In the early days that I wrote of in my first letter our mail service was slow, uncertain and costly. If I recollect right, there was then but one post office in the county, Statesboro, and the office was never crowded with letters and much less with newspapers. Then followed Mill Ray, and after a while in the early 50's, the office of Bengal, near Lower Lotts Creek was established, and then we felt that we were surely living in a progressive age. The mails came weekly to Statesboro, but I do not know from what point. Postage was outrageously high, being 18 3/4 cents on a half sheet of fool's cap (tenpence ha' penny it was then called) and 37 1/2 cents on a whole sheet. Thirty seven and a half cents was called "one and nine pence," meaning no doubt one shilling and nine pence, English currency. Pre-payment of postage was optional, letters uncalled for were held six months before being sent to the dead letter office. When letters came over a route of two or three hundred miles they were often three weeks or more in reaching their destination and if a letter was on important business it was apt to have a request to the post master written on the back "Please forward this in haste," Such letters were usually prepaid. Letters were folded without envelopes and sealed with a red wafer, or sealing wax. Letters announcing a death were usually sealed with a black wafer. Newspapers were very few, and were rather curiosities. "The Savannah Georgian" was the official organ of Bulloch County, in which the legal notices of the county were printed; and were seen perhaps by a dozen citizens. The people in the lower part of the county found it convenient to have their letters addressed to Savannah. When letter postage was reduced to ten cents we thought it was an act of great generosity of the government, but the reduction had no visible effect on the office at Statesboro.

The Courthouse

The first time I saw Statesboro, was in 1838, and it made a gloomy impression on my young mind. I recollect only three families living in the place then. Mrs. Wise, who kept a boarding house and a Mr. Selph, who kept the only store in the place. This store was built of logs and was about 14 by 16 feet; the stock in trade was mostly fighting whiskey, some calicoes and a few farming implements. To my youthful mind the old court house was a magnificent structure. I suppose it was about 22 by 50, unpainted, and had but one door, which was in the end of the house, a small portico in front and without window blinds or sashes, and an upper story where the jury rooms were, and the different county officers had their offices and kept the county records.

There were several public occasions in those days that called the people together; such as court day, public speaking, district and general musters, horse racing, shooting matches, gander pullings, etc. The people would travel for many miles to attend these gatherings, many would walk, some would go on horseback and others in carts; buggies there were none. On such days vendors of ginger bread, persimmon beer and parched ground peas, or pinders were always in evidence, and did a good business.

Militia Musters

There were two superior courts held each year and were usually in ses about two days. At such time the people assembled from all parts of the county, some had cases in court, some were witnesses, some were jurors, and some for the ostensible purpose of having a good time generally, hearing the news and drinking whiskey at the expense of someone else, most especially the candidate for office. The average voter on such occasions would pledge himself to every candidate whom he met. I have since then meet men of this stamp in every community where I have ever lived. In those early times there regular militia musters, and such musters as they were, would be a subject of ridicule now. Every male person between the ages of 18 and 45 were subject to militia duty, except such as were exempt by law. When muster day was drawing nigh the captain would send a written notice to every one in his district that was on his muster roll "to be and appear" at the regular muster ground on a named day "armed and equipped as the law directs, " and when the day arrived it would have made you smile to have seen these equipments. Some of the men carried old muskets, relics of the war of the Revolution which had three iron bands around the barrel, some had rifles and some were accused of trying to pass muster with only a cornstalk for a gun. None had bayonets. The captain and men were ignorant of all military tactics and the musters were usually conducted by a man called a "fugleman" who stood in the front, and by dumb motion showed the man what to do, and when the captain gave the order to "charge bayonets" the men went through a pantomime that was laughable to behold. The Brigade musters came off twice a year and were a repetition of the district musters, only on a larger scale.

The people of those days were hardy, honest and hospitable, but the shrewdest horse traders I ever saw. I discovered this to my cost. There were professional horse swappers who were on the lookout for suckers and usually found them. Many a man rode to Statesboro on a good horse and rode back virtually afoot, and not a dollar in his pocket, a sadder but not always a wiser man.

In those days of which I am writing the modes of traveling, the vehicles and farming implements, were such as might have been used by the old Romans. It is safe to say that there have been more discoveries, inventions, and improvements in every department of useful knowledge, made in the century just closed than in any five centuries before it. In the present letter I will tell something of travel and transportation in the early days of which I have been writing in my previous letters. To mention private conveyance first, travel was done on foot, on horse-back or in carts; buggies were entirely unknown then. A few of the wealthier citizens owned gigs or a high awkward carriage called a barouche, but these latter were scarce.

All the country west of the Altamaha River was then almost an unbroken wilderness with only a few white settlers, and the Seminole Indians were unfriendly and troublesome. Nothwithstanding this there were several men in Bulloch who resolved to remove and take their families to Thomas County. Among the number were the Groovers, Jones, and Denmarks, and some others. They settled and named the town of Grooversville in Thomas County.

Before their departure for these unknown wilds an old gentleman said, "If they escape the Indians I will never see them again when they go to that far away country." And really it was practically further away than New York is now. If someone had told the old gentleman that the time would come when it would be possible to eat breakfast in Statesboro and supper in this "far off country" he would probably have believed it no more than we believe in the reality of Baron Munchausen.

I cannot adequately describe the privations and difficulties with which these emigrants had to contend. Their only mode of conveyance was the one-horse cart to transport their families, furniture, plows, hoes, pots, ovens, etc. for the new country to which they were going could not furnish them any of these necessaries. Besides these articles every family must have a steel mill which was a hand mill on which corn could be ground into grits and coarse meal; the hopper would hold about a peck of grain. It was a saying among them that when one of their number was taken sick the remedy was "a heavy dose of beef and hominey and sweat it off at the steel mill." The mover usually employed several of his neighbors to go along with him and carry a load to prevent him from having to return for the rest of his "plunder," as all household furniture was then called. There were few roads that led southward to the Altamaha and almost none at all after crossing that stream. The emigrants had to skirt the stream down to old Port Barrington Ferry to cross. I believe that the A. & G. R.R. now crosses near the old ferry. After crossing the river they made their way the best they could, often cutting out their own roads and crossing streams on log rafts. I mention these circumstances to show what occurred so near your doors within the memory of persons still living.

Before the C.R.R. was built the merchants and planters in the up country had to send their cotton to market by wagon either to Augusta or Savannah and carry back their goods by the same method. I have seen a caravan of wagons nearly a half mile long and all loaded with cotton, some from as high up as Macon. Many of the wagoneers owned one or more of the wagons and teams and followed the road for a living. When the Central R.R. was built in 1836-37 it was a death blow to the cotton hauling by wagon.

This feeling was shared by a large majority of the citizens. The public stagecoach which plied between Macon and Savannah was also forced out of business when the railroad came. I cannot close this subject without trying to describe the indignation of the people when the corps of surveyors for the Central ran the line for the road through Bulloch County.

The people had never seen and many of them had never heard of and they really did not know what kind of an "animal" it was. The farmers inquired of some of the leading men of the county for information about railroads, and were told by one of the most prominent citizens of the county, one who was a member of the legislature: that the cars were propelled by boiling water in large boilers heated by immense fires and sparks from these fires would set fire to all dwellings, barns, fences and grass within reach. This was enough, and the citizens were determined that the road would not pass through the county.

I do not know how the managers of the road learned about the temper of the citizens of Bulloch County, but they learned enough to make a turn in the road, just before no. 2 station, and this is the way the road now runs Effingham and Screven counties. Time rolled onward and so did the car wheels, and when the citizens discovered their mistake it was too late to get the road. The people were so densely ignorant of the railroads that cars were looked upon with awe and were believed to be some part of an infernal machine. The farmers who carried their produce to market had a dread of the cars, fearing that they would run over them, whilst they were crossing the road. If there were several persons in company they would call a halt before reaching the road and send one of their number to reconnoiter and if no train was in sight the road was crossed in a hurry but if a train was coming, the horses were hastily unhitched from the carts and firmly held by the bridle until the train had passed. but the horses were rarely ever excited. When the market man returned home the first question put to him was, "Well, pap did you see the kears?" and the next was apt to be "Was the hoss afeared of em?"

I heard one young man tell his experience as follows, as nearly as I can recollect and which is a fair sample of many others told in those times. He said "I was jest drivin' along close to the railroad when I heerd a roaring in the tree tops and I said to mammy, who was in the cart, says I, 'Mammy put on your shawl, thar's a storm coming up, 'but I seen that the tree tops were still and no storm comin, and then mammy she said, '0, Jim, it's the cyars; take out old Poll quick,' which I did and I helt her by the bridle till the blamed things passed, but she did not keer a cent, but mammy she jest sot in the cart and trembled."

In this enlightened day it is hard to believe such stories as this but I vouch for the truth of this. It must be recollected that this happened about the year 1838, sixty five years ago.