Flemington, Georgia - History

History

_ As in the case of Walthourville and following their exam- _ ple, several of the members commenced settling at Gravel Hill, now Flemington, about 1814. Among the early settlers were William Fleming, after whom the place was named, John Osgood, Oliver Stevens, Peter Farly Winn, Joseph Norman, Simon Fraser, Major John Bacon, and Rev. Murdock Murphy, who lived near the place owned by Rev. E. Q. An-

Previous to this, the little house used for magistrates' court and for muster ground, was the place for occasional services. About 1836 a frame house was erected near the log house, which was still continued in use as a school house, and where the writer obtained most of his early education ; the road, being one night set on fire by someone and burned. This first church building had a shed around it, and a small belfry at the west end. The ground, some four acres, was

The present building was erected about 1851 and upon the same site as the other. The bell in the steeple is the one used at Midway so long, it having fallen to the Flemington people in the distribution of the effects of the old church. Its removal from the old steeple to its present resting place was search after a healthy location crossed over Bulltown swamp and penetrated the piney woods some three miles, and there located their village. It was named Jonesville after the first settler, Samuel Jones, and was located not far from the ranch of Moses Way, one of the early settlers, who had built a stockade for his cattle somewhere in that localt ity, the country there furnishing excellent pi s Fe stock, with which the neighborhood abounded, and i the origin, I suppose, of the primitive, though not has sical name of the swamp near by. . Among the early settlers were Samuel Jones, John: w Louis LeConte, Nathaniel Varnedoe; and later, W. L. Jor Moses Jones, Thos. Sheppard, Mr. Deane, Edward Quarte man, T. W. Fleming, Capt. P. W. Fleming, Joseph Bacon, yore B. Barnard, and Dr. J. M. B. Harden. Here Dr. Axson spent the last years of his ministry among this people, Bent having first lived at Walthourville, until the burning of thers parsonage in that place. Until the time of the war it was a delightful village with about eighteen families, but like Sunbury and some of the other dead towns of Georgia, its glory : is gone; its inhabitants scattered; its houses pulled down, . and soon to be a thing of the past, without even a single | vestige left to mark the spot. How appropriate and seemingly prophetic the subject of one of the addresses which the writer heard, and so well remembers, delivered at a school © exhibition in said alae in 1850, from the words "sic ator are still ringing in his ears, but the occasion, the aut ence, and the very lips that uttered them, are all now buried forever 1 in the silence of the tomb!