Irwinville, Georgia

• 1. Introduction

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  Irwinville, Georgia sits in Irwin County as an unincorporated community today, but for decades it was the beating heart of the county. In the early hours of the 10th of May 1865, a detachment of Union cavalry rode into a camp beside a creek bed a couple of miles outside of town. What they found there would make Irwinville one of the most discussed small communities in the history of the American South. Who was sheltering in that camp? How did a place this small come to hold so much history? And what happened to Irwinville after the nation moved on?

• 2. A County Born in the Pines

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  Irwinville was founded in 1831, the same year Irwin County itself was formed, and from the start it served as the county seat. The community took its name from Jared Irwin, a governor of Georgia. At founding it was spelled "Irwinsville," and it kept that spelling until 1857, when incorporation as a town brought a small but deliberate change: the S was dropped, and Irwinville became the official name.

  For 76 years the town held the seat of county government. Over that span it built three courthouses. The first was constructed by Benjamin Baker at a cost of about $1,500. It stood a story and a half tall, with a shingle roof that was typical of rural Georgia at the time. A second courthouse followed in 1854, built by Loam Brown at a cost of $1,323 to replace Baker's building.

  In August 1883, a notice posted on the courthouse door announced that the building and the public square around it would be auctioned within ten days. John Clements won the bid at $40.50, a sum so low it drew significant public outcry from residents who did not want to see the landmark go. That same summer, the county commissioned a third courthouse at a cost of $4,080, a plain white-sided structure with a tin roof, built on roughly the same ground where Moorehead's County Store stands today.

  A petition to relocate the county seat to Fitzgerald arrived in 1897 but was rejected. The county itself was then subdivided in 1905 into Irwin, Ben Hill, Turner, and Tift counties. In the spring of 1907, the seat moved to Ocilla, and Irwinville's 76-year role as the county's civic center came to an end. The old courthouse in Irwinville remained in use for its original purpose until the new courthouse in Ocilla was completed in 1910.

• 3. The Unionists of Bone Pond

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  In mid-February 1865, a remarkable act of defiance took shape in Irwinville. Willis Jackson Bone, a local miller who operated his mill on Bone Pond near the Alapaha River, led a group that included Southern Unionists, a large number of residents, and deserters from Confederate service. The assembly passed a resolution declaring that the county was returning to the Union.

  When a lieutenant of the local militia objected, Bone knocked him down with a musket. Three cheers for Abraham Lincoln followed. The group then drove the lieutenant and an enrolling officer named Gideon Brown out of town, along with other Confederate sympathizers, and threatened them with death if they returned.

  Bone's story ended badly. In late April 1865, just weeks after that assembly, he was hanged near his own pond. He had killed a local justice of the peace named Jack Walker while bringing food to an escaped slave named Toney. Walker had attempted to take Toney into custody, and Bone killed him. The pond where Bone worked his mill would eventually be renamed Crystal Lake.

• 4. The Night Jefferson Davis Stopped

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  Confederate President Jefferson Davis arrived in Irwinville on the evening of the 9th of May 1865. He was traveling from Richmond, Virginia, the Confederate capital, with the intention of boarding a ship and fleeing to safety in Cuba with his family. Davis stopped at the hotel owned by Doctor G.E. White, where he conversed and socialized with the locals. No one in the room appears to have recognized the significance of their guest.

  Davis and his family moved that night to an encampment beside a nearby creek bed, only a couple of miles from the hotel. In the early morning of the 10th of May, gunfire alarmed the camp. Davis attempted to escape toward the creek. He wore an overcoat, and his wife had tied her scarf around his shoulders because of a heavy rainstorm that was falling. Members of the First Wisconsin and Fourth Michigan Cavalry Regiments captured him there.

  Davis was taken to Fortress Monroe, Virginia, where he was held for two years. J.B. Clements later argued in his book, The History of Irwinville, that had Davis identified himself to the residents of Irwinville, they would have willingly hidden him from the pursuing Union troops. The hotel built by Doctor G.E. White is the only surviving hotel building in Irwinville, still standing today.

  The site of the capture is now the Jefferson Davis Memorial Historic Site, marked by a monument, a museum, picnic facilities, and hiking trails, where Civil War reenactments are held regularly.

• 5. Jails, Courts, and Oak Trees

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  Irwinville's three jails carry stories that are harder to find in the history books than the capture of a Confederate president. The first was built between 1849 and 1850 at a cost of $800, using log construction. In 1856, an African-American prisoner named Josh Williams was jailed for the murder of two men, Daniel and Bill Luke. On the night of his arrest, someone set fire to the building. The jailer lived only a mile away, but neither the jail nor Williams could be saved. Josh Williams' remains are buried in a field cemetery behind the Masonic Lodge.

  A rebuilt jail followed, reportedly poorly sealed. In 1880, R.W. Clements jailed another man on a misdemeanor charge. Witnesses described the prisoner "screaming and hollering as if all kinds of demons were after him." Clements arrived to find that a rattlesnake had entered the prisoner's cell. The prisoner was removed, and the jail was sealed more carefully after that.

  The county built a third jail in 1890, this time of brick construction, with eight steel cells, at a cost of $3,395. All three jails were built near the same area as the courthouses, close to where Moorehead's Country Store now stands. Historical records note that the oak trees still standing around Moorehead's were once used for the hangings of criminals convicted at those courthouses.

• 6. The Railroad and the WPA

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  The Ocilla and Irwinville Railroad was incorporated by the 4th of October 1900, and ran 11 miles of track between Ocilla and Irwinville. Its inventory was small: one locomotive, one passenger carriage, and 46 freight carriages. The Brunswick and Birmingham Railroad purchased it in February or March 1903, and in 1911 the line was leased to the Fitzgerald, Ocilla, and Broxton Railroad. The original 11 miles of track were abandoned in 1916 and later removed.

  Decades later, the Works Progress Administration brought a different kind of investment between 1935 and 1939. The resulting Irwinville Farms Project aimed to revive a community that had suffered through the Great Depression. The project built a cooperative cotton gin across from Quick Change number 50 store at the stoplight in Irwinville. It also funded the monument at the Jefferson Davis Memorial Historic Site, a school playground, and a health clinic. The old courthouse was converted into apartments for farm families.

  The project also gave rise to the Irwinville Farmers basketball team, organized a May Day health festival, and brought sports to the community. The health clinic that the project constructed was considered very useful by the residents who visited it. That building, originally a bank, still stands and is used today as a shop. A small water park called Crystal Lake, later renamed Crystal Beach, operated just outside Irwinville from the middle of the twentieth century until 1998, the name echoing back to Willis Jackson Bone's mill pond.