Lockerly Hall

Even though we finally got a few days of sun here in the Atlanta area, it’s cold.

It’s freezing cold.

It…is…brutal....damn…cold.

I could blame my age for my aches and pains that seem to like to scream in the worst possible ways during bitter cold weather, but in the end I think it’s just my desire for warmer climates.

I just seem to be in a better mood at seventy degrees or higher.

So, I’m looking forward to April and May…..

I’m so anxious for it I’m already planning a few places I want to go and explore.

Places like Lockerby Hall in the Milledgeville area.

Lockerby Hall serves middle Georgia as a public garden and educational resource with a pond and nature trails.

The site of the home was first used by Richard J. Nichols as his home site in 1839. The home was the centerpiece of Nichol’s plantation, Midway.

The home was known as Rose Hill then due to the roses that covered the banks around the house. When Nichols died in 1849, Daniel R. Tucker, pictured below, served as one of the appraisers for the estate.

Tucker purchased Rose Hill in 1851, but a year later the home was tragically consumed by fire. Tucker built a new home on the same site using the Rose Hill name.

Rose Hill changed hands several times after Tucker died in 1879.

Reginald R. Hatcher bought the property in 1928 and renamed the home Lockerly Hall after an estate in Hampshire, England.

The next owner, Edward J. Grassman established the Arboretum Foundation in 1965.

Today, hundreds of visitors including high school biology students from Baldwin, Putnam and Hancock Counties visit the Arboretum to enjoy the grounds, and later they get to tour a “haunted” house.

There are tales of the heavy wooden pocket doors slamming shut by themselves, ashtrays hurling themselves across rooms and ghostly figures of a man and a young girl have been seen…….mainly during periods of disruption such as renovations.

Some think the apparitions are those of Daniel J. Tucker and one of his daughters….

Yes, this is one destination that is going on my list!

A Monumental Find....

As you might already be aware historical research interests me.  

No surprise there, right?

I realize it might not be your thing…but it’s mine.  I conduct the research in order to find the quirky things that draw people in…..the hidden information that never makes it to the textbook or your eleventh grade history teacher’s lesson plan.   

I use it to remind folks about things they know, but have filed them away somewhere in the dark recesses of their minds. 

I use the research to write curriculum so other educators can share it with their students.
 

I use the research to feed my need to write…..and learn.

I do the research to find little pieces of larger history puzzles I’m trying to put together, and that’s where the irony comes in.   Most of the time I find little puzzle pieces here and there when I least expect them…..most certainly when I’m NOT looking for them.  

Sometimes those little puzzle pieces are monumental because they hold the key to solving a historical mystery.     

I’ve never been that fortunate locate something like that, but Hugh Harrington has experienced  the joy of a monumental find while looking for something else.   

Hugh was on the hunt for information regarding a mass escape from a woman’s prison, so he was pouring over microfilmed issues of the Southern Recorder, a Milledgeville paper that was published during the Civil War.    He happened upon a list of soldiers who had died at Brown Hospital during the last months of the Civil War.

The hospital, named for Governor Joseph Brown had been in Atlanta, but then moved under the direction of Dr. R.J. Massey to Milledgeville when General Sherman began marching south.

The list of soldiers had nothing to do with what Herrington was searching for, but he had hunch that the list might be important.

He knew there was a Confederate Memorial at Memory Hill Cemetery in Milledgeville  to unknown dead.   He knew this because he had been involved in indexing the many of the graves at the cemetery.   He knew at least two of the soldiers were named in the Confederate section and…….their names were on the same list he had just found in the newspaper archives.  

It was more than a hunch…..He had stumbled upon the identities of the unknown soldiers….all of them.

He did just what I would have done.    He went to the cemetery….walked to the memorial and announced to the men at rest there……”I know who you are…..”

What a personal moment of joy for Mr. Herrington…..

Then he met with members of the United Daughters of the Confederacy and shared his discovery.   They immediately agreed with him that he had found a resource to identify the graves.

He went through the list to determine which men were shipped home….and narrowed the list to 24 names.   He determined they all died in 1864.   The men had died in August or September, 1864 while patients of the hospital.   They all died of disease of one sort or another.   They were all citizens of Georgia and part of the militia.

However, between September 6, 1864 when the newspaper article provided the names of the men who died and 1868 when the monument was erected folks didn’t remember a list existed, and the names had been lost all that time until Hugh Herrington happened to be looking for……..

…..something else.

Astounding!

I have to wonder thought if Mr. Herrington ever found anything on those wild women who broke out of prison.

You can find out more about Herrington’s discovery and the graves here,  here and here.

I’ve written about Dr. R.J. Massey….the head surgeon at Brown Hospital.   He was instrumental in saving the State House in Millledgeville from Sherman’s torch and happened to live in my little town for a bit.   You can read my article here.

Old Capital Museum

The place where Georgia legislators voted to secede from the Union…..and it was the first public building designed in the Gothic Revival style in America.

Visit the Old Capitol Museum website here.

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