The Montgomery advertiser., 1905-02-07
HARTFORD RESULT OF
 POLITICAL ANIMOSITIES
Something Regarding the Early History of the Town Which Grew Up Almost Ina
 Night.
BY WILL n, sHEEHAN,

Hartford, Feb. 4e.--(special Corre- ence.)-Hartford,. the thriving and vigorous town that grew up almost in a night Is a result of the fierce po- litical animosities which followed the Alliance movement of fifteen years ago. Hartford. 1t may be said, was matched by the heat of those animosities.
 Of a right, a cluster of houses a mile and half away, which Is put down on the map as Dundee, should have been. the depot on the Central of Georgia Railroad. the telegraph office. the aggregation of brick stores. the hive of industry, the embryo city which Hartford now is. But the men of Dundee. no doubt like the canny citizens of the Scotch place for which the place was named, were obstinate and self opinionated.
 They were Populists, these men of Dundee, and they had no use for Dem ocrats. The men who founded and es- tablished Hartford were Democrats. They were not possessed by political prejudice. however, and they were quite willing to dwell in peace and harmony side by side with Populists. They came to the Dundee people and proposed to buy land to put up steam mill, a saw mill, store and to build their homes there.
 But the men of Dundee said to them. we've got all the Democrats we want in this beat. We don't propose to in- crease the Democratic population if we can help 1t. We don't want to sell you any land and if you insist on buy ing 1t we will charge you three or four times its value"
 Dundee's Mistake.
 It was a sorry day for Dundee when this was said. The little country vil- lage with the pleasant suggestion of Scotch poetry and music was one of the older postoffices of Geneva County. Some of the original settlers of Geneva County had come in there when the county was rather slightingly known as a part of the COW country. Graz ing and cattle raising had been the principal industry of that section with hunting and fishing as important ad- juncts. Farming had, however, grad ually and slowly through the years come into its own.
 But the agricultural hegira to the Wiregrass had not set in. There had been no rush of farmers from the up- per counties in Alabama and Georgia to the pine woods. The country was rather thinly settled and Dundee was the postoffice and trading center to large area of Geneva County. The modest wants of the early Geneva farmers were supplied by three or four stores about the postofice at Dunudea.
 The promoting Democrats came along in 1896. The intensity of the political feeling was never fully ap- preciated or understood by people live ing further up in Alabama. The Farmers Alliance had died a hard death. And from It's ashes. like the Phoenix. rose an ill-omened bird of hatred. The Kolb-Jones and the Kolb- Oates campaigns had been fought, but the ending of the hostilities rather &C., centuated than lowered the bitter feel- ing between the two factions.
 And the Populists as Is ever the case with the defeated, went theft way bearing the greater burden of the ha- tired and hostility. So strong were the Populists entrenched in this section that it was only last year when Geneva County was completely redeemed from Populism.
 Hostile Political Feeling.
 The virulence of this political ani- mostly in sections of Alabama where the two factions were evenly divided will be remembered and recounted for many years. It is a matter of court record that in one county a white man was lynched for no other reason than he was a Democrat. The Populists of that community, like those of Dun dee, were earnest advocates of the policy of reducing and restricting the Democratic population. In Dothan du- ring the Alliance days while Marshal Tobe Domingus and his assistant, Parker Powell, were endeavoring to collect the city license on a ware house they figured as the storm center of one of the bloodiest riots that ever darkened the record of Sutheast Ala bama, a riot in which two men were killed outright and in which a dozen more were wounded.
 All of which throws light upon the feelings of the men of Dundee when in their Populism they suspiciously re- fused to let the Democrats in and de- clined to break bread or sup with them. That was nine years ago. To- day about the only thing that Dundee has Is a place on the map. the sole relic of It's past existence, a fact that exists not because of what Dundee is now, but because of what 1t has been.
 Took POstOmee Away.
 But the insult of insults. the hu- initiation of humiliation, was admin istered to Dundee when Hartford took