architect nor a good debater, and his rebuttals in this letter were pitifully weak. On the suggestion of Southwest Georgia having “no society,” he retorted:
“I have always found that so far as society was concerned it regulated itself.”
The hell does that even mean?
Parkins made no attempt to defend the area’s substandard educational options, conceding:
“As to schools, there is a deficiency…”
His response to the region’s remoteness was similarly flaccid:
“My own plantation is twelve miles from the nearest Railroad station, still I do not consider that any particular disadvantage.”
Parkins also noted, rather vaguely, that “the New Jersey people are not altogether satisfied with their situation in Georgia.”
That apparently referred to a New Jersey farmer and 16 of his neighbors who bought 5,000 acres in Ware County, Georgia, in early 1879.1 Before moving south, the farmer told a reporter from The Atlanta Constitution:
“…the average opinion throughout New England is that the southern states are about the same as Mexico, in point of morals, society and lawlessness. It is believed that the people are barbarians, and the state of society utterly lawless and desperate.”2
Surely Ware County did nothing to change their opinion—the place is a shithole.
It’s also located in Southeast Georgia, not Southwest Georgia, but the two regions are equally awful: both are unsightly, sweltering cesspools of hatred, oppression, ineptitude, and arrogance.
Can you tell how much I detest South Georgia?
I also question Parkins’ description of “generous hearted… Southern planters,” and his assertion that:
“I have never had any trouble in finding friends any where in the South. It depends upon the man.”
Even today, the people of Southwest Georgia are deeply suspicious of outsiders, if not outright hostile.
Ironically, the region’s largest city, Albany, was largely shaped by three Northerners:
- Nelson Tift (1810-1891), a Connecticut native who founded and developed the city.
- Francis Flagg Putney (1837-1928), a New Hampshire native3 who founded Phoebe Putney Memorial Hospital, now the region’s largest employer.
- James H. Gray, Sr. (1916-1986), a Massachusetts native who edited and published The Albany Herald, founded the region’s first TV station, WALB, and served as the city’s longtime mayor. Gray’s local media empire has since grown into one of the largest media companies in the United States.
Of course, the rules are different when money is involved: if a rich Yankee arrives in Bumfuck, the locals roll out the red carpet and crowd around with their hands out.
But for a middling Atlanta architect like Parkins? Somehow, I doubt Southwest Georgia received him so graciously.
Credit him for optimism, though. In touting the region’s potential greatness, Parkins proclaimed:
“It will be, in my estimation, a great boom to this country, when men will awake from their lethargy and drowsiness, and see the drawbacks that attend them face to face, and then go to work to avert it.”
Spoken like a man who had yet to be worn down by the place.
Southwest Georgia.
Advantages—Advice From A Northern Settler To His Northern Friends.
Editors Albany News: In my letter to the Southern Enterprise (which you were kind enough to copy) I was anxious that the facts which Gen. Sherman said in regard to North Georgia might be extended, and that Southwest Georgia should reap her share of the benefits, for, in my opinion, she is justly entitled to honorable mention at least, and if the people who live on the fat of the land, on level rich lands, don’t speak out in her behalf Gen. Sherman’s red hills and deep gullies of North Georgia and Tennessee will soon be peopled with such an industrious class of farmers and mechanics that it will cause us to look with envy upon them, hence the necessity of blowing your horn, and blow it loud.
A few days ago I was traveling through the upper portion of Calhoun county, and I have no doubt Baker, Lee, Dougherty and others are in the same category, and as I saw the many hundreds of acres—yes, thousands, I fancied what a country this would be if those broad acres and 3,000 acre plantations were divided up into 200 acre farms and people with those intelligent, industrious, hard working farmers of the North, what a picture it would present. Where is the country (I was about to say on the globe) that can present a better field for intelligent immigration than this? What is there that cannot be raised, and where else the country that can grow something every month in the year? Now, I do not desire that any of my northern friends should be mislead [sic] as to the character of the soil, climate, people, or anything else, for what I say here I can prove, so far as the capacity of the soil is concerned. Can anything more be wanted or desired than to say that we can raise anything that grows out of the soil. Is it not better to live in a country where it is not nine months winter and three months late fall?
You may travel the world over and you cannot find a more generous hearted people than these Southern planters. They may say there is no society, no schools, no markets close at hand. So far as the first is concerned, that depends upon where one locates, and whether they come singly or by ten, twenty or fifty families. I have always found that so far as society was concerned it regulated itself. I have never had any trouble in finding friends any where in the South. It depends upon the man. As to schools, there is a deficiency, but the State is gradually working to the front in that respect; her State superintendent is indefatigable and is working hard to establish good free schools wherever there is a demand. As to the markets, they are in some respects, far away from some portions of the county. My own plantation is twelve miles from the nearest Railroad station, still I do not consider that any particular disadvantage. It must be borne in mind that people make the markets, settle up this country, and it will not be long before Railroads and produce buyers will be at your gates.
I notice an article in the Philadelphia Times where it says the New Jersey people are not altogether satisfied with their situation in Georgia. I do not know which particular portion of the State they allude to, but of one thing I am satisfied, that Northern people coming South cannot run things as they would North; their ideas and principles in agriculture and manufactures are good, most excellent, but they must adopt those ideas and principles to the situation when coming South. The climate is different, the people are different, things have to be managed differently to attain the same end; labor is not so well skilled, which I find is one of the great drawbacks.
But I am digressing. I am firm in the conviction that if Northern farmers will come here in Southwest Georgia, and come to stay, that after five years, eight out of ten will not go back North, and if the other two go back they will return in less than twelve months. I have known hundreds of Northern men to come South and stay, and I can count on my fingers all that ever returned, I mean on my acquaintance. It will be, in my estimation, a great boom to this country, when men will awake from their lethargy and drowsiness, and see the drawbacks that attend them face to face, and then go to work to avert it. Many farmers cannot get out of the old rut, and seek to run their farms and labor as they did during slavery; this cannot be done successfully. Labor has got to be treated differently and should be made interesting, which can be done in many ways.
I am confident that if the people of Southwest Georgia will divide up some of their large waste places, and, if necessary, give away every alternate farm of 100 acres, that the time is not far distant when they would be taken up and would enhance the value of their remaining acres double the cost. I know of a tract of land in one of the Northern States that was sold this way and the owner made an independent fortune. Those to whom the land was given got a clear title after five years, provided he put certain improvements on the land that was required of him in the start.
If these waste lands were in proper cultivation, and cotton be made a surplus crop, and some improved stock were introduced, it is my impression that the time is not far distant when Southwest Georgia would take a leap ahead, and lead the van so far as good lands, good society and good crops is concerned, and if my northern friends want to get into a country that has the easiest farming in the world let them come down here and be convinced.
W.H. PARKINS.
Morgan, Calhoun county, Ga.4
References
- “Our Jersey Colony.” The Atlanta Constitution, February 21, 1879, p. 1. ↩︎
- ibid. ↩︎
- The Making of a Monopoly — Sick in a Hospital Town, Part 2: ProPublica ↩︎
- Parkins, W.H. “Southwest Georgia.” The Albany News (Albany, Georgia), May 15, 1879, p. 1. ↩︎