Pieces of Our Past: Uncle Andy remembered

It could be said that Andrew Fuqua was the first historian of Laurens County. After all, he spent the first and last 1,113 months of his life living near the edge of the county seat of Dublin.   From his years as “Little Andy” to “Old Uncle Andy,” Fuqua experienced a series of dramatic changes from the tiny village of less than 100 persons to a burgeoning agricentered metropolis of East Central Georgia.  

Andrew Augustus Fuqua was born in what was then Montgomery County, Georgia, in a quaint home on a sandy ridge along the east side of the Oconee River in April 1808. His parents, Henry Candler Fuqua and Rachel Berryhill Fuqua, were among the earliest settlers of the community then called “Sandbar,” a moniker given to the place because of the large sandbar at the point where one or more Indian trails crossed the Oconee River.

It has been written that Andy’s father was the first to discover crushed cotton seeds as an excellent fertilizer. Legend has it that Henry Fuqua crossed the river to the west side and farmed the fertile areas, which were then owned by the Creek Nation. Normally, Fuqua’s incursion on Creek lands would be treated as an invasion that would be solemnly dealt with. Fuqua’s mother, Susan Berryhill, was a daughter of Andrew Berryhill, owner of a large tract of land 25-30 miles down the Oconee at a place still called Berryhill’s Bluff.  She was born in the Creek Indian territory in the mid-1780s and was raised an Indian. Her mother, (half English, half Creek or Cherokee), Elizabeth Derrisaw was born in a Creek village in the Coweta Territory, some twenty years earlier. Elizabeth’s mother, whose name is lost to time, was born in the mountains of Dade County, Georgia, in the upper left corner of Georgia.  He was technically 1/32 native American by blood, but virtually one-half by his upbringing in a virtual wilderness. 

As a young man, Andy took advantage of an occasional trip to Dublin, which was founded when he was 3 years old. His proud father introduced Andy to many of the most influential men in the county and the state.  These eminent men, close friends of this included the Governor, U.S. Senator and Congressman George M. Troup and General David Blackshear. 

Andy told a reporter for the Macon Telegraph in 1899, “A resident by the name of McCormick donated 100 acres of land for a county site, and for a framed, wooden courthouse to be built. There were a few slaveholders at the time.  Gov. Troup, Gen. David, and Joe Blackshear owned many negroes. The majority owned none and lived by farming on a small scale, raising cattle and catching fish. The streams abounded in fish. The woods were full of deer, turkey and every kind of game. Sugar cane grew wild on the edges of the swamps. Oats and swamp peas were all of the forest floors.

“People made their own clothing, and the women spun the cloth. Every family had a spinning wheel,” Andy recalled.

On the Sabbath, young girls, usually in groups, walked to church five or six miles. The girls removed their stockings and shoes until they reached the edge of the meeting house. The girls did not want to wear out their good shoes because itinerant shoe makers rarely peddled their wares in town. The church that Andy refers to is most likely Poplar Springs North, the first and oldest Baptist church west of the Oconee River in Georgia.

Andy remembered the first grist mill and 36-saw cotton gin that he ever saw.  It was built by Jonathan Sawyer, the town’s first postmaster and the long-accepted founder of Dublin.  Andy remembered the day when his father covered a lot of garden plants with cottonseed, which was generally thrown in the river as a useless by-product. Today, historians give credit to Fuqua for the discovery of cottonseed as a fertilizer.  

Andy recalled that as a small boy, the town’s first teacher was an Irishman named McCeever.

The first courthouse, a small affair, was used for Sunday preaching and other meetings. That practice ended when Jeremiah Yopp donated an acre for a Baptist Church, which is still located in the original spot, nearly 200 years later.

Uncle Andy remembered the first coffee in Dublin, which was imported by wagon from Savannah.  Wright Flowers boiled some in a meat cooking pan and spat it out instantly as it was “horrible.” Andy’s mother diluted it with more water. His father was not impressed and called it only “colored water.”

Andy remembered the days when the local militia mustered on a large field on the outskirts of town. “The county was divided into militia districts. Each company had a captain, who led his men through intense drills.  “There were occasions for fights. They fought not with deadly weapons but with arms and fists.” Any man who pulled a knife was extracized and dismissed from the company as a ‘low sneak.’”   

Fuqua recalled the day when he was working as a sawyer in a mill when he was struck by a severe case of the chills. Andy had been suffering through the previous fall and into the winter He sought medical assistance, but no cure could be found. That day was very cold. Fuqua feinted and fell 25 feet down in the icy waters. Somehow, Andy was able to swim to the bank.  Andy walked a fair distance to his home to retrieve some dry clothes. When he arrived at his modest home, he found his entire wardrobe was frozen solid.   Andy was rescued by his wife, the former Miss Mable Thoas,  who heard his wailing calls for help just in the nick of time. Since that incident and until his death, some 50-plus years later, Andy Fuqua never had a case of the chills again. Andy broke down and sobbed: “She knew my voice. She heard my cry.”  

The Fuqua family accumulated more than 1,000 acres on the western fringe of Dublin. Andy lived in a modest home on an old Indian trail, then known as the Old Hawkinsville Wagron Road or the Chicken Road, and now Bellevue Road. The house, now long ago razed, was located just to the rear of a large water oak, Dublin’s oldest tree, at the corner of Bellevue Road and Oakhurst Drive.   

Andy died on Aug. 21, 1900. His body was placed next to his beloved Mable, who went to Heaven ahead of him.  “Uncle Andy” rests in peace under the shade of ancient cedars in the Old City Cemetery in the rear of Dublin First Methodist Church.” Their daughter, Sarah, married Judge John T. Duncan, a leader of the Dublin community during the Civil War. Duncan, who owned large tracts of land east of the Fuqua, secured the first permanent Oconee River Bridge. Their daughter, Lizzie, married Zach Kennedy, who also owned thousands of acres in western Dublin.