Because I was challenged!!!!

It is a beautiful Saturday morning here in South Georgia.  As I was having my morning coffee and checking out a few blogs that I follow, I was brought to full alert as my good buddy, The Downeast Duck Hunter, has issued a small challenge to his fellow bloggers and followers.  He posted an old photo of two guys in a boat doing some waterfowl hunting.  Now you may be asking yourself what is so special about that.  Well, it seems that our friend from Downeast is quite the history buff.  He is calling for fellow bloggers to post their own historical photo in the effort to remind all of us of our great historical past.  I'm just the type of man to meet that challenge and I happen to reside in the perfect place for all you history buffs.  Fitzgerald, Georgia has quite a history and is the place where the North (Yankees) and the South (Rebels) decided to live together as one in the good old South in 1895.

I am not going to go into the complete history of Fitzgerald because that was not my challenge.  I will just tell you that Fitzgerald, GA was founded by PH Fitzgerald, a newspaper man, as a place for Union Soldiers to come and retire and start a living after the Civil war.  Mr. Fitzgerald purchased a tract of land with tall pines in southern Georgia and then advertised in his newspaper across the nation inviting Union Soldiers to come south and enjoy the fine weather. The Rebels from this area welcomed the Union soldiers, named streets after both Union and Confederate Generals, built great building such as the Lee Grant motel and the Corn and Cotton Palace, lived in harmony, and the rest is what we call history.  You can read a little more about it here.

My challenge was to post some historical pictures with captions, so here we go.  These pictures were taken from the book "Images of America, Fitzgerald", authored by my good friend Cam Jordan and local newspaper writer Sherri Butler.



Fitzgerald became an important cotton market early on.  At harvest, cotton chocked Central Avenue.  The original caption touts, "600 bales $35,000.  City Hall is immediately behind Planters Warehouse.

This picture is special to me because the building that you see in the picture is actually where I work today.  My bank bought this site several years ago and we rebuilt a building to match the old look of The Planters Warehouse.  You can see the new building in the picture below.  My wife works in the City Hall building, which was refurbished 3 years ago and is still used as City Hall today!


Modern day

Some of you may remember me writing a little post about my all time favorite job.  That job was with Fitzgerald Ice Company.  The following photo was taken around 1912 and shows the horse and buggy that was used to deliver ice.  Today Fitzgerald Ice Company delivers beer!  More money in Budweiser than ice!

And lastly, since this is an outdoor blog I will offer up this jewel of what is thought to be a photo of Fitzgerald's first hunting club.



The Empire Hunting Club of 1913 was likely composed of many sons of settlers.  The abundance of game in the area was another selling point for the colony company.

 

So there you have it Duck Man!  I met your challenge!  If you want to know more about my great little town, come and see me and I will take you to the Blue/Gray museum.  After that, I'll show you a good ole time just like us Southern boys did for those Yankees back in 1895!