Going to Georgia to Work in the Turpentine

June 3, 2023 at 12:45 am (Uncategorized)
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In 1900, Cull Stacy came to Berrien County, GA . He was 16 years old. He was born about 1884 in Richmond Parrish, North Carolina. Before coming to Georgia, he had worked at the age of 13 in a West Virginia coal mine. Like many African American men of that time, he came to south Georgia to find work in a turpentine camp. Turpentine and the naval stores industry were an economic engine for Berrien County and Ray’s Mill (now Ray City), and for other towns and counties across Wiregrass Georgia. The turpentine stills at Ray’s Mill employed many African American turpentine laborers.

Turpentine workers in a southern forest working under the watchful eyes of woodsriders.

Collecting the turpentine was hard and sometimes dangerous work. The working conditions could be grueling and the pay was  meager.  But the vast, untapped pine forests of the Wiregrass provided abundant employment opportunities for those who could take it.  African Americans, many sons of former slaves, came to the area to find work in the turpentine and sawmill operations. At Ray’s Mill such men included Dixie Alston, Amos Beckton, Boxter Blakney, David Blakney, Zackariah Blakney, James Brally, Joe Brally, John Wesley Briggs, Robert B. “BB” Brown, Thomas Brown, Peter Burges, Tom Burges, John Cooper, Dave Elliot, James Foster, Charlie Geralds, J.H. Graham, Sam Hemmingway, Isham Hill, Law Kearson, Ephriam Lang, Eph Lang, E.L. Lewis, Henry McFadden, A.C. McKnight, Bras McKnight, Elmore Medley, Rainey Medley, Henry Melvin, Sam Julian “Jim” Myers Junni Odum, Wiley Odum, Sandy Ray, William Revel, Elliot Rias, C.H. Riges, M.C. Roberson, Mack Speights, Nero Smith, John Thompson, Abraham L. Vandross, B. Washington, Myres Washington, Richard Washington, William Washington, Alexander West, John Whitfield, Jeff Williams, Amos York, Other turpentine laborers like Benjamin F. Morehead and Lewis Hudson, were born and raised in the local area of Ray’s Mill, GA.

These men mostly worked for the white timber men and turpentine operators in Berrien County. Lon Fender of Ray City, GA, was one of the biggest. In 1898, the Thigpen Turpentine Still at Ray’s Mill (now Ray City) was owned by W.F. Powell, of North Carolina. The Bamberg Still was owned by Henson Bros. & Company. Among  other Ray City and Berrien County residents who prospered in the industry was Walter “W.D.” Brown, who had a turpentine operation near Ray’s Mill in 1904. Lorenzo D. Carter was in the turpentine business. Waren Walter Purvis and Hugh A. McLean were woodsriders at Ray’s Mill. Arthur Shaw and brother-in-law, William Clements, operated a turpentine still at Willacoochee, GA. Brothers Chester Shaw and Lacy Lester Shaw were also involved in the turpentine business. Near Nashville, the county seat, was the Keefe & Bulloch turpentine still.

Cull Stacey was among the young men who came to Berrien County from North Carolina at the turn of the 20th century. Four decades later he was still working turpentine at the Aycock & Lindsay turpentine camp in Cross City, FL, 120 miles south of Ray City, GA. The Aycock and Lindsay turpentine distillers were actually on the western edge of Cross City in the separate community of Shamrock which maintained its individual identity as a milltown. It was during the Great Depression. The Works Project Administration had interviewers in the field to record American Folklife. WPA field workers interviewed Cull Stacey in a 1939 WPA audio recording Cull Stacey where he talked about “A turpentine worker’s song” he learned in the turpentine camps.

“When I was a small boy…it was sung in Georgia….I heard em singing and I picked it up, what I could learn.
Well when I first landed, you want to know how I came to Georgia? I came to Berrien County. The County Seat was Nashville. I went back then to Bulloch County and came to a mill station called a ‘camp.’ I knew some white men from home.I stayed there a few months and go to Cumberland, Georgia, and went to work in a camp run by McMullen Brothers. They were Commission men.”

“But I first came to a little station called Sparks, GA which was in Berrien County, but its not Berrien now. Its in Cook…they made a new county in there.

“The turpentiners made up the song…they brought those people from North Carolina on transportation…they don’t want to pay their debt. They would run away from the turpentine man. They could get out and they jump this railroad car from North Carolina and run to another [turpentine] man. The [turpentine] stills in Georgia at that time were very identical. [The turpentiner] would jump from the man employed him and go and work for a man he didn’t know. But he would catch him and bring him back. And that’s why this song was composed.

That [song] was original. It was sung forty years ago. Civilization follows the work, and there is no money there now. I came into Georgia when I was about sixteen. New people were coming in then. My work, I tapped the tree. I have always worked in the turpentine — grew up with it.”

This song has run out…because the young age don’t know anything about this immigration.

Kennedy, Stetson, Robert Harrison Cook, Stetson Kennedy, Cull Stacey, and Cull Stacey. I’m Going to Georgia. Cross City, Florida, 1939. Audio. https://www.loc.gov/item/flwpa000140/ .

I’m Going to Georgia

I am going to Georgia to work in the Turpentine
When I got to Georgia, I didn’t have long to stay,
I got into debt and had to run away.

I’m going to Georgia to work in the turpentine.
When I got to Georgia I began to fret,
The boss man told me I was in debt,
Going to Georgia to work in the turpentine.

I got to a lime sink and decided to stop.
The white man told me if I find the buttin line
I would have to get up and trot.
The woodsman went to the boss man and began to fret,
He say the hand left in debt.
The Woods rider caught me and brought me back.

Zora Neale Hurston was one of the WPA interviewers Aycock & Lindsay turpentine camp where Cull Stacey worked in 1939. At the time, Hurston, author of Jonah’s Gourd Vine and Mules and Men, was the only published author on the Florida WPA payroll. But at Aycock & Lindsay turpentine camp, one white woodsrider opined, “She was a pretty smart nigger. I took one look at her and sized her up to be bout two thirds white.” Hurston wrote about what she saw at the Aycock & Lindsay’s in an essay, a brief glimpse at the workday of the camp.

TURPENTINE

Well, I put on my shoes and I started. Going up some roads and down some others to see what Negroes do for a living. Going down one road I smelt hot rosin and looked and saw a “gum patch.” That’s a turpentine still to the outsider, but gum [patch] to those who work them.

It was not long before I was up [in] the foreman’s face talking and asking to be talked-to. He was a sort of pencil-shaped brown-stained man in his forties and his name was John McFarlin. He got to telling and I got to listening until the first thing I knew I was spending the night at his house so I could “Ride the Wood” with him next morning and see for myself instead of asking him so many questions. So that left me free to ask about songs go [sic] the turpentine woods.
“No, Ma’am. they don’t make up many songs. The boys used to be pretty ad [sic] about making up songs but they don’t do that now.”
“If you don’t make up songs while you are working, don’t you all make some up round the jook?”

“[No Ma’am], its like I told you. Taint like saw-mills and such like that. Turpentine woods is kind of lonesome.”

Foreman McFarlin had me up before five o’ clock next morning. He had to wake up his camp and he always started out about 5:30 so that he had every man on the job by 6.

Every man took his tools, went to his task-whatever he was doing when he knocked off at 5:30 the afternoon before, he got right on it in the morning. The foreman had 18 men under him and he saw everyone in his place.

He had 5 chippers, 7 pullers and 5 dippers and a wood-chopper. All the men off to work, John McFarlin straddled his horse, got one for me and we began riding the wood. Talking about knowing his business! The foreman can ride a “drift” and with a glance tell if every “face” on every tree has been chipped.

First he rode a drift of virgin boxes. That is when a tree is first worked, it is a virgin box for three years. That is the finest rosin. The five men were chipping away. The chipper is the man who makes those little slanting cuts on pine trees so that the gum exudes, and drains down into the box. He has a very sharp cutting tool that heavily weighted in the handle and cunningly balanced so that he chips at a stroke. The company pays a cent a tree. We stopped and watched Lester Keller chip because he is hard to beat anywhere in the world. He often chips 700 or more trees a week.

A puller is a specialized chipper. He chips the trees when they have been worked too high for the chipper. He does this with a chipping axe with a long handle [known] as a puller. The foreman explained that the tree are chipped three years and pulled three years then it is abandoned. Leroy Heath is the champ puller.

He inspected a drift that was being dipped. The men who dip take the cup off the tree, scrape out the gum with the dipping iron and put it back in place and pass on to the next face. The dippers are paid $.85 a barrel for gum and 10 barrels a week is good dipping. Dan Walker is the champ. He can dip two barrels a day.

The wood-chopper cuts wood for the still. Wood is used to fire the furnace instead of coal because the company owns millions of cords of wood for burning in trees that have been worked out.

McFarlin explained that [there] is no chipping and dipping from November to March. In November they stop working the trees, scrape the faces, [hoe] and rake around the trees as a caution against fire.

The foreman gets $12.50 a week, the foreman’s house, all the firewood he wants and all the gardening space he wants. He said shyly that he would raise in wages, but feels that he will not get it. He wants to know if the Government is sending people around to make folk pay better wages. He hopes so.

Florida Memory,

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