The Savannah morning news., 1902-02-18
PULASKI AND THE CAPITAL.
HAwKINSvMLE THE BUSY CITY ON
THE OCMULGEE.

ter-kts Institutions SOud ana
Backed by Men of Wealth ana En-
ergy-History of Pulaski County,
Named I'm Honor of the Noble Pol
ish General, Who Fell in the De-
Tense of Savannah.
Pulaski county and its capital the
old city of Hawkinsville, are subjects
which to do justice to would require
a more extended article than the aver
age reader cares tol see in a newspa-
per.
There is but one Pulaski in history,
and the county was named in memory
of him. Every school boy knows the
story of the gallant and noble Polish
soldier, who, after serving under
Washington, fell on that fateful 9th
of October, 1779,, in charging the Brit
ish works at Savannah. The spot where
he received the fatal shot was not a
stones throw from the corner of Lib
erty and West Broad streets, near the
Central Railroad depot
A month before Count Pulaski had
ridden at the head of his Legion along
the highway leading to Beaulieu, to no
tify Count DEstaing. whose army was
aboard the French fleet lying at an
chor in Ossabaw Sound, that Gen.
Lincoln and the American army We're
near at hand to join him in the at
tack on the British entrenched at Sa
vannah. The story of the siege and
the assault that caused the death of
hundreds of Frenchmen and Ameri-
cans, among them Pulaski, Jasper and
Jones, is an loft told tale" and need
not be repeated here.
erected a monument to Pulaski,
and it stands to-day without
rival for beauty of design and exc
cution. The funds to pay for the mon
ument were raised by lottery The late
Maj. ". P. Bowen was the head of the
monument concessions. 1t is said that
bones, which Maj. Bowen insisted were
those of the dead hero, were deposited
beneath the marble shaft, he having
demonstrated to his own satisfaction,
but TO no others, that Pulaski died and
was buried at Greenwich, and not at
sea, as all well authenticated accounts
proved beyond a doubt.
Doubtless an officer who died of
wounds received during the siege was
buried at Greenwich plantation. now
owned by Mr.. S. P. Shotter but he was
not Pulaski. 1t has always been my
opinion that it was Maj. Peter Joseph
Franch Vernier, of Pulaski Legion of
Cavalry and Infantry, who was killed
on the same day that Pulaski fell, who
was buried at Greenwich. There is a
weird story of that lonely grave it is
an old plantation tradition. The tradi-
tion among the negroes was that every
year on a certain night in October, the
anniversary of the death of the occu-
pant of that earthly tenement, a troop
of spectre horSemen, with spurs jing-
ling and sabres clanking, appeared at
midnight and rode slowly around and
around the grave until the cocks
crowed in the morning, and then the
ghostly riders would dissolve in the
air, not to resume their spirit forms for
another twelve months. Tradition says
that when the officers bones were re-
covered by Maj. Bowen, the visits of his
revolutionary comrades, who had
passed to the great beyond, ceased.
Pulaski county was laid out from
Laurens in 1903. Since then, during the
reconstruction period, a part of it was
taken to make the county of Dodge.
The Ocmulgee river flows through the
county. and has been and still is a very
valuable adjunct to the prosperity of
its people. Owing to this river Pulaski
county, early in its settlement, became
we'll known, by reason of it's commerce
by boat with Savannah and Darien,
md was one of the sources of suppl
for It.r,, ,I,.,~
those cities.
The upper part of the county is hilly.
and the lower part level. The soil is
fertile, and like other counties of the
wiregrass, is capable of producing any
thing that can be grown in a sub tropi-
cal climate. Its principal product, how
ever, is cotton.
The report of the superintendent of
public education for 1901 shows that
there were 1,755 white and 1882 colored
school children enrolled in Pulaski
county, and the average attendance
was, white, 1,071; colored, 749. The av-
erage monthly cost per. pupil was $1.5O.
of which the state paid $1.93 1-3
The population Of the county, accord
ing to the United States census for
1900, was 1S,4S9, an increase of very
nearly II per cent. in ten years.
Hawkinsville was incorporated in
1880. 1t is on the Indian side of the
Ocmulgee river and opposite the old
town of Hartford, which was in its
day a place of note, where the Creeks
came to trade their peltries for fire
water and gunpowder-the first was bad
for the Indians and the last very dam
gerous to the white man. Hartford
was the county site until 1897. when
that honor was transferred to Haw-
kinsville
Col. Benjamin Hawkins of North
Carolina, famous as an Indian agent in
Georgia, after whom Fort Hawkins
was named, gives Hawkinsville it's
name. If history tells the truth, to Col.
Hawkins rs due much of the credit of
keeping the redskins in a reasonably
peaceful state of mind and body dur
ing the early days of the nineteenth
century.
Hawkinsville, it will be seen, is an
old city 1t has it's old families and
traditions, but it is like Savannah-its
age is no sign of decay. The people
are not only enterprising, but aggres-
sve, as was demonstrated when they
met railroad determinations by sub
scribing $4,000 and building a steam
boat to connect their city with the
steamship lines at the ports. 1t also
has lines Of steamboats, on the Ocmul-
gee river, as we'll as three railroads.
connecting the city with the adjoining
country and the rest of the world The
Wrightsville and Tennille Railroad has
its southern terminus at Hawkinsville.
and there are rumors of that railroad
being extended further South, thus. Civ
ing the city additional trading terri