Valdosta: The Early Years

by Dean Poling

While the Civil War decimated much of the South, it helped an infant town of Valdosta grow. It was the end of the war that nearly destroyed Valdosta.

In 1859-60, Lowndes County residents created Valdosta to have a county seat along the path of a coming railroad. Lowndes literally shut down its county seat of Troupville to create Valdosta. Railroads were that vital to a community’s prospects.

On July 4, 1860, the first train stopped in the new city of Valdosta. Had events not gone as they soon would, the railroad would have still brought people to Valdosta, but major events would make Valdosta a refuge then a home for many folks.

Within a year after the arrival of Valdosta’s first train, the nation was at war. Southern states, including Georgia, had seceded from the United States of America to create the Confederacy.

Like towns and counties throughout the South, Valdosta and Lowndes County saw many of its young men join Confederate forces and march off to war. Like most Southern agricultural communities, the absence of so many young men created hardships for Valdosta-Lowndes County families and its economy. As the war progressed, and the South began facing increasing defeats and set-backs, as Union forces penetrated into the Southern states and more battlefields were in the South, Valdosta felt even sharper economic strains, the absence of its menfolk, and the mournful loss of their lives.

But Valdosta and South Georgia were gaining reputations as safe havens from the war. Valdosta’s reputation for being far from the war gave the young city its first statewide and regional publicity.

“Throughout the war, Valdosta was advertised in all the major Georgia newspapers as a ‘safe retreat’ from the threat of Union bombardment,” writes Dr. Louis Schmier in his book, “A Ray in the Sunbelt: Valdosta & Lowndes County.” “Though spared the ravages of invasion and battle, not even inland Valdosta was safe from the effects of the Union naval blockade.”

Train or no train, during the war, Schmier notes, Valdosta’s store shelves were often empty. “Flour, salt and sugar were rare items. Meat, grain, and corn grew scarce. People could not get cloth or any notions.”

“Economy was a study as the war went on,” notes the General James Jackson Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution’s book, “History of Lowndes County Georgia: 1825-1941.” Shoes and clothing were preserved as best as possible. “Needles were soon so scarce that any lady fortunate enough to have several would put them under lock and key for safety.”

“Government warehouses and depots frequently bore the brunt of attacks in smaller towns like Valdosta and Colquitt,” writes Dr. David Williams, Teresa Crisp Williams and David Carlson in their book, “Plain Folks in a Rich Man’s War: Class and Dissent in Confederate Georgia.”

During the war, the only event to call Valdosta’s home guard into service was not a Yankee incursion but an 1863 rampage of starving Southern women in Thomasville, according to “Plain Folks.”

Thinking they would face the enemy, the Valdosta home guard excitedly armed itself. “When they arrived in Thomasville, they learned, to their utter chagrin, that some soldiers’ wives had threatened to break into the government commissary to obtain food for their hungry children,” Thannie Wisenbaker, a Valdosta resident, later wrote of the event, according to “Plain Folks.”

“The (Valdosta) Guards were sadly disappointed and much disgusted. They had failed to meet an imaginary foe,” according to the DAR book.

At one point, “a group of Valdosta women marched on a local store and tried to buy cotton, but the proprietor refused to take Confederate money,” according to “Plain Folks.” “He would, however, trade for bacon. Having no bacon to trade, the women forcibly took all the yarns in the store. In the same neighborhood (west of Stockton), a dozen or more women — at least one armed with a pistol — broke into a government warehouse and stole a wagonload of bacon.”

Such deprivations, however, were felt throughout the South as the war continued, often with invasions and battles, too. Not Valdosta. It was deprived but not in the immediate path of the war. Women stealing bacon at gunpoint was nothing compared to the horrors of a Civil War battlefield. Given this reputation for security, people came to settle in Valdosta.

One such family was that of Major Henry Holliday, the father of a boy who would become the legendary Western figure “Doc” Holliday of Wyatt Earp and OK Corral fame.

Late in the Civil War, Major Henry Holliday moved to the new town of Valdosta in hopes of protecting his family from Union forces.

“When Major (Holliday) first saw it, Valdosta was a dismal place,” writes Gary L. Roberts in his book, “Doc Holliday: The Life and Legend.” “... The only thing the town had to recommend it was that it was distant from the war. ... Gathering refugees made (Valdosta) even less attractive.”

While considered safe, Valdosta’s security was not assured. “In 1864, people were restless, not knowing what to expect in the way of news from the war,” according to “History of Lowndes County.”

They prepared for war with the formation of the Valdosta Guard consisting mostly of old men and teenagers, but their only action came from the desperate mothers in Thomasville.

The closest battle to Valdosta was not in Georgia but in Florida. About 60 miles away, the battle in Olustee, Fla., is probably the closest site of a major Civil War battle to Valdosta. On the way to Olustee, Confederate Brigadier General Alfred Colquitt and his regiment camped a night in Valdosta. The Battle of Olustee was a short but deadly skirmish which left casualties of 1,861 Union soldiers and 946 Confederate soldiers. These were by no means the highest casualties of a Civil War battle but, given the number of troops involved, it was proportionately one of the war’s bloodiest battles, and the Union was routed.

Still, “Valdosta was now apprehensive that the Yanks would find even this secluded spot,” according to the DAR book. By late 1864, train service to and from Valdosta halted with General William Tecumseh Sherman’s destruction of rails during his march to the sea across Georgia. But even as Atlanta burned and Georgia was ravaged during Sherman’s march to and occupation of Savannah, Valdosta remained cut-off from the world but safe.

In 1864, a group of Liberty County refugees arrived in Valdosta. They were fleeing the ravages of Sherman’s march. They organized what came to be the First Presbyterian Church of Valdosta.

Given Valdosta’s youth at the time of the war and the infusion of new residents, settlers and refugees perhaps Valdosta was better equipped than other Georgia and Southern towns to resume life after the war. With so little past history and no entrenched society, Valdosta had little nostalgia for its way of life before the war because there was so little Valdosta history prior to the war.

“(Valdosta) found it easier than other areas of Georgia to diminish the restrictive influence of the past and to concentrate on developing the future,” Schmier wrote in “A Ray in the Sunbelt.” “They were more inclined to consider the replacement of a society based on cotton and slavery with a society based on merchandising, manufacturing, and diversified farming.”

As one observer of Valdosta noted: “They really don’t have much to look back to. There’s no reason for them not to look forward to something different.”

Within the next three decades, Valdosta would build itself into a major stop in Georgia, as the world’s largest market of inland sea island cotton, and as the “Jewel of South Georgia.” Yet, this prosperity and that nickname were years away.

Immediately after the war, many of these new Valdostans were ready to return to their old Southern homes.

Though ravaged by war, goods and commerce first returned to the Old South’s population centers. Railroads were restored to larger cities, meaning more remote outposts such as the small, new town of Valdosta had to wait. Having endured enough hardships, people who had arrived in Valdosta for safety during the war began leaving the town once the war ended.

Others had come to view Valdosta as their new home, as a place to stay and build. One such man was Major Philip C. Pendleton.

Accompanied by his 16-year-old son, William F. Pendleton, Major P.C. Pendleton served in Virginia campaigns with Company B Fiftieth Georgia Regiment until the major’s retirement in 1862, according to Jane Twitty Shelton in her book, “Pines and Pioneers: A History of Lowndes County, Georgia 1825-1900.” At the age of 18, William went back to war; “however, Major Pendleton moved his family from Tebeauville (Waycross) to Valdosta in December 1863.”

Amidst the isolation and turmoil of Reconstruction, Pendleton became an advocate for Valdosta.

He would stand in the middle of the street to stop families and their wagons from leaving Valdosta, according to the tales. He leased a hotel room as a hospitality room. Pendleton wanted legislation to ban the word “can’t” from Valdosta’s vocabulary, so positive things could be accomplished. He preached the virtues of Valdosta in the hospitality room, on the streets, in church pulpits, everywhere he could. In 1867, he started The South Georgia Times, a weekly newspaper, where he also wrote as an advocate of Valdosta.

Schmier’s “A Ray in the Sunbelt” gives one of the best sketches of Pendleton’s advocacy, noting the major “emerged as a leading and calming voice of reason” during a troubled time. Though he was not immune to his times, often lamenting emancipation, he also stood against radicals within the population. He presented his cases in calming language.

Pendleton advocated Valdostans to channel their energies into building a better life and a better city. As Schmier notes, Pendleton “urged people to ‘return to the spirit of the pioneer ... Build your house, fashion your tools.’”

Throughout the South, plantation owners were often a region’s leaders. In areas with more plantations, these leaders attempted resurrecting a pre-war way of life and commerce that ran counter to the forces of Reconstruction. With few plantations, Pendleton was able to advocate a new way of life and a new type of commerce in Valdosta.

His and others efforts to create a new type of Southern city were eventually successful, though Major P.C. Pendleton never saw the fruits of his efforts.

In June 1869, at the age of 56, Pendleton was riding home with his 4-year-old son, Dandridge, when “his horse took fright (cause unknown) ran away and threw him out, it is supposed against a stump,” according to an article in The South Georgia Times. “His little son was thrown out at the distance of 50 yards further on but was unhurt — His friends rallied to the assistance of the Major, who was taken up insensible. The bruises on the forehead and temple, and his unconscious state showed internal cerebral injury.”

He tossed and turned, speaking incoherently, until, the man who saved Valdosta “passed away to the inheritance of the pure and good.”

Four years after the war, less than 10 years after its inception, Valdosta had transferred from a place secure from the battlefield to a place with a future that seemed secure.

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