By Dr. Charles Pendley
Contributing Writer

This year, 2021, is our county’s Bicentennial year, marking 200 years since our County’s founding by an act of the state legislature on May 15, 1821. It is altogether fitting to look back on the last two centuries, on the people and events that made Henry County what it is today and – hopefully – to draw some lessons from our county’s history.

The last article told how our County was carved out of former Creek Indian land and was opened to settlement by white families, which set the stage for the next chapter in our county’s history – the reign of “King Cotton,” the coming of railroads with their “Iron Horses,” the plantation system, slave labor and divisive national and state politics that led the county into the destruction and devastation of the Civil War.

By 1830, the population of Henry County had reached over 10,000 souls. Forests were being cleared and crops planted by the new settlers. The first homes were mostly crude log cabins with dirt or rough plank floors and basic wooden furniture. Among the first crops were tobacco and corn, but with the arrival of the cotton gin, coupled with the demand for cotton in the northern states and England, and the expansion of railroads that linked the farms with distant markets, cotton soon became the dominant crop.

However, cotton cultivation required labor to plant, weed, and pick – a lot of labor. Small farmers could get by with the labor of their own family, but larger farms required large amounts of cheap labor, for which the slave labor already being used in sugar plantations and coastal Georgia was well-suited.

The first railroad to reach Henry County was the Macon and Western Railroad, which ran through the small community of Bear Creek (now Hampton) in 1845. This created a boom for Bear Creek, so much so that it was reported that people in McDonough tore down their houses and moved them on wagons to Bear Creek (Hampton), which would soon could boast a cotton gin and more taverns than churches. The railroad made it possible to ship bales of cotton from Bear Creek to Macon, and from there, on to the port of Savannah.  For better or worse, cotton and the railroads connected Henry County to the outside world and made the plantation system, along with its demand for slave labor, take root and grow in Henry County.

One reason the railroad passed through Bear Creek and bypassed the county seat of McDonough, was that Bear Creek lies on the continental divide between the Flint and Ocmulgee rivers, which meant that few, if any, trestles over rivers and creeks had to be built. In the mid-1800s, trestles were made mostly of wood and were expensive and dangerous – as McDonough was to tragically experience some 50 years later.

It is reported that, in the beginning, many residents of McDonough were against a railroad coming through their town, because it was claimed that the noise would scare their horses and other animals. By 1850, the population of Henry County had reached over 15,000 people, of which almost 10,000 were white, 15 free colored, and almost 5,000 were indentured slave laborers and their families. The population of the town of McDonough had reached 500, and large plantations in Henry County were the exception, not the rule.

By 1850, a social order was taking shape that would persist until the Civil War. At the top were owners of large plantations, some of whom had amassed up to 500 acres of land or more through inheritance or purchase. As of 1859, there were 726 slaveholders, of which only 88 had ten slaves or more, with the largest number being around 60. Next in the social hierarchy were merchants, government officials, lawyers, judges, doctors, bankers, teachers, and preachers. They were followed by craftsmen such as carpenters, blacksmiths, cobblers, wagoners, and buggy-makers. At the bottom of the social order were the two largest groups: small family farmers, and slave laborers and their families.

Among the largest and most prosperous of the plantation owners in the 1850s was Philip Fitzgerald, who had 400 acres under cultivation. In one year, the Fitzgerald plantation produced 57 bushels of wheat, 1,250 bushels of “Indian corn,” 50 bushels of oats, 300 pounds of butter, 50 pounds of honey, and, last but not least, 70 bales of cotton.

Another of Henry County’s large plantation owners was Thomas Dixon Weems. While we don’t have records from before the Civil War, we can get a glimpse of what the Weems plantation possessed and produced from the claims that were made of the damage caused by General Sherman’s troops on their infamous March to the Sea in November of 1864.  It was claimed that the Yankees burned or destroyed one new and one old gin house, a two-story barn, three tenant houses, four wagons, one shop building with tools, 150 bales of lint (ginned) cotton, 50 bales of cotton with seed, 18,000 bushels of corn burned in the field or in cribs, 180,000 bundles of animal fodder burned in buildings and in stacks, and an enclosed silver mounted carriage (the SUV of the day).

It was also claimed that the ravenous Yankees took away no fewer than 1,500 bushels of shucked corn, 20,000 bundles of animal fodder, 30 barrels of flour, 8,000 pounds of cured meat (hams, bacon, sausage, etc.), 3,000 pounds of lard, 550 cows, 600 sheep, goats and hogs, 600 chickens, 100 turkeys, 125 geese, 12,000 bushels of sweet potatoes, 1,200 gallons of syrup, 25 work mules, 6 horses, and 400 gallons of peach and apple brandy.

Even though the above claims are probably exaggerated, it is beyond doubt that the Weems plantation was both large and prosperous, and that the use of slave labor was an important reason for its prosperity.