When I returned from the army I had a severe cough and was in
a very run down condition. Brother George feared that I had an
incipient case of tuberculosis. So in the fall of 1865 I went down
to a plantation in Sumter County to try to recover my health by
living out of doors. That winter I lived the life of a hunter, the
gun constantly in my hand. During the four years of the war the
game had not been hunted at all, consequently it had increased
in great abundance. I was very successful in killing game of all
kinds--quail, ducks, wild turkey, and deer. To show the abundance of
the game, and my success, I remember that in fourteen turkey hunts I
brought home a turkey every time but one. There were several large
ponds in the place to which the ducks, principally mallards, came in
great flocks to roost. One late afternoon I saw two trumpeter swans
coming in to a pond. From a distance of one hundred and forty yards
I raised my rifle and shot one of them dead. It was a magnificent
bird, weighing thirty-nine pounds and measured nine feet from tip
to tip of the wings. There were coon hunts at night, and many hours
spent with the fishing rod. On many of the trips I was accompanied
by a faithful negro named Squash. My health improved, my cough
disappeared, and I went back to Macon a well, strong man.
In 1864 my sister Julia, Mrs. E. D. Huguenin of Macon, then a widow,
died as a result of a runaway accident. She left five children to my
mother's care. She bequeathed to my mother her home and servants in
Macon, and made brother George executor of the estate. The family
then moved to Macon, where we lived for about twenty years. The
family life was a most harmonious one. The household was presided
over by my mother, assisted by sister Kate.
In the spring of 1866 brother George died. He had been in poor
health for a long time, but, in spite of that, he had made a
splendid success of his profession, and had acquired a good deal
of property. He was the kindest and best of brothers. After
brother George's death I applied for testamentary letters for the
administration of the Huguenin estate. The letters were granted _de
bonis non cum testamentor nexus_. The estate consisted principally
of three large plantations in Sumter County. At Colonel Huguenin's
death there had been about three hundred slaves. I assumed the
position of manager of the estate, which occupied most of my time
for many years. When I took charge the estate owed about twenty
thousand dollars to Mrs. Rosa E. Delony, Athens, Georgia, a daughter
of Colonel Huguenin by a former marriage. I succeeded with great
effort in paying off this indebtedness, although the extreme low
price of cotton and the contraction of the currency made the
payment very difficult to make. Some years I was not able to make
any at all. At one time attempts were made to sell the plantations
at public sale. But I managed to pull through. My commission for
administrator averaged about eight hundred a year.
I resumed the study of law under the tutelage of Mr. L. N. Whittle
in 1866, and I was duly admitted to the Bar in the following year.
On account of the fact that the Sumter County plantations kept me
so busy, I was only able to devote a limited amount of time to the
practice of law. I was reasonably successful in my profession. I had
a good clientage who felt that their affairs were in safe hands.
Some of my cases involved interesting questions of law, several
being taken to the Supreme Court. I believe my greatest triumph was
the case of Mrs. Martha F. Woodson _versus_ Bodeing & Company, in
which the opposing counsel was Mr. Benjamin H. Hill, in which I
achieved a great victory. I retired from the practice of law in 1885
and turned my entire attention to agriculture.
During my life in Macon I was interested in the welfare of the city.
Under the auspices of the Ladies' Memorial Association, I erected
the Confederate monument which is standing to-day at the crossing of
Cotton Avenue and Mulberry Street.
My niece, Martha Huguenin, married Mr. J. Marshall Johnston of the
firm of R. T. Wilson & Co., bankers of New York City. Mr. Johnston
and I purchased large plantations in Houston, Lee, and Dougherty
counties, twelve thousand acres in all. The title was conveyed to me
and Mrs. M. F. Johnston. The affairs of the Huguenin estate being
now wound up I could give most of my time to agriculture on the
newly acquired plantations. The price of cotton continued very low.
I do not think at that time any one made money planting cotton.
At just about that time the cotton caterpillar appeared in the
fields of southern Georgia and bid fair to destroy the crop. Cotton
growing seemed doomed as a profitable undertaking. One day while
out in the fields I noticed that the moths, the parents of the
cotton caterpillar, were flying very slowly, as if sick. I captured
some of these moths and took them back with me to Macon, where with
the aid of a compound microscope I discovered they were infested
with a parasitic insect. This parasite killed them in a short
time. I, at once, communicated this discovery to the Entomological
Department in Washington. But they refused to agree with me in
this, the true reason for the quick disappearance of the cotton
caterpillar. Although I had testimony that the same trait of slow
short flight was noticed in the moths all over the country, I do
not know if any credit has ever been given to my discovery by the
Department, or how they finally accounted for the disappearance of
the caterpillar from the cotton fields.
In the year 1876, a society for the promotion of agriculture was
formed, with headquarters in Washington City. The organization
spread with astonishing rapidity, the farmers looking to it
for assistance. At a general meeting in Atlanta of the Georgia
organization, of which I was a member and officer, a resolution
was passed requesting the legislature to form a Department of
Agriculture. I was requested to prepare a bill. I had no guide
before me; but I drew the bill, defining its object in various
matters, and giving the commissioners power to prescribe rules,
and to prohibit the sale of worthless fertilizers in this State.
I handed the bill to Mr. Bacon, speaker of the House, and it was
introduced by Mr. Butt of Marion County. The bill passed without
amendment after much discussion, and was soon a law. A similar bill
was passed almost at once by several other States.
Among the plantations in the western part of Dougherty County,
purchased by Mr. Johnston and myself in 1879, was a body of land
of twenty-five hundred acres known as "Hickory Level." The land
was very fertile, there was no superior in that entire section of
the State. The plantation was very sickly, no white man but one
had ever lived on it for two consecutive years. Malaria in its
worst form was very prevalent. The death rate among the negroes was
alarming. At that time, the theory of the relation of the mosquito
to the spreading of malaria had not been advanced. I considered the
sickness to be due to a great extent to the very bad water, being
what is known as "rotten limestone," which was drunk on the place.
The question of obtaining pure water became so important that at
one time it looked as though the place would have to be abandoned
if some solution were not found. I thought first of building large
cisterns with sheds to catch rain water, but that plan involved
so many details, and expense, and there was the danger of easy
contamination, so I gave up that plan. I suggested then that we
bore an artesian well, as I had been investigating that subject and
believed that a well could be bored with success. The question was
discussed between Mr. Johnston and myself but held in abeyance on
account of the expense and the uncertainty of the enterprise.
During the summer of 1880 there was a great deal of sickness on the
place. There was very little rain. Water was difficult to obtain
and was of a milky color. During that summer I tried to interest
the town of Albany and the Central of Georgia railroad in the
enterprise of boring an artesian well to obtain good water. At that
time Mr. Nelson Tift, Sr., was Mayor of Albany; General W. S. Holt
was president and Mr. Shelman superintendent of the Southwestern
railroad. As best I could, I laid before these gentlemen, the
importance of good water to that section and what the benefit would
be to the town of Albany and to the railroads. I explained why I
believed artesian wells could be bored with success in this section.
And as I felt financially unable to undertake the experiment of
the first well, I wished to get financial assistance for the
undertaking from those who would ultimately be benefited. I received
no encouragement. I wrote articles for the _Macon Telegraph_ and
the _Albany News and Advertiser_, explaining fully my reasons for
believing that artesian wells could be bored in southern Georgia. My
theories were ridiculed, and received no serious attention.
At last, I determined to commence the undertaking myself. I had the
consent of my partner, Mr. J. M. Johnston. We were jointly to bear
the expense. I again laid the matter before the managers of the
Central and Southwestern railroads for assistance. I saw Mr. Shelman
in person. All he would do was to give me a free ticket over the
Southwestern road for the man whom I had engaged to commence the
well. This amounted to three dollars and fifty cents, which was all
the assistance I received from the railroads, and that was done in
anticipation of the freight charges that were to be on the engine
and other material that were to be brought from Selma, Alabama, to
Ducker Station for the purpose of boring the well. I had written to
a friend in Selma, Mr. J. C. Campton, to recommend to me a man who
was accustomed to boring artesian wells in that section of Alabama.
He employed for me a Mr. Jackson from Selma at the price of five
dollars a day, for his services, and use of his friction clutch and
windlass. I purchased an engine and steam pump and commenced work on
February 1, 1881.
My reasons for the faith I had in the practicability of artesian
wells being bored in Georgia was a matter of thought and observation
extending from my boyhood. One day while riding in a buggy with my
father in the lower part of Baldwin County, we crossed a little
stream known as "Reedy Creek," that flowed over many small round
pebbles that looked like birds' eggs. The banks, too, of the stream
were covered with these round stones imbedded in the earth. I got
out of the buggy to get some to carry home as checker rocks for my
sisters. My father then explained to me, that at an ancient period
of time this had been the shore of the ocean that had extended over
what is now southern Georgia, south of a line drawn from Augusta
to Columbus. I was interested in the facts explained to me by my
father, and remembered the conversation.
Many years afterwards while on the southern Chattahoochee River I
noticed cut by the river bank a stratum of blue earth, which I felt
assured was an ocean deposit known as blue marl, a deep-sea ooze.
This ooze is impervious to water, preventing the water underneath
from rising to the surface in springs. I noticed this deposit on
the west bank, the Alabama side, and that it was sloping downward,
eastward, and toward the south. I crossed over to the east bank,
the Georgia side, none was to be seen. But the natural supposition
was that it was there only lower than the river bank. This was near
Eufaula. As this marl appeared again at the surface near Brunswick,
I took what seemed to me to be a logical position that this deposit
extended under all southern Georgia, far down in the earth.
There were other phenomena I had observed on this subject. During
the Civil War, I was attached to a cavalry scout service with
headquarters near Saint Mark's, Florida. One day I went with a
comrade, Jim Denham, in a skiff up the Wakulla River to the Wakulla
Spring, about five miles from Saint Mark's. This spring is said to
be the largest in the world. It is a great natural curiosity. Here
was a river as large as the Chattahoochee or larger, rising up out
of the ground. Whence came this water? The natural answer seemed: an
underground river flowing under Georgia, which had been prevented
before from rising to the surface by some natural obstruction,
namely, earth impervious to water. The water had sunk into the
earth in the northern plateau and mountains of Georgia, where there
were no water-tight strata. I was greatly awed and interested in the
Wakulla Spring. At first my ideas of its origin were only vague and
crude, but became more definite and crystallized as time went on,
and as I added to my observation and thought on the subject.
There had been several attempts to bore artesian wells in Georgia.
In about 1850 an attempt was made to bore a well in Albany; which
proved a complete failure. They were wanting in continuous pipes to
reach water-tight strata. The water would seep out and never reach
the surface. Mr. Jones of Newton, Georgia, was the contractor for
the Albany well. I wrote to him upon the subject. He answered with
a most discouraging letter, stating that when a young man he had
lost a good deal of money in that enterprise, which he had never
been able to recover from the town of Albany. Another attempt was
by a Mr. Walker, called "Rich Billy Walker," a very wealthy man of
Pulaski County, who bored two wells near Longstreet, Georgia, both
of which were failures, although he went over six hundred feet deep.
My attention was also called to the fact that scientists and
especially the famous geologist, Joseph Le Conte, had said that
artesian water could not be procured in Georgia. In the face of all
this discouragement I am astonished that I was still determined to
go ahead, and too my finances were very low. In after years, in
thinking this over, I have sometimes felt that I was compelled to
continue the undertaking by some power outside of myself.
Commencing February 1, 1881, I continued the work through the spring
and summer. My tools were so inferior that I almost had to abandon
the well, especially when a boring tool, a reamer was broken off
in the bottom of the pipe. My well seemed to be a failure and was
ridiculed by some of the citizens of Albany. I remember one day
on the street that a Mr. Bazemore, a warehouseman, stopped me and
laughingly said that he had an injunction against me, because I
was trying to rival Noah,--the difference was that Noah wished
to rescue from a flood while I wanted to flood the State. Such
ridicule only made me more than ever determined to go on. With great
difficulty I succeeded in getting the reamer out. At about the depth
of four hundred feet I reached the water-tight stratum, a deposit
of deep-sea ooze known as blue marl. I had been looking for this
water-tight envelope and felt greatly encouraged.
On August 1st, I returned to Macon leaving word to continue work
until my return, which would be within a few days. On August 4th, at
ten o'clock in the morning I received the following telegram, "Water
flowing at seven gallons per minute." I was greatly gratified at
this, which was a triumph for my belief and for my perseverance. I
took the next train accompanied by Mr. Harry Edwards of the _Macon
Telegraph_. We arrived at Ducker Station the next morning, Sunday,
and went out at once to see the little well. It was an inspiring and
gratifying sight to see the water flowing from the pipe.
The country was in the grasp of a parching drouth, and presented the
appearance of a country in a great need of the blessing of water. A
great number of awe-struck negroes had assembled. They regarded me
with great wonder and astonishment. It was thought that the Almighty
had informed me to strike at that special spot, and I was likened to
Moses, who in the wilderness struck the rock from which water gushed
out. The news spread. The well was visited by many people who came
to wonder and drink the splendid water. An account of my success was
published in many of the State papers. The first being the _Macon_
_Telegraph_ with an article by Mr. Edwards in which I was much
praised.
This gem of a little well, five hundred and fifty feet deep, of the
purest life-giving water, of less than one hundred grains of any
substance to the gallon, flowed nineteen years without diminishing.
Its diminution at the end of this time was caused by chemical
corrosion of the pipe, a hole being made, through which the water
passed into the great sand bed above the water-tight strata. I
successfully telescoped the pipe with a smaller one. The well had
only ceased to flow two or three days.