Outdoors in Georgia [Aug. 1976]

Outdoors
August 1976 50c

OutdOOrS \t) Georgia

George Busbee
Governor
Joe D. Tanner
Commissioner
BOARD OF NATURAL RESOURCES
Wade H. Coleman
Chairman Valdosta-- State-at-Large
Donald J. Carter Vice Chairman
-- Gainesville 9th District
Leo T. Barber, Jr. Secretary
Moultrie-- 2nd District James F. Darby
Vidalia-- 1st District
Dr. Robert A. Collins, Jr. Americus-- 3rd District George P. Dillard Decatur--4th District
Mary Bailey Izard Atlanta-- 5th District
James A. Mankin Griffin-- 6th District Lloyd L. Summer, Jr.
Rome-- 7th District
J. Wimbric Walker
McRae-- 8th District Walter W. Eaves
Elberton-- 10th District
Sam Cofer
St. Simons Island Coastal District Leonard E. Foote Waleska-- State-at-Large James D. Cone Decatur-- State-at-Large A. Leo Lanman, Jr. Ros well-- State-at-Large
DIVISION DIRECTORS
Parks and Historic Sites Division Henry D. Struble, Director
Game and Fish Division
Jack Crockford, Director
Environmental Protection Division J. Leonard Ledbetter, Director
Geologic and Water Resources Division Sam M. Pickering, Jr., Director
Office of Information and Education David Cranshaw, Director
Office of Planning and Research J. Clayton Fisher, Jr.
Office of Administrative Services James H. Pittman, Director

Volume 5

August 1976

Number 8

FEATURES

Ed Dodd
A Sea Going Safari

Bill Hammock 3
Bill Morehead 8

Brown Thrasher

Leonard E. Foote 13

The Real Sea Serpents

Jingle Davis 16

The House of Vann

Susan Wood 21

Andersonville, an Execution . . Howard Bushnell 25

DEPARTMENTS

.... Outdoors in Touch

edited by Bill Hammack 30

Coming Next Month

32

FRONT COVER: The characters and staff of the Mark Trail comic strip, by Tom Hill.
BACK COVER: Blue wafer is one of the many appeals of big game fishing. Photo by
Jim Couch.

Aaron Pass Rebecca N. Marshall Dick Davis Bill Hammack Jingle Davis
Susan Wood

MAGAZINE STAFF
Phone-656-5660

David Cranshaw Editor-in-Chief

Bill Morehead

Editor

Managing Editor
Writer Writer Writer Writer Writer Priscilla C. Powell

Liz Carmichael Jones . . Mike Nunn Bob Busby Edward Brock
.... Cathy Cardarelli
Jim Couch Circulation Manager

. Art Director Illustrator
Photo Editor Photographer Photographer Photographer

Outdoors in Georgia is the official monthly magazine of the Georgia Department of Natural Resources, published at the Department's offices, Room 713, 270 Washington Street, Atlanta, Georgia 30334. No advertising accepted. Subscriptions are $3 for one year or $6 for three years. Printed by Williams Printing Company, Atlanta, Georgia. Articles and photographs may be reprinted when proper credit given. Contributions are welcome, but the editors assume no responsibility or liability for loss or damage of -articles, photographs, or illustra-
tions. Second-class postage paid at Atlanta, Georgia. 31,000 copies printed at an approximate cost of $16,500. The Department of Natural Resources is an Equal Opportunity employer, and employs without regard to race, color, sex, religion, or national origin.

Holiday Agony

In our Outdoors in Touch section this month, there is

a grim item about deaths and accidents on this past

Bicentennial Fourth of July long weekend.

We'd like to call your attention to the listing of deaths

and injuries and accidents on the road during the Fourth weekend. Perhaps a case could be made that highway

accidents should not be reported in a magazine devoted

to the outdoors and outdoor recreation. But we disagree. To enjoy activity in the outdoors, usually you have to
drive somewhere. We feel that an accident occurring on

an outdoors trip belongs in the outdoors activity category.

Note where the highway accidents happened this past

Fourth. Not a one took place on the interstates. They

all hit on two-lane state and secondary roads, save two

on city streets. While sportsmen and sportswomen travel

the interstates of course, they usually have to traverse

state and secondary roads to reach their favorite spots

We for outdoors recreation.

are sure the deduction is

valid that some of the statistics recorded for the past

Fourth included persons headed to or from outdoors

enjoyment.

-- Another long weekend is coming up Labor Day.

Traditionally that's the time for one last big summertime

fun fling. We'd like to ask a favor of you. Bring yourself

and yours back alive and uninjured from wherever you

go for Labor Day recreation.

Make sure you're familiar with all the guidelines for

safety whether you're headed for the water or the field.

Drive defensively as you travel to and from your recrea-

We tion destination.

ask your help in holding down the

tragic totals of drownings, boating and other accidents in
this Bicentennial year; maybe we can make a beginning

in the last half of 1 976 in establishing a pattern of safety

in the outdoors.

August 1976

Outdoors it? Georgia

Walker County's

Ed Dodd

and the World s Mark Trail
By Bill Hammock
Photography by Bob Busby

Ed Dodd, creator of the internationally-enjoyed

comic strip, "Mark Trail," leads two lives.
-- First he is Ed Dodd a down-to-earth, outgoing,

thoroughly likable man, an outdoorsman, a conserva-

tionist, world-traveler, artist/writer, hunter, fisherman,

pipe-smoker, who lives in a place called "Lost Forest,"

whose walking companion these days is a 16-year-old Scottish border collie/ cocker spaniel named "Mose," a
dog who succeeded a 200-pound St. Bernard named

"Andy."
He is also Mark Trail, the comic strip friend of mil-

lions of readers around the globe, an outdoorsman,

conservationist, traveler, photographer/writer, hunter,
fisherman, pipe-smoker, who lives in a place called

"Lost Forest" and whose huge St. Bernard is named

"Andy."

Ed Dodd says "Mark is my alter ego. But he can do

things 1 can't do. He does things I'd like to do. And he's

a lot younger. Mark was 30 years old this past April

5."
1

Most people are surprised when they learn Ed Dodd

is 74, born in 1902 in LaFayette in Walker County,

Georgia. Most folks peg him maybe in his early 60s.

His close-cut hair is steel gray and his face is leathery
-- from all sorts of weather the snows of Canada and

the broiling sun of Africa and nearly everywhere in

between. Erect and flat-bellied, he walks at a fast clip.
His eyes reflect the calm strength of a man who knows who he is and where he is and what he's doing, the eyes of a man you'd like to have side with you but whom

you'd hate to cross.

Mark first appeared 30 years ago, seeming the same age as he is now. Ed Dodd then was 44 years old. He considered himself a middle-aged failure. He had been

working hard all his life, scratching and scrabbling, but

August 1976

he had never made what he calls "the big time." He
says "I had been hacking along with a cartoon feature
called 'Back Home Again.' I'd sold it in 1930 and I
-- kept hacking away at it a long time 14 years. It ap-
peared in about 75 or 100 newspapers. I kept it sold
and it brought me some bread and a little meat, but I wasn't making any money. I don't think I ever made
more than $60 a week. I realized I wasn't getting any-
where. I beat my brain for ideas. I'd been an outdoorsman all my life, but I reckon the outdoors was so close to me I just couldn't see it as a subject for a comic strip. The realization dawned on me that I ought to draw and write what I know best. So I started working
on an outdoors strip. I worked hard on it. I worked
hard trying to sell it. After two years of writing and rewriting, drawing and redrawing, pounding the pavement trying to sell the strip, I was beginning to get
discouraged. Then the New York syndicate bought it.
The day it came out in the paper, I happened to be
standing on a corner when a New York Post delivery
truck came up 7th Avenue. It was a cold, misty, rainy
A -- day. poster on the side of the truck the whole side -- of the truck was a great big blow up of Mark's head,
and God Almighty, that was the biggest thrill I ever had in my life. I knew then, / knew, I was finally on the way. Tears just busted out and started streaming down my cheeks."
Lady Luck, who had been slamming Ed Dodd with
brass knucks, slipped on her silken glove and began
caressing him and his brain child Mark Trail. Mark
-- Trail was an instant success instant if you don't count
the years of long days and longer nights that Ed Dodd
sweated and stretched himself through as he doggedly
pursued his dream. Some people who may have gained

Tom Hill works on the Sunday cartoon panel for
Mark Trail.

a little wisdom as they trudge along down here say that

to get on the good side of Lady Luck a person has to

show her plenty of perseverance and a lot of hard work.

"When Mark came out, men were returning from the

war," Ed Dodd says, "and they were thinking about

heme and hunting and fishing and the outdoors. And the

strip caught on.'"

Mark Trail, an outdoor life adventure strip with a

lively story line and top-notch drawing, also speaks up

for conservation, and later when wide public interest

in conservation was aroused, it boosted the strip's al-

ready impressive popularity. Today it appears in 400

newspapers worldwide, the 30 overseas in five lan-

guages. Combined daily circulation of these papers is

20 million, and using the generally accepted yardstick

of between two and three readers per copy, that makes

around 50 million persons who can follow the adven-

tures of Mark.

The adventures are produced by an all-Georgia team.
Mark's daddy, Ed Dodd, writes the story. Tom Hill of

Atlanta, who joined Dodd in 1946, and Jack Elrod

from Gainesville, who came aboard two years later,

handle the drawing, and Barbara Chen from Savannah

Tom does the lettering.

Hill also is editor and artist of

the Sunday strip, which highlights interesting facts

about wild creatures and the outdoors pictured in Hill's

meticulous drawings. Ed Dodd says Hill is the best

wildlife illustrator he has ever seen. The team stays

seven weeks ahead on the strips, Dodd maintains a three-month lead with the story. They accomplish their
-- work in a place that pleasures the spirit and charms
the eye a studio that looks out over a dancing creek
and a singing waterfall, a big room full of light in a
stone and unpainted cypress house that rambles around
a forested hillside. The house, Ed Dodd's home, was
designed by the late Atlanta architect Herbert Millkey, a disciple of Frank Lloyd Wright. Millkey spent a lot of time with Dodd, studying him, his personality, his life style, and created a hollow sculpture of cypress and stone, a friendly-looking, comfortable-looking house,
that expresses Ed Dodd the way a bust of him by
renowned Georgia sculptor Julian Harris depicts him. The house was four years in the future when Mark
was born, but within a few months of the comic strip's
appearance, Dodd left New York to come back home to Georgia. He started looking for somewhere to sink roots. He knew what he wanted. He had inspected more
than a score of sites when one day a real estate agent took him out to some pretty wild woods on the west side of Sandy Springs. "As soon as I saw the waterfall
and the creek," says Ed Dodd, "I knew I had found my home. When Herb Millkey completed plans for the house, not a bank in Atlanta would lend me a dime to
-- -- build it. In 1950 that's when work started on it the
house was considered too advanced, too far out."
But Dodd was able to swing the construction, for money from Mark Trail was coming in; the feature
syndicate sold the comic strip to 46 papers the first week it hit the market and the number kept growing. First newspaper to buy was The Atlanta Journal.
Mark Trail ranges far and wide in his comic strip adventures, but sometimes Dodd brings hometown friends into the strip. One of them is Jack Crockford, Director of the Game and Fish Division of Georgia's
Department of Natural Resources. Years earlier, Crock-
ford had told Dodd a sad little story about a youngster who had tried to make a household pet of a wild crea-
-- -- ture a fawn with the usual unhappy results. Dodd
soaks up stories like this all over the world for possible future use and when one of them fits into his longrunning narrative, perhaps to stress the importance of conservation or to illustrate humane treatment of creatures of the wild, he smoothly makes it a part of the
comic strip. When he used the story of the fawn, he felt it natural to introduce his friend who had told it
to him; so in that episode, Jack Crockford made his
appearance. Tom Hill, who drew Crockford in the
-- strip, has brought other friends into it Jack Elrod,
whose drawing table is just behind Hill's, Barbara Chen. "Drew myself in once," Hill says. "Drew myself in as a trumpet player. Don't know whv. I can't play the
trumpet." Has he ever drawn Ed Dodd into the strip? Hill grins. "Many times."
When a character who may wear Dodd's seamed,
leathery face appears, he has been created along with
all the other people of the strip by Ed Dodd, and the
words in the balloon above the character's head, like
Outdoors ir> Georgia

all the other balloons, are words that Dodd has written. "I write the sequence in considerable detail," Dodd
says. "I describe the scenes, the costumes, flora and
fauna, all the details. And I write the dialogue, trying
to keep it cut to the bone and still say what I want to say. Editing copy in a comic strip is just ferocious these days because they're reducing the size of the strips in printing them. So you have to make one word do the work of three, since you have to increase the size of the lettering if you want it reproduced big enough to be readable. That means we have to decrease the size of the drawings."
The drawings in Mark Trail are authentic down to the fine details because of Ed Dodd's singular memory
and his library, in that order of importance. "I have a hell of a time remembering names, but I can remember
how a north woods lumberjack is dressed right down
to his shoestrings," he says. "I've been lucky enough to ramble around all over the United States and Canada and other parts of the world, and somehow I can retain
the memory of how all these places look. And then I
take a lot of photographs in case I ever need them to
polish an old memory that may be growing dim." Besides his picture files, Dodd has built a library of
about 5,000 volumes, along with copies of the National
Geographic from 1910 to the present. He files outdoors
-- magazines from everywhere for example, there's a
stack of copies of Outdoors in Georgia. "I do some re-
search to double-check," he says. "I try to write stories
with scenes in places I have some familiarity with. No
matter what sort of drawing appears, no matter what part of the country the scene is set in, no matter whether
the subject is a canoe or a snowshoe, or a bow and arrow or a particular gun, there's somebody somewhere who knows exactly what it looks like, and if the draw-
ing is wrong, he says, 'This guy's a faker'."
Ed Dodd couldn't know how to be a faker even if
he had a list of instructions. He's a straightforward
man who's knowledgeable in an astounding sweep of

August 1976

A hove: Ed Dodd's waterjail sings to the house in
Lost Forest, nearly hidden by the trees. Left: The living room.
subjects, and his convictions run deep and he expresses them clearly. Born and raised in a rural environment, his natural tendency toward conservation was reinforced
by one of the greatest American conservationists, Dan Beard. "He wrote a lot of books for boys, and I ate them up," Dodd remembers. "My father used to subscribe to Boys' Life and American Boy for me, and Mr. Beard had an article in each one every month. He described this boys' woodcraft camp he had on Big Tink Pond in the Pocono Mountains in Pennsylvania, 117
miles west of New York City. When I was 15, I wrote
him that I wanted to come up there but I didn't have any money, and would he give me any sort of a job to

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Here's a strip from a Mark Trail episode that pictures
Jack Crockjord. In the drawing, he is "Joe," the
official who tells "Ray" to get the deer.
pay my way. Took me two years to sell him on the idea. He finally let me come up. Said I could blow the bugle
and wait on his table. So I got a bugle and learned to blow it. Waited on his table, and that was the best
thing that could have happened, because I got to know
him and his family just like my own. They eventually came to be just like my own family. I stayed there.
Finally worked up to camp director. Beard was a wild-
-- life artist, a great artist illustrated some of the original
Mark Twain books. He didn't get into the Boy Scout movement until he was around 65. He founded a group he named the Boy Pioneers. Ernest Thompson Seton,
another great conservationist, got a bunch together he
called the Woodcraft Indians. And in England, Lord Baden-Powell started an organization known as the
Scouts. These groups, and some others, were pulled together by William D. Boyce and the Boy Scouts came into being. Dan Beard was the first scout commissioner and Seton was the first chief scout. I stayed with Dan
Beard a long time. He influenced me more than anyone except my mother and father. He took me under
his wing. I'd been trying to draw ever since I was a
child. He gave me a lot of criticism, told me what to do. He was a distinguished old fellow, with that white mustache and goatee. We'd walk down Broadway and people would turn around and stare at him. He looked
kind of like Buffalo Bill come to life. For years, I'd go to his house like I'd go home. I'd call up and say I

wanted to come spend the night. I had a room there, up in the attic. I last saw him when he was 91. He died the next year. Last time I saw him, I knew he wasn't going to keep going much longer, but he was still full of beans. He was the kind of man who paid attention to young people. He didn't preach, but he made his points decisively. I had been smoking cigarettes and one day in camp, I leaned over and a cigarette fell out of
my pocket and rolled in front of him. He didn't say anything. He just gave me a look. That was some look. Just shriveled me up. Then he shook his head."
Ed Dodd smokes no cigarettes any more. He smokes
Granger rough cut in a pipe. Conservation practices he
learned from Dan Beard and those he absorbed with
his rural raising form the foundation of his strong con-
servationist philosophy today. "We're presently facing
a dangerous situation," he says. "On one hand, there are a lot of thoughtful, rational people who have been deeply interested in conservation for many years, who approach it from a scientific standpoint. On the other hand, there are people who get emotional because they're hung up on the Bambi syndrome. Talk about
conservation of deer to these people, and immediately they see every deer as an adorable little Bambi. So they fight like all get-out to prevent any deer from being shot.
-- -- In their tragic ignorance tragic for the deer they
don't know or they refuse to face the knowledge that they're trying to condemn their adorable little Bambi
to the cruel suffering of a slow death by starvation. True conservationists have been aware a long time that a deer herd will literally eat itself out of house and home.

Outdoors \ty Georgia

--

-- The real conservationists are the hunters deer hunters -- and duck hunters and bird hunters and fishermen.
They have contributed more to conservation than any other group on earth. The anti-hunters don't contribute anything but talk. They don't buy hunting licenses, they don't buy equipment, they don't go to camps. What they do is put out propaganda like that "Guns of Au-
tumn" TV program that's slanted and one-sided and
doesn't give the true picture. It's the money from hunt-
ers and other true conservationists that pays the bills for enlightened conservation and propagation practices."
Dodd warns that "While the anti-conservationists are
shrillest in their irrational attacks on hunting, they're
also attacking fishing. What we've got to do is fight
their propaganda, their lies, with the only defense that
-- can overcome them the truth. We've got to keep ham-
mering home the truth about conservation. Sportsmen
and sportswomen are not only conserving game, but they're bringing game back. For example, because of hunters and other conservationists, there are more deer in Pennsylvania today than there were when old William Penn made a treaty with the Indians when he set up his
-- colony. If a person doesn't want to hunt for whatever -- reason it's his or her privilege not to hunt. At the
same time, who gave the anti-conservationists the right to tell me that I'm doing something wrong when it's not illegal and not immoral? And what is, in my belief, helping the game? Hunting is a deep-seated urge. Tt's atavistic, goes back to the dawn of mankind on this
earth. I'm absolutely against shooting or harming any endangered species, but where game is plentiful, I think
August 1976

hunting is the greatest sport in the world. It's absurd to

talk about the horror of killing and inhumane treatment

of wild animals when the only alternative is forcing

them to starve to death, which is far more horrible."

Like most hunters, save those who hunt for meat
-- and there are still those who have to do that Dodd

finds rewards in going hunting that transcend bageing

a bird or a deer. "We get outdoors, next to nature,

where we belong," he says. "We live artificial lives in

these canyons of steel and concrete we've fabricated.

We're naturally a woods-roaming people."

Dodd roams the woods these days in his Lost Forest

with his old dog Mosc. "Mose," he'll say, "you're a

TV beauty." Mose has been on

coast to coast, he's

appeared in half a dozen documentaries and he has had

his picture in papers all over the United States. At the

patriarchal canine age of 16, Mose is a beautiful dog and

he's still eager to join Dodd in walks. Dodd mav have

inherited his fondness for walking. His father, a Baptist

minister who died in 1972 at the age of 97, liked to

walk. The elder Dodd's influence may also be reflected

in his son's religious attitude. Ed Dodd says "I think

man is moral or immoral depending on how successfully

he moves toward God."

Ed Dodd may have the best of two worlds here below.

In one of them, as Ed Dodd, he is not only a successful

writer/artist doing what he loves doing, but he is also a

successful humane human being with friends all over the

globe. In his second world, which is also real to him. his

alter ego, Mark Trail, can do anything Ed Dodd's

imagination wants him to do.

^

A Sea Going
T.T*

Billfish off Georgia's coast

By Bill Morehead Photos b\ the A nthor

Billfishing for marlin, sailfish and other big game fish is expensive. The time and money (wheelbarrows of money) that are invested in a 50-
foot sportfisherman, the barrels of gasoline or diesel fuel burned to
make the 160 mile round trip to the
fishing grounds off Georgia, and the days it takes to actually harvest such a fish clearly take big game fishing out of the hands of most of us average mortals.
Billfishing is the closest thing we have in Georgia to a big game safari to Africa. To go at it full time and in
full force, a person will lay out dollars equivalent to a half-dozen African trips.
Yet, it is the most dramatic, most
exciting, and in many ways the most demanding of fishing expeditions. It is indeed a big game in terms of the loot it takes away from your wallet
-- but . . . there are big fish out there and who ever said the top of the
rung was easy or cheap? I thought about those things as I
sat around the table at the Captains' meeting the night before the start of
the Annual Billfish Tournament
sponsored by the Savannah Sport Fishing Club. 1 learned that some 22 boats from South Carolina and Georgia would participate in the tournament this year.
"Landlubbers often call this 'deep sea' fishing," said one captain. "It's true we fish some 60-70 miles offshore but it's not 'deep sea' fishing at all," he continued. "If you get a chance to see a blue marlin stalk the bait, swipe at it, take it and jump three or four times, you'll see our
-- fishing for what it really is offshore
surface fishing," he explained.

"Our tournament is one of the
more successful tournaments
around," said Bruce Ford, chairman of the tournament. "Billfishing is big business in Florida and the Carolinas, but here off Georgia the sport fishing pressure is comparatively lower." Ford went on to explain that the Savannah tournament has the highest billfish catch ratio of any tournament on the east coast.
"Billfishing is riot the chancy thing you might think," chimed in
one fellow. "It may look like we go
offshore, drop the bait overboard and troll blindly hoping for a strike,"
he continued, "but it's not that way

at all. To catch billfish you have to know where they are. They like to
hang out around any unusual structure on the bottom, near a canyon, a
reef, or anywhere bait fish may be." He further explained it wasn't even
necessary to get to the Gulf Stream (some 80 miles off Georgia), for at times the billfish come in as close as 35-40 miles.
Nestled in the dusk outside of the
clubhouse where we talked were
-- some of the big boats the setting
sun bounced faint rays off glistening hulls and metallic antennae. I had strolled onto the docks earlier and viewed the sportfishermen ranging

ririHit

August 1976

in size from a sleek, trim 26-footer
to a mammoth 65-footer.
"We'll fish tomorrow if the weather doesn't make us come back in, and the way these people fish, the weather will have to be really foul to drive us back," said Bill Hopkins, president of the Sport Fishing Club. The early morning weather would be closely watched.
The weather report that morning called for 20-knot winds and rain, but by the time we arrived at the fishing grounds, the sky was clear and the elements perfect for big game fishing.
I was on the George T. Bagby, a research vessel of the Departmentof Natural Resources, which monitored the tournament for data on offshore
fishes. My being on the Bagby was

ideal, for it would be able to draw close to any boat that had a fish on.
Had I been on a tournament boat the
emphasis would have been on fishing
--not on picture taking.
Larry Smith, a biologist who heads
the saltwater sports fishing program
for DNR, told me, "The fishermen
are not only looking for unusual underwater structures, they'll also be
looking for weed lines (open-ocean
Sargassurri), a likely feeding site for
the big fish."
While the weather was perfect, the fishing was off. The boats fished hard, too. Shortly after we got to the fishing grounds, we could see one or two
-- boats already trolling the radio told
us that all the others were also. The tournament rules permitted fishing
from 9 am to 3 pm and none of the

boats were wasting time doing anything but fishing.
About three hours later, we heard on the radio that the Waterway, a 45-foot custom sportfisherman captained by Ralph Vick of Savannah, had a fish on. Mike Younce, captain
of the Bagby, got the approximate location of the Waterway and brought us over to it.
I was hoping to get pictures of the fish jumping. By the time we arrived however, the fish had already been
-- through its jumps but we did get to
see it boated. The angler, Herman
Kleinsteuber of Savannah, had battled a 246'/^ pound blue marlin for 40 minutes before bringing him to
gaff.
This was the only fish brought in on the first day (and, as it turned out, the tournament winner). At the dock that evening, I talked with Kleinsteuber about his catch. "You know, I could've sworn that 40-minute battle lasted two hours. Landing him was a team effort, believe me. People always say that one fellow caught a big fish, but I can tell you that this one was a team effort."
Later, I interviewed several captains as to the bait they used and their
fishing techniques. They used everything from Spanish mackerel to small dolphin for bait. Some skipped the baits along the waves and others swam the baits in the water. Some trolled fast, others slow, and some even tried jigging with the boat dead in the water. For all their efforts, 22 boats and their fishermen caught one
blue marlin the first day.
The weather the next morning looked rugged. I had another meeting to go to, and so didn't make the second day of the tournament. I was lucky. Shortly after noon I dropped by the Fishing Club to hear whocaught-what on the radio. As I drove up to the docks I saw perhaps 17 of the 22 boats docked.
I went inside and learned why. The wind had really whipped up that
A morning. south wind, it had a 150
mile fetch to build up waves. I interviewed several captains who had turned back.
First captain: "We fished about an
hour. I was knocked off the chair on

10

Outdoors \t) Georgia

Hoisting the winner. This 24614 pounder, battle scarred and tattered, took first place in the two-day tournament.
Herman Kleinsteuber of Savannah,
fishing on the Waterway, said the 40 minute battle felt like it lasted two hours.

the bridge four times during that

We hour.

had a ten-foot pitching sea

We out there.

took it long enough."

Second captain: "We had to head

south into the waves after we got out
there. We went through one wave

with about three feet of water on the
main deck. We came out on the other

side and pancaked about 20 feet into
the trough. That was enough. We got

out of there and made it to Sapelo

(about 50 miles to the south)."

Third captain: "We got broad-

sided several times out there. Man, it was rough. One broadside blew out

our windows and another one ripped

the superstructure. I'm glad we made

it back."

Several boats did manage to fish,

though. It was lucky one did, for the

Roulette, out of Beaufort, South
Carolina, captained by Tommy Cito-
ris, brought in a 35 pound white marlin, the first ever recorded from

Georgia waters. Joe Fraser of Hilton

Head, S. C, caught the fish. Larry

DNR Smith, the

biologist, said: "The

record will have to be confirmed, but as far as I know, this is the first white marlin caught off Georgia."

Another couple of fishermen were
lucky that day, too. Ray Williams of
Savannah, and Tom Hollingsworth of Savannah, landed 241% pound
and 235 pound blue marlin, respec-

tively.

These four fish were the total catch
-- of the tournament a disappointing,

but totally understandable, total. The
-- first day's weather was perfect and
one fish was caught. The second

day's was horrible, and three fish, in-

cluding the first Georgia white mar-

lin, were brought in.

I guess all of this shows that, no

matter if you're fishing in a 10-foot

John boat or a 65-foot sportsfisher-

man, fishing depends as much or more on the fish as it does on the

fisherman. That's the way it should

be, even for the safari fishing of the

big leagues.



August 1976

11

r

i4

Cherokee [Rose and [Brown cJhrasht
/P/ctarcf a PerAj

Thrasher
Brown
Georgia's Songster

By Leonard E. Foote Photography by the Author Art Work by Richard Parks
The Brown Thrasher, our State Bird, almost wasn't
recognized officially. But a last-minute action by Governor Eugene Talmadge brought the state's official recognition to Georgia's sweetest singer.
In 1935, school children, bird lovers and thrasher devotees all over the state generated a groundswell of
enthusiasm with so much political clout that the House
of Representatives unanimously passed a motion "to declare the brown thrasher the state bird and the pine tree the state tree ..." Four days later the State Senate
passed its own resolution confirming the thrasher, but omitting the pine tree. The legislature adjourned, still
polarized between the pine tree and the live oak, without agreement between House and Senate, so no act was passed. But Governor Talmadge, with his usual decisiveness, issued a proclamation on April 6, 1935 to honor
August 1976

-- the pine and the thrasher a proclamation not recorded
in the Executive Minutes on file in the Georgia Department of Archives and History. But the Governor's action made front page headlines in the April 6 Atlanta Journal:
"Brown thrashers were strutting more than usual and pine trees were waving more majestically in Georgia Saturday. They had just received honors from the
chief executive of the state.
" 'The school children of Georgia, the Garden Clubs and other statewide organizations have indicated by their votes that they favor the brown thrasher for the state bird and the pine tree for the state tree,' the proclamation said.
" Therefore, I, Eugene Talmadge, Governor of Georgia, do hereby proclaim that the brown thrasher shall be adopted and declared the state bird and the pine tree shall be adopted and declared the state
" tree.'
Although the next General Assembly disagreed with the Governor and on February 25, 1937 declared the live oak to be Georgia's official tree, the thrasher's designation was greeted with favor.
In more recent times there have been other efforts to dethrone the brown thrasher but his champions always
13

have prevailed, even over such fine candidates as the bobwhite quail. (For the story of the bobwhite, see
Prince of Game Birds: the bobwhite quail, by Charles
Elliott, 1974, published by the Georgia Department of
Natural Resources.) It is the thrasher's presence every-
where in Georgia, perhaps more than any other charac-
teristic of the bird, that insures its popularity. It courts,
nests, sings and feeds in both live oaks and pines, up and down the state, in honeysuckles and privets from the thickets atop Brasstown Bald at 4,768 feet, to the base of Tybee light at the edge of Georgia's priceless seacoast
marshes.
No Georgian need go far, on an early spring morning,
to hear a thrasher. Its voice rockets from every wood,
swamp edge, pasture hedgerow and suburban garden
proclaiming its territory, announcing to all birddom that this is its chosen piece of Georgia.
Thrashers have been Georgians longer than people. The bird's ancestors were here long before our Old
World ancestors and maybe before the first people drifted this way. He met the earliest explorers and the paths of the bird's discoverer and the state's founder
crossed in history.
Linnaeus named the brown thrasher Toxostoma rufiim, ("bow-mouthed" from the slightly curved bill and "reddish") from specimens collected and sketches
14

made in South Carolina or Georgia by Mark Catesby.

Catesby was the first great southeastern naturalist and

traveled in Georgia before the area became a crown

colony in 1733.

Catesby took daily trips along the Savannah River
sketching and collecting birds, animals and plants. He

returned to London in 1726 and in 1731 published his "Natural History of Carolina, Florida and the Bahama

Islands," describing the flora and fauna of this part of
the New World, including the "Fox-Colored Thrush."

From Catesby's volumes, Linnaeus named and de-

scribed 109 species of birds, animals and plants.

Catesby's "Fox-Colored Thrush" became Linnaeus's

and Georgia's brown thrasher. The monumental work of

Mark Catesby brought him recognition from the august

Royal Society of London, where later, in 1749, he spon-

sored the membership of General James Oglethorpe,

founder of the colony of Georgia.

Some say the singing of the fox-colored thrasher is

sweeter than that of its close relative, the mockingbird.

Arthur T. Wayne, South Carolina's eccentric but pro-

my lific ornithologist, noted in 1910 that "to

ear the

song is sweeter, richer and wilder than the mocking-

bird, and as a musician he is simply incomparable." In

fact, many of the songs attributed to the mocker come

from a thrasher throat.

Outdoors ip Georgia

The state bird, for all its fame, is called and miscalled a number of names. Throughout the South, country people to this day call it the "planting bird" and say its call admonishes the farmer to "drop it, drop it, drop it, cover
it, cover it, cover it; I'll pull it up, I'll pull it up, I'll pull it up."
The brown thrasher is more plentiful here in winter because the two or three broods reared in summer and fall and the influx of thrashers from the northern part of the breeding range swell its numbers. Georgia's wintering thrashers breed as far north as southern Manitoba and northern Maine.
Male thrashers may whistle into full song during late
February snows, while setting up their well-defended
territories.
Within these territories the male resents the presence of other male thrashers and will do aerial combat to turn
away intruders. When a human interloper chances into
thrasher territory, both members of the thrasher pair
will voice resentment with a sharp "tchat" like the click
of hedge shears. Humans venturing too near the nest may find themselves fending off feathered air attacks.
The courtship of thrashers happens mostly on the ground under cover of early spring foliage. Working
together, the pair will complete a stick-based, rootlet-
lined nest in from six to ten days. The three to five
greenish-white eggs, thickly covered with fine reddish
dots, may be laid as early as April 5 in the Atlanta area, but early May marks the peak of nesting activity.
The male thrasher takes his turn, sitting for long hours on the eggs during the 1 1 to 14 days of incubation, hunched stolidly on the nest through rain, sleet or sun.
After the hatching he assists with the brooding, feeding,
care and protection of the young. When either parent
approaches the nest with a morsel of food for the young, they soothe their offspring with a variety of pleasant
musical tones inaudible only a short distance away. The rapidly growing biddies spend about 12 days in the nest and are fed by both parents for several weeks after the first venture from their home.
Most thrasher pairs nest again around late July in the Atlanta area, but usually with fewer eggs than before. Early nests often are ancestral castles, used from year to year and added onto until a great mound of sticks and lining becomes a massive foundation for the current tenant. These nests are often in cover remaining from the previous season's growth. The thrasher prefers hedgerows and the edge of the woods near vegetative openings. While many other birds exhibit this "edge" preference, it is a pronounced trait of the Georgia state
bird.
With the end of the breeding season in early August, thrashers retire to thicker cover to moult. Their once
A ceaseless singing ceases. stillness settles over Georgia's
woods and fields. The only thrasher noises are the muted
sounds of the birds scratching through the forest floor as they search for spiders, insects, seeds and fruits, reminding Georgians that their state bird is still close to them as it has been throughout history.

August 1976

15

By Jingle Davis
&orit be so waiy of marine monsters that you jail
victim to the more common seasibe hazards*.*

16

Outdoors ip Georgia

Auust 1976

A good .

friend

from

Atlanta

spent

his vacation last year at the beach,

or rather, he spent the first part of

his vacation at the beach. The ma-

jority of his two-week holiday was

spent in a local hospital, in a fair

amount of pain.
When he first arrived on the coast,

he told everyone, "I plan to enjoy

the beach, but I'm staying out of the

ocean. All those sharks and things."
No amount of talking could con-

vince him that sharks and things

posed little real threat to him or any-
A one else. few days soaking up sun

on his beach towel put him in the

hospital with third-degree burns.

This illustrates a sad phenomenon

that occurs each summer on Georgia

beaches and probably on beaches

all over the world. People are scared

of the wrong sea serpents. The pub-

licity given sharks and other sea

creatures not only makes people fear-

ful of the ocean, but it also distracts

their attention from some of the real,

but easily avoidable, dangers of the

beach and coastal waters.

Sharks head many vacationers' lists of things that go bump in the night

or under the waves. Yet statistics

prove that, each year, considerably

more people are struck by lightning

than are attacked by sharks.

There are common-sense precau-

tions to remember when you're swim-

ming in the ocean. Don't swim if

you're bleeding or if there's blood in

the water. Avoid areas between

coastal islands and the mouths of in-

lets; these are places where sharks

congregate. Don't swim at night, and

don't swim too far out from the beach. (Your big danger there is

drowning, rather than shark attack.)

If you float on an air mattress, don't

--flip your hands or feet over the side to a shark, those movements

could resemble motions made by a wounded fish, and sharks like easy

prey. If you should see a fin cutting
-- the water nearby, don't panic it's

probably a friendly porpoise. (Fol-

17

lowing last summer's shark mania, bathers on a Miami beach clubbed a baby whale to death, convinced the
harmless mammal was a great white
shark.) If you're sure a shark is in your neighborhood, keep your eye
on him and walk or swim, using calm, even strokes, back to the
beach. Jellyfish are about as dangerous as
bees or wasps, and if you happen to be allergic to the venom, they can
A give you a bad time. cautious visi-
tor will walk along the tide line for a few hundred yards before swimming
to see how many washed up on the last tide. If you see more than one
jellyfish per yard, postpone your swimming and beachcomb instead. Should a jellyfish sting you, quickly
-- rub wet sand, meat tenderizer or
household ammonia on the sting
it won't hurt for long. Portuguese men-of-war are a dif-
ferent kettle of jellyfish. The man-ofwar can deliver dangerous stings, but fortunately, swimmers on Georgia beaches almost never have to suffer. About the only time the man-of-war makes it this far inshore is after tropical storms or hurricanes sweep
these creatures into our waters. Small children are sometimes enticed by the man-of-war's pretty balloon-
shaped float. The float isn't dangerous, but the tentacles which stretch beneath it are. If you see something in the water or on the beach which
resembles a small blue or lavender
balloon, stay away. Again, the manof-war is rare in Georgia waters; during a lifetime of ocean swimming and beachcombing, most Georgians only see a few, and most of these are dead on the beach.
Sting rays are other much-maligned sea serpents, and they can deliver a
-- painful sting yet most coastal ex-
perts would rather swim with a whole school of rays than step on one broken bottle. Like any other wild thing, the ray will defend itself if you
attack, or if it thinks you're attacking. Given half a chance, the ray will
swim away from you; after all, you're quite a bit bigger. If you walk
in shallow water over mud flats during summer months, you might step
-- on a ray this is a favorite feeding

spot for rays. But if you're walking
the mud flats, where sharp-shelled
oysters or mussels might hide beneath the mud, you'd be wise to wear tennis shoes anyway. If you shuffle your feet as you walk through tide pools (where rays might be trapped by the outgoing tide), you'll give a sting ray warning to get out of your way.
Oyster shells and barnacles can cause painful cuts. Both usually choose a firm foundation on which to
attach their shells. Steer clear of pil-
ings, jetties, seawalls, or any other stationary object in the water, and watch for floating logs which might be covered with sharp barnacles.
Sometimes dead catfish wash up on the beach, and a dead catfish on the beach causes much more of a problem than a live catfish in the water. While you won't be finned by a catfish in the water, you could step on one on the beach, and its sharp barbs can give you a nasty puncture.
The creatures in the ocean, while some can be unpleasant, are probably far less dangerous to coastal swimmers and beachcombers than the nature of the ocean itself. If you understand tides and currents, swim-

ming in the ocean can be a completely enjoyable experience. But too often, the uninitiated assume the ocean is just a super-size lake or swimming pool, and they fail to give
it the respect it deserves.
Respect the ocean by learning something about it. For example, don't walk on offshore sandbars unless you pay close attention to the tide, which has a way of coming in and leaving bar-walkers stranded. If you are trapped on a sandbar by ris-
-- ing tide, call for help and don't un-
derestimate the depth of the water between you and the beach. Every year people are trapped on the bars,

Outdoors ip Georgia

and while most are rescued without incident, tragedies do occur.
Some years ago, a group of children vacationing at a now-abandoned summer camp on St. Simons Island wandered out to a sandbar just as the tide began to flood in. The children were apparently unaware of danger until the bar was ankle-deep in water, when the group belatedly
decided to head back for the beach. In the middle of the slough, where the current ran swift and deep, the children panicked. People on the beach rushed out to help, but for seven or eight of the youngsters, help came too late.
August 1976

--
The stingray (far left) is common in
shallow water areas and is armed
with a barb (far left, below) that can inflict a nasty wound. Jelly fish (left) sometimes wash ashore and its tentacles can deliver a painful sting.
If you're swimming on an unfamiliar beach (if you haven't been there as recently as a week before, consider the beach "unfamiliar" beach contours can change almost overnight) don't let your children swim until you've waded out at least
-- as far as they'll be swimming. Strong
currents can cause a shelf locally
-- known as a drop-off to form near
the beach, and a child can quickly go from knee-deep shallows to over-thehead water.
Pay attention to waves and cur-
-- rents sometimes rip tides (strong
currents perpendicular to the beach ) run between offshore bars and have
been known to carry strong swimmers out to deep waters. If you are caught in a rip tide, rule number one is don't try to swim against it. What you do is swim across the current,
usually they're fairly narrow, and when you're out of the current, then swim back to the beach.
"Don't fight the current" is a good general rule for all ocean swimming. The unknowing sometimes try to swim in a straight line from the beach
to a boat or sandbar, and may panic when it becomes apparent that they
will miss their target by several hundred feet because of a strong incoming or outgoing tide.
Nobody should swim in the ocean
19

Anti-Sea-Serpent Potions:
Even if you come to the beach with a fairly good tan, remember that the effect of the sun's rays will be increased when they reflect off white sand and water. Be careful of sunburn on cloudy or overcast days, when ultra-violet rays are still coming down.
To keep track of daily tides, pick up a tide table at a
coastal hardware store, drugstone, bait shop, boat marina,
or one of DNR's two coastal offices. If you don't feel confident in coastal waters, swim on a
beach which has lifeguards (some don't). And don't be
afraid to ask the lifeguard about currents or tides or drop-offs.
20

alone, and non-swimmers should be watched carefully. Nor should parents depend on rafts or inflatable swim rings to keep children safe. Every lifeguard in Georgia would probably like to see these devices outlawed, for they encourage nonswimmers to venture out too far. If something happens to the raft or swim ring, or if the user falls off, a dangerous situation develops.
One lifeguard says parents often depend on their children to call for help if they're in trouble. "But I've
never heard a kid yell help," he said.
"Usually when they get in trouble, they're choking on a mouthful of water. The big problem here when somebody goes under, you have to guess where he or she might be. The
water off Georgia beaches is about as
clear as pea soup. I don't mean it isn't clean; it is, but you just don't have
the visibility you'd have in a swimming pool or lake."
This same lifeguard tells a strange story about a family vacationing at the beach. They spread their beachtowels near his tower, and he overheard the mother's careful warnings
to her children before she turned
them loose. "Now, watch out for
crabs in the water; they'll pinch you," she told the little boy and girl. "If
you see any fish jumping, come out of the water immediately." The lifeguard said the mother then looked down the beach and spotted the sea-
wall, constructed of loose granite
-- boulders many of which were cov-
ered with razor sharp oyster shells
and barnacles. The mother said, "In fact, why don't you just play on the seawall and stay out of the ocean?"
If you have small, non-swimming children, better confine them to the shallows or to your motel pool. If the children wear flotation devices, make sure the device is an approved flotation device, not an inflatable swim ring, and make sure it's the kind that straps on securely.
If you decide to wander down the beach, be sure your
beach gear is stashed well above the high tide line. There are several good paperback books which identify
plants and animals you're likely to encounter on Georgia's beaches. Most local bookstores or newsstands carry them.
Outdoors it? Georgia

The House oj Vann
A Cherokee Memento

By Susan Wood
Sketch courtesy of the Georgia Department of
Archives and History.

jb
f'#

I'-t4/.

!"^"

M ,

*

>

.-

fwraar*

.

,\V i iv

'Here lies the hody of James Vann
WLo killed many a White man
At last hy a rifle tail he fell
And the devil draped his soul to hell.
Inscription on James Vann'a grave.

-- James Vann a man whose role in Georgia's heritage
has been somewhat obscure. A half Cherokee, loved and
feared by his people, Vann was a town Chief in
Cherokee land in northwest Georgia for about 1 5 years. But Vann was no wildly painted, raging Indian sporting
bow and arrow and tomahawk. No, James Vann was a
wealthy landowner and businessman whose only violence came after drinking too much "fire water."
Though James Vann was only a half-breed Cherokee,
he was fully accepted by the Indians. His Scottish father, Clement, had married a Cherokee girl, Wa-wli, thus giving James his Cherokee heritage. Wa-wli was later baptized by the Moravian missionaries as Mary Christiana and is said to have lived to the age of 1 30.

August 1976

21

--

Vann House, James Vann's legacy at Spring Place near Chatsworth, offers a glimpse of Cherokee heritage and the spirit of James Vann. Completed in 1 804, the two-story brick home overlooked his 4000-acre plantation. The bricks were made right on Vann's property, probably by some of his 500 slaves. The kilns used to make the bricks have purportedly been found near the spring, about 400 yards from the house.
Perched high on a hill, Vann House offers a splendid view of the northwest Georgia hills. And the colorful scenery must have inspired James Vann who brought
-- the colors of the hills right into his home. The red, blue,
green and yellow of northwest Georgia reminders of red clay, blue sky, green forests and yellow of the
-- ripened corn match the wainscoting, moldings,
mantels and window facings inside Vann's home. To build a house the entire Cherokee nation would
talk about, Vann brought an architect from Pennsylvania and craftsmen from several neighboring states, according to diaries of Moravian missionaries. Some say
the Moravians, whom Vann had invited to settle at
Spring Place, also took part in the design and
-- construction. Intricate details such as hand-carved -- Cherokee roses grace the house which consists of two
large rooms (20 x 30 feet) and a wide hallway on each of the two main floors.
Originally a separate kitchen was built on the eastern side of the house with a guest room on the northeast corner of the kitchen. These additions, never rebuilt, formed a courtyard, paved with bricks.
The Vann House was a curiosity in the early 1 800s only the second brick home in the entire Cherokee
-- nation and brought sightseers from all around. The
new mansion and Vann's newly completed still were likely the reasons an 1804 meeting between Indian chiefs and agents of the U.S. Government was held at Vann House. In 1819 James Monroe stopped at Vann House for an overnight stay. Later John C. Calhoun
visited there.
James Vann was killed in February 1809 at Buffington's Tavern, south of Spring Place. James Hall, curator of the Vann House historic site, tells that Vann's sister had him killed in revenge for Vann's having killed her husband some months earlier.
"James Vann, you see, had his good points and his bad points like most folks. But one of his bad points was
that he liked to drink, and not in moderation. And when Vann was drinking, he became very belligerent, very
mean. His meanness probably brought about the duel in which he killed his brother-in-law and which,
eventually, led to Vann's own death." Though James Vann intended to leave his entire
estate including one of the earliest mills in the area to his young son Joseph, the Cherokee Council of Chiefs
intervened, dividing the property among Vann's three widows and five children. But "Rich Joe" as he came to be called, did inherit the house and much of the
property.
Legend tells us that Rich Joe, an astute businessman

-- The colors of northwest Georgia reflections of red -- clay, blue sky, green forests and yellow ripened corn
and intricate handcarved Cherokee roses can be seen in the living room of Vann House (above).
-- The third floor "coffin room" so called for its shape not -- its purpose was normally the Vann children's bedroom.

August 1976

23

"Rich Joe," the most flamboyant Vann, was forced out of Georgia along with thousands of other Cherokees.
In 1836 he settled in Webber Falls, Oklahoma where he operated a steamboat line on the Arkansas, Mississippi and Ohio Rivers.
Rich Joe's gold nugget ring depicts his pride and joy, the "Lucy Walker." His love for racing and his pride in
the Lucy Walker brought an early death to this
colorful character.

who operated steamboat lines, trading posts and several farms, hid some of his treasures in secret drawers under deeply recessed windows in Vann House. Those
drawers, the old-timers say, could have also hidden the
bodies of men who crossed James or Joseph Vann. During the 1 830s Joseph Vann was caught up in the
push for removal of Indians from Georgia. One obvious way to remove the Indians was to take away their land. With nowhere to live, the Indians had to move on. Thus the lottery system of land grants was devised in 1 830. Under this plan, white citizens of the state were entitled to one ticket each, with special benefits for widows and veterans. The tickets represented land lots which consisted of 160 acres in Indian territory. About this time, Vann hired a white man as overseer of his plantation, unknowingly violating a new Georgia law that made it illegal for a white man to work for an
Indian, even a half-Indian. Because of this, the
commander of the Georgia Guard tried to take over
Vann's house, but a white boarder claimed the house as
his own. With Joseph Vann and his family huddled
inside, the claimants proceeded to battle it out. Georgia Guardsmen finally smoked out the defender by building a fire on the stairway. The charred flooring is
still visible.
Vann along with thousands of other Cherokees was forced to desert his home and lands. Rich Joe and his family made their way to a farm he owned in Tennessee
24

but later moved on to Oklahoma. In Webber Falls, Joe built a replica of his Georgia home. But the Oklahoma Vann House with all its furnishings brought from Georgia was destroyed by Federal forces during the War Between the States.
Rich Joe was a flamboyant character who loved to
race horses and steamboats. This passion was his
downfall. Patricia Hall, hostess at Vann House who has done research on the Vann family and the Cherokees,
tells that in October 1 844, Rich Joe was hosting a party on the Lucy Walker, a steamboat named after his prize racehorse, when a passer-by challenged him to a race. "Never one to turn down a challenge, Joe ordered full steam, and the race was on down the Ohio River near Louisville, Kentucky. Joe ordered his steamboat pilot to throw bacon onto the fire to give them more steam. Horrified, the pilot refused, explaining the danger, but Rich Joe drew his pistol, demanding that his request be honored. The nameless pilot, fearing for hrs life no matter what he did, threw the bacon into the fire and jumped overboard, knowing what the result would be. The boiler exploded, killing Vann, his 50 guests and his
prized horse Lucy Walker who was also on board." Vann House was a shambles in 1952 when the
community purchased it and three acres to give to the Georgia Historical Society. Once restored, Vann House was dedicated in July 1958 before a gathering which included Cherokee leaders and 42 Vann descendants.
Outdoors ii) Georgia

Andersonville
An Execution

By Howard Bushnell
"Execution of the Raiders," by J. E. Taylor, 1896, from the Andersonville Military Prison
Series.
"

The hot sun of south Georgia beat down in blinding waves of heat on the bare heads of 30,000 ragged and bearded men.
The closely packed crowd seethed with nervous movement, the restless, shifting feet sending up clouds of acrid dust; dust which irritated eyes
already inflamed with excitement, sickness and exposure.
At the center of this vast crowd of men stands a raised platform, a crude thing of rough lumber erected on the
gently sloping side of a small hill. All of those thousands of bloodshot eyes
are centered on it, and upon the strangely assorted group of six men who stand there. Another man, a

priest in black robe, is speaking,
making an effort to quiet the crowd.
The hands of the six men are tied
behind them and on each face is a look which gives a hint of each man's
character. On some there is a look of
pathetic disbelief that this thing can
be happening to them. On other faces
are looks of snarling anger. The priest raises his arm in a gesture beseeching attention and speaks.
"Men, it is within your power and mercy to grant life to these who stand here with me. I know full well what their crimes have been, I know that they have been cold-blooded and cruel; that cannot be denied. Perhaps each of you has suffered at their

"Andersonville Prison, as Seen by John L. Ransom," lithograph by A. Sachse & Co., 1882.

hands in one way or another. I can understand your wish to see them suffer also. But, remember the words of our Lord when He said, 'Bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, forgive them that despitefully use you.' I plead with you to forgive these men their sins as your Father forgives you yours."
The crowd is in no mood for this
and shouts as one voice "No, no . . . hang them, hang them."
There is in that voice a finality which could not be misunderstood and the priest, knowing the futility of further words, begins to read the
ritual for the souls of the dying.
All of this took place some one hundred years ago near a small town in the southern part of Georgia. Not long ago I stood on this same spot at a point where I know the platform to have been and looked around me. I tried to visualize the scene as it had looked to those 30,000 men who had been there and had seen the thing
happen.
On that long-ago day the Civil War was raging and this place was

the hated Andersonville Prison. The very name of that place was enough to send shivers of dread up the spine
of any Union soldier. On the day
about which we are talking it held 30,000 sick and ragged survivors of Chickamauga and others of the bloodiest and ugliest battles which the world had seen up to that time. They were huddled on the open
ground, cooking their slim rations over small campfires and sleeping at night in holes dug into the ground with scraps of cloth for cover.
What I saw as I looked around was
a pleasant, parklike National His-
toric Site. Where those thousands camped there are now neat signs ad-
monishing the visitor that there will
be No Picnicking. The gentle hills
that were then bare and scarred are
covered now with sweet, green grass. The little stream which flows through
the center of the area, at that time a maggot-blocked trickle which fur-
nished the camp with its only sanitary facilities, now gurgles cleanly on its way. Gone forever is the great enclosing wall made of pine logs,

pointed at the upper end. These were set, side by side, all the way around the 16-acre area. The butt ends were set deep into the ground to dis-
courage those who had the energy to
try tunneling under. Their tops towered 20 feet into the air. Gone, too, is that dreaded thing of terror,
the Dead Line, although its original
location as well as that of the out-
side wall is now marked by a line of cement posts. The Dead Line was a line of wooden posts about three feet
high set 20 feet inside the outer wall and paralleling it all the way around. The posts were joined together along the top by pieces of scantling. This established a point beyond which the prisoners might
not go. To do so brought instant
death from the guns of guards posted at intervals along the top of the outer
wall.
This place which then held in its
confines so much misery has been
turned into a place of quiet beauty, but the breeze which sighs softly through the pines reminds one of the
moans of a long dead company.

26

Outdoors ii> Georgia

Up the road about one quarter of
a mile north of the prison site is the Andersonville National Military
Cemetery. Here, as I wandered slowly about, I came upon six white headstones. There was nothing to distinguish them from the thousands of others which are so neatly ar-
-- ranged in ordered rows except that
they were set apart in a small open space, apart from all others. I supposed at first that these six were set apart because of some deed of unusual bravery which those buried here had done, or perhaps they were high-ranking officers. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Thirty thousand men living to-
gether under conditions such as have been described at Andersonville forgot some of the finer points of civilized society. Their actions and behavior became more and more brutish and elemental. The fight of each
man for his own survival became the
first law of life. So, here in this prison where bodily comforts were few, where the food was low in quantity and bad in quality, where blankets were a luxury, there was naturally a great deal of thieving and cheating
as some sought to gain a little added
comfort.
A group of perhaps 500 prisoners,
most of them from the New York
slums, banded together under the name of the Raiders and preyed upon the other prisoners, stealing from them what little they had, beat-
ing and sometimes killing those who
resisted. At first they operated only under the cover of darkness but at last grew so lawless and uncontrolled that they began conducting their raids in broad daylight. They became such a problem that finally the other prisoners were forced to take measures for their own protection. As always happens in a crisis a leader was found. One strong character rallied around himself an opposing force who called themselves the Regulators. The Raiders had their headquarters on the south side of the small stream which has been mentioned and the Regulators had theirs on the north side. The first clash between the two forces resulted in de-

feat for the Regulators who were
driven back to their side of the
stream in great disorder. The Raiders became even more bold for a time
afterwards. Finally the Regulators
decided that the time had come for an all-out effort. They recruited additional men for their ranks and crossed the creek again. Both sides were armed with clubs made of boards, tree branches and with any crude weapon which was capable of causing some damage to those on the
other side. All of the other prisoners
massed on opposite sides of the stream to watch the tide of battle. The fight was long and hard, as cruel and wild as is only possible between
men who have nursed hate for a long
time. First one side and then the other seemed to be winning. At last it was seen that the Regulators were pushing the Raiders back and with a final surge of power broke them into utter confusion and defeat.
About 1 25 ringleaders of the Raiders were captured with the aid of the Confederate guards. The prisoners, themselves, assembled a court and tried these men. It was a fair and

honest trial. The jurors were 12 sergeants chosen from among some of
the newly-arrived prisoners so that
they would have no prejudice. Wit-
nesses were produced who testified
against the accused and then the lawyer for the accused was allowed
to question them as much as he liked.
A large number of the captives were
found guilty and were sentenced to sitting in the stocks, being strung up by the thumbs, running the gauntlet, or wearing the ball and chain around their legs. Six of the worst offenders were sentenced to be hanged. The Raiders that were sentenced to the gauntlet faced the prisoners they had
terrorized who had armed themselves with clubs and belts and lined up in
a double line forming an avenue from the gate through which the prisoners must come. As each one came through he was forced to run for his
life down through the avenue of
men. Several were beaten so badly that they died.
The six who were to die treated it all as a great joke. Even when the
scaffold was erected inside the prison from lumber supplied by the prison

'Graves of the Andersonville Raiders," from a stereopticon slide made in 1867.

August 1976

27

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commander they still thought it was all a bluff. Rumors began flying about the prison one night, one man whis-
pering to another that the following morning was to be the time for the hanging. It was said that friends of
the six were going to make an attempt to rescue them. The situation inside was tense, an air of nervousness hung like a blanket over the camp. The prison commander, sens-
ing this and being afraid that it might lead to an uprising or a rush at the gates and walls, posted additional guards on the walls and had artillery loaded and trained so as to cover all
areas of the prison.
The following morning the six doomed men were led in and con-
ducted to the steps of the gallows.
About the gallows were crowded 30,000 men, a solid sea of faces upturned. Around the outside of the walls another assemblage of 2000 more was gathered. They were the guards and inhabitants of the surrounding country who had been

drawn by the rumors of what was to happen.
As the six were brought up to the scaffold it seemed that for the first time the seriousness of it hit them
and one of them cried out "My God,
men, you're not going to hang us up there, are you?" They were assured that this was actually the intention. The priest. Father Peter Whelan, began a plea to the other prisoners for
-- the lives of these six, but the great
crowd shouted as one voice "No, no, hang them." The priest then began to read the service for the dying.
One of the condemned men paid no
attention to what was being read but continued shouting instructions to one of his friends as to what was to be done with his personal belongings. The priest reproved him, saying,
"My son, take no thought now for
the things of this world, but consider
the things of eternity." As the end of the reading drew near another of the six shouted "I would rather die this way," and plunged headlong into the

crowd trying desperately to break through. With almost superhuman strength he managed to struggle through for a short distance but was overcome by the weight of numbers, beaten down, and returned to the platform. All six were then lined up, side by side, on the platform of the scaffold, sacks were pulled down over their heads and knotted ropes were adjusted about their necks. As a signal was given the planks upon which they stood were jerked from beneath them and they dropped. Five of them died instantly but the weight of the sixth, who was an unusually heavy man, broke the rope and he landed unconscious upon the ground. Water was thrown in his face and he was revived. As he regained his senses he
exclaimed "Am I dead, is this the
next world?" Then, realizing what had happened he fell on his knees and pleaded pathetically for his life. This was refused; he was placed again upon the gallows, dropped, and this time he died.

2.S

Outdoors it? Georgia

Postscript

The story of the Andersonville Raiders was done but a new chapter was about to begin. In that anguished August of 1864 while 2,993 of Andersonville's 32,899 were dying the South was trying to improve their
A prisons. new and healthier prison
site had been chosen near Millen,
Georgia.
A 42-acre stockade named Camp
Lawton was built in what is now Magnolia Springs State Park. The
park headquarters stands yards from where the prison gate once stood. Brush-covered Fort Lawton overlooks the valley that held over 10,000 of Andersonville's survivors.
Some of the survivors were rem-
nants of the infamous Andersonville Raiders, still embittered at their treatment. The Regulators had been
disorganized by the move so the

Raiders felt they could get control of
Camp Lawton. One night the Raiders attacked Corporal "Wat" Payne who
had helped trigger the hangman's
traps and Sergeant Goody who put
meal sacks and ropes over the executed Raiders.
With the yell "Raiders" the exRegulators came to Payne's and
Goody's aid. Prison Commandant Captain D. W. Vowles acted quickly
and soon the Raiders were lying on their stomachs in stocks near the prison gate. The quick action at
Camp Lawton or Millen as the pris-
oners called it ended the Raider
menace. No longer did the prisoners
have to fight their fellow men. For the rest of their internment it was just a struggle with hunger, disease and exposure.
Billy Townsend

The bodies of the six were cut

down after what was thought a suit-

able period and placed in rude

wooden coffins. These were then

placed in a row and the rest of the

prisoners filed past to look their last
upon the remains of those who had

caused them so much pain and trou-

ble, or perhaps, as in the case of

friends of the dead men, to swear
vengeance upon those who had

brought them to that end.

So, there they lie today under six

white headstones in an open space,

to testify that even in eternal death

they can have no comradeship with
the thousands of others who died to a

better purpose.



Photos by Bob Bus h\

August 1976

29

Outdoors Toucl? ip

edited by Bill Hammack

DEATH DECLARED NO HOLIDAY ON THE BICENTENNIAL FOURTH
Two persons drowned in Georgia during the long Bicentennial Fourth of July weekend. The total number of drownings for this Bicentennial year now stands
at 55.
During the Fourth weekend, there were nine boating accidents. The total for 1 976 has reached 47 so far.
On the road in this long Fourth weekend, 19 indi-
viduals were killed and 408 were injured in 1,243 accidents. No deaths were reported on the interstates, but 10 died on two-lane state roads, seven on two-lane secondary roads and two on city streets.
Major William L. Cline, northern region commander of the Law Enforcement Section of the Department of
Natural Resources' Game and Fish Division, said con-
servation rangers were patrolling in full force during
the weekend of the Fourth, and that heavy rains may have been another factor in holding down accidents
on the water.
GEORGIA KAOLIN AND GOLD KIST WIN ENVIRONMENTAL AWARDS
This year's top environmental awards by the Georgia Business & Industry Association went to the Georgia Kaolin Company of Dry Branch and Gold Kist, Inc., Ball Ground.
Joe D. Tanner, Commissioner of the Department of Natural Resources, and Gene Dyson, President of Georgia Business & Industry Association, presented the awards to Georgia Kaolin for its work in reducing air pollution and to Gold Kist for decreasing water pollu-
tion.
In 1970, Georgia Kaolin's Dry Branch plant, one of the biggest and most complex kaolin operations in the state, appeared to be one of the worst air polluters in the kaolin industry. But since that time, the company has spent considerable resources on the best available control technology and for a maintenance program on air pollution control devices. Today, it's estimated the plant emits about 40 percent of what's allowed by the state's air quality control rules and regulations.
Gold Kist's poultry rendering operation at Ball Ground produces 20 tons of feather meal and 15 tons of meat meal a day. Before 1973, wastewater and suspended solids from the plant were sources of considerable pollution in the Etowah River. Grease and oil pol-
lutants and complaints about the odor compounded the problem. But beginning that year, Gold Kist instituted an effective program to reduce wastewater flows, increase the degree of wastewater treatment, modify the treatment system and initiate a wastewater reuse system. The result was a 30-fold drop from initial effluent flows-- and the current flow is well within permit limi-
tations.
30

"Georgia Kaolin and Gold Kist have shown an excellent spirit of cooperation with us," said Leonard Led-
better, director of the Environmental Protection Division of the Department of National Resources. "Their contributions toward cleaning up pollution in their areas benefit the state and its citizens and the business community."
Previous environmental award winners in Georgia have been: in 1975, the Pomona Products Company for water and J. M. Huber Corporation for air, and in 1974, King Finishing Company for water and Engle-
hard Minerals for air.
NATIONAL HUNTING AND FISHING DAY
WILL BE OBSERVED SEPTEMBER 25
For the fifth consecutive year this nation's sportsmen and sportswomen will be honored for their contributions to conservation through the observance of National Hunting and Fishing Day, scheduled for September 25.
NHF Day helps provide a better understanding of what hunting and fishing are all about-- that there's a
National Hunting & Fishing Day
Outdoors \ty Georgia

lot more to hunting and fishing than guns, fishing rods
and reels, and that the people who hunt and fish are
the real protectors of our wildlife.
If you'd like information about how to support NHF Day activities in your community, write: NHF Day, 1 075
Post Road, Riverside, Connecticut 06878.
HUNTERS, ANGLERS INVEST $4.5 MILLION
TOWARD CONSERVATION IN GEORGIA
Georgia was fifth among 1 1 Southern states in the number of both hunting and fishing license holders for 1975. According to U.S. Fish and Wildlife figures,
364,392 hunters paid about $2.4 million to the state for hunting licenses, tags, permits and stamps in 1975, and 658,167 anglers invested more than $2.2 million
in fishing licenses.
Leading the 1 1 Southern states in both categories was Texas, with 853,250 hunting licenses and 1,639,552 fishing licenses. National hunting license leader was Pennsylvania, with 1,245,740, and top fishing license state was California with 2,348,293.
Through purchase of Georgia hunting and fishing licenses alone, hunters and anglers invested around four and a half million dollars in 1975 in the state's conservation and wildlife management programs.

August 1976

31

Gorpipg Next Moi>tl>...
A Sapelo Experience: Managed deer hunts held on Sapelo Island last fall were designed
to control the expanding deer herd there. Aside from this managerial goal was the recreational experience for the hunters, particularly the youngsters on the parent-child hunts. Jingle Davis records the experience of one of these young men.
Opening Day Doves: Whatever your sport, the first day you can pursue it each year is
-- special so special you will be there regardless of weather, conflicts or even chances
of success. All of the restraints which govern normal lives on normal days are suspended on opening day. Bill Morehead reports an occurrence of this mystique.
Georgia's Endangered Species: Since 1973 the Department of Natural Resources has been deeply involved in research on those wildlife and plant species which are in
trouble. September OIG devotes a section to these species and the efforts to aid them.

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I Outdoors

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32

Outdoors
Georgia's

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Southeastern Wildlife
Art Exhibit

October 21-24, 1976
Perimeter Mall Atlanta, Georgia
Original wildlife paintings,
sketches, sculpture and photography
exhibited in the mall.