General Knight’s Railroad Rolls Into Civil War

October 20, 2010 at 1:21 am (Brunswick & Florida Railroad, Civil War, Knight Family, Railroads)
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Previously:

Brunswick & Florida Railroad

Brunswick & Florida Railroad Stock Certificate, issued September 4, 1856

Brunswick & Florida Railroad Stock Certificate, issued September 4, 1856

By 1857, 36 miles of track had been completed and there were grand designs that the Brunswick & Florida Railroad line would extend all the way to Pensacola, Florida. With service through connecting lines the B&F would provide passenger and freight service from the interior as far west as Vicksburg, MS all the way to the east coast shipping port at Brunswick, GA. The state of Georgia invested half a million dollars in the railroad company’s stock.

The advantage of  the B&F, it was said. was that it could move men and materials from ports on the Gulf of Mexico to the Brunswick port on the Atlantic in 24 hours “in case of war between this country and a foreign nation.”

Levi J. Knight was present when the annual Convention of the Stockholders of the Brunswick and Florida Railroad Company was held at Brunswick, GA on Wednesday, May 13, 1857.  The good news was that construction of the road was progressing,  but there was no report on the financial condition of the company. General Knight was among those who advocated for the company to negotiate an agreement with the Main Trunk railroad that would secure funding for the construction of a railroad line across southern Georgia.

According to Wikipedia, “By 1859, the railroad stretched from Brunswick to Glenmore, Georgia, where it connected with the Atlantic and Gulf Railroad.

Ultimately, Levi J. Knight’s investment in the B&F railroad became another casualty of the Civil War.  “The Brunswick and Florida Railroad was in operation up to the fall of 1863, when the Confederate Government seized it under the Impressment Act, tore up the rails, and distributed the property of the Company among other railroads, which were considered as leading military lines.”

“After the war in 1869, the State of Georgia provided about $6 million in bonds to rebuild. The railroad was then reorganized as the Brunswick and Albany Railroad.”

The Brunswick and Albany Railroad (B&A) took over operation of the Brunswick and Florida Railroad. By May 1869, the B&A had reopened tracks between Brunswick, Georgia, and a connection with the Atlantic and Gulf Railroad at Tebeauville  (now Waycross), GA.  Tebeauville was at the ninth station to be constructed on the Atlantic & Gulf RR. Philip Coleman Pendleton settled his family there in 1857. “The station was to be named Pendleton but Mr. Pendleton requested the station be named Tebeauville after his father-in-law, Frederic Edmund Tebeau of Savannah. To this day many old timers refer to the section of [Waycross] where the Tebeauville station was located as “Old Nine”.   Pendleton had come from Sandersville, GA where he was co-owner of the Central Georgian newspaper, with O. C. Pope, Sr.  During the Civil War, Pendleton served with the 50th Georgia Regiment. He later moved to Valdosta, GA and in 1867 established the South Georgia Times there.

Tebeauville Historic Marker, Waycross, GA

Tebeauville Historic Marker, Waycross, GA

The B&A went bankrupt in 1872 after a bond was nullified by the Georgia General Assembly. It was reorganized in 1882 and was then named the Brunswick and Western Railroad.

(See source citations below)

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Sources:

Georgia.1836. Acts of the General Assembly of the state of Georgia passed in Milledgeville at an annual session in November and December, 1835. An act to incorporate the Brunswick and Florida Railroad.pg 187.

United States. (1851). The statutes at large and treaties of the United States of America from. Boston: C.C. Little and J. Brown. pg 146

Dozier, Howard Douglas. 1920. A history of the Atlantic Coast Line Railroad. Houghton Mifflin. pg 79.

Phillips, Ulrich Bonnell. 1908. A history of transportation in the eastern cotton belt to 1860. pg 358.

Georgia Telegraph. Dec 20, 1853. From Milledgeville. Macon, GA. Pg 2

Georgia Telegraph. June 13, 1854. Minutes of the stockholders of the Brunswick and Florida Railroad. Macon, GA. Pg 3

Southern Recorder, May 15, 1855. Brunswick and Florida Railroad. Pg 2

Georgia Telegraph. Apr 8, 1856. Minutes of the Board of Commissioners of the Atlantic & Gulf Railroad Company, First Meeting, Wednesday, Feb 27, 1856. Macon, GA. Pg 3

United States. 1857. Appendix to the Congressional Globe containing speeches, important state papers, laws, etc., of the third session, Thirty-fourth Congress. Naval Depot at Brunswick, Georgia: Speech of Hon. A. Iverson of Georgia in the Senate, January 20, 1957. pg 270-275.

Poor, H. V. (1869). Poor’s manual of railroads. New York: H.V. & H.W. Poor; [etc., etc.. Pg. 337.

Loyless, T. W. (1902). Georgia’s public men 1902-1904. Atlanta, Ga: Byrd Print. Pp 166.
Miller, S.F. 1858. The bench and bar of Georgia : memoirs and sketches, with an appendix, containing a court roll from 1790 to 1857, etc. (1858). J. B. Lippincott & Co. Philadelphia. Pg 170

Milledgeville Federal Union, Nov. 18, 1856. Commercial Convention at Savannah. page 3. Milledgeville, GA.

United States of America, Bureau of the Census. Eighth Census of the United States, 1860. Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, 1860. M653, 1,438 rolls.Census Place: , Berrien, Georgia; Roll: M653_111; Page: 362; Image: 363.

Mitchell, S. Augustus. 1855. Mitchell’s new traveller’s guide through the United States and Canada. pg 87

Swayze, J. C., & H.P. Hill & Co. (1862). Hill & Swayze’s Confederate States rail-road & steam-boat guide: Containing the time-tables, fares, connections and distances on all the rail-roads of the Confederate States, also, the connecting lines of rail-roads, steamboats and stages, and will be accompanied by a complete guide to the principal hotels, with a large variety of valuable information. Griffin, Ga: Hill & Swayze.

Railga.com. Brunswick & Florida Railroad. https://railga.com/brunfl.html

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