I received a letter from Mr. Alfred C. Newell concerning a memorial
to the memory of Col. John P. Fort. The letter in part reads:
"I note that John P. Fort, of Mount Airy, is dead. I write you
this because it seems to me a movement should be initiated by some
one to establish a memorial to this great man. He would not want
a monument. He would be the last man in the world to care for
anything like display. It seems to me, however, entirely fitting
that a special appropriation could be made by the board of county
commissioners of every county in south Georgia to the end that a
small mountain school might be established somewhere about his
beloved Mount Airy.
"What William H. Crawford, Charles F. Crisp, and Alfred H. Colquitt
were to Georgia in a public sense; what Sidney Lanier and Joel
Chandler Harris were to the State in a literary way; and what Henry
Grady was as an editor-statesman, John P. Fort has been to Georgia
as the practical scientist.
"In other words, his name deserves to be perpetuated in the
immediate set of the biggest men in the State's history.
"I don't think I am going too far when I say that he probably did
more for Georgia in a practical way than any other one man. I have
a long letter from him which he wrote some years ago telling me how
he first came to think of drilling the original artesian well on
his place near Albany. This was in 1881. You know, of course, the
transformation which followed in this section.
"It was through his efforts that the apple culture was introduced in
the north Georgia mountains.
"He was a dreamer who dreamed dreams as well as a scientist who knew
how to work out these dreams with a table of logarithms.
"His father before him was a great man, old Dr. Tomlinson Fort--the
greatest antebellum physician of his day."
It is certainly appropriate that some steps be taken at once to
erect a memorial to Colonel Fort. Nothing would be more fitting than
a "mountain school." It is better than brass or marble. Mr. Newell
has communicated his suggestion to Editor Henry McIntosh, of Albany,
and also to Hon. Clark Howell.
The thought-forces worked strongly in Colonel Fort, making him
a centrifugal force, a builder for humanity. He lived to see
his visions become realities--blessings to mankind. He felt the
responsibility resting upon him. He never permitted his faith to
trail, but walked uprightly, full of good deeds and useful thoughts.
Colonel Fort was certainly the "practical scientist." Albany is
known as the "Artesian City." Colonel Fort gave to Dougherty County
its first flowing artesian well. His apples from the "hills of
Habersham" and Rabun took the premium over all others at the fairs
of the great Northwest.
Throw a rock into the air and by force of gravitation it falls. Yet
right in the face of that power of gravitation, that life-giving
principle called sap, flows to the top of the tallest tree,
resuscitating its remotest branches. Colonel Fort's attempt to
discover flowing artesian water was likened by his friends to the
rock that falls to the ground. But his thought-forces within, in the
face of discouragement, were like the ascending sap, bounding in
hope and carrying triumph and beauty and health to every branch of
his tree of endeavor.
Every flowing artesian well in Georgia is a never-ceasing tribute to
Colonel Fort--the "practical scientist," as Mr. Alfred Newell calls
him.
Colonel Fort drove mosquitoes from his Dougherty County plantation
by the simple device of putting up martin-gourds and bird-houses
at the homes of his tenants. He had discovered that the swallows
and martins fed on mosquitoes, and determined to locate them on his
premises by building little houses for them. On his recent visit
to Macon he told the writer, his countenance lighting up with
expressions of pleasure over his triumph, that his experiment had
been a success and that the health of his tenants was excellent.
Two years ago he advised me to try the martin. But the tenants
considered martin-gourds a relic of slavery times, and in their
superstition would not erect the martin-poles. Colonel Fort also
said the martins fed on boll weevils, and he expected to largely
increase the number of martin-houses. And this was our last
conversation, not many weeks ago. Yes, he was like Colonel Hunt, of
Eatonton, "a practical scientist"--the most useful of men.