So, dear reader, I have some things to unpack today. For the better part of a month I’ve been working on the Garbutt Family Documents post. It started with a cache of articles and documents that Sue sent me in January. I started putting them into the post and supplemented them with internet research, which I enjoy doing. It’s my own version of a jigsaw puzzle, putting together pieces of data and trying to arrive at a more coherent picture.
I quickly started to learn a lot more about the Garbutt side of the family than I had ever known before. That was a pretty low threshold because I knew very little about my mother’s family. Her stories about them were sparse and not very detailed. The best resource I had was a Garbutt Family Stories document that Sue put together in 2002 from a long car ride to New Orleans she took with Mom and Dad. Sue tried to pull family stories out of both of them — mostly Mom spoke — and Sue compiled them into a useful 17-page document.
I first delved into the background of George Garbutt, the family’s original immigrant from England who came to Georgia in 1848. This was already a generation further back than Mom seemed to know about. In fact, her own origin story for the family was off by a generation — she thought it was her grandfather J.W. Garbutt who made the transatlantic trip. I progressed through subsequent generations, finding more puzzle pieces and trying to get a handle on the various lumber and related businesses of the family from the 1850s through the 1950s. I found things like the article about my grandfather, Allie Glenn Garbutt, getting shot (and shooting back!) in a robbery attempt in 1912. I questioned why my Mom never mentioned that. Did she even know? It seems like the kind of event that might get passed down in a family.
A week ago I thought I was more or less done with the post, but I wasn’t satisfied I had a good enough handle on the main family stories, like how the businesses fit together and why the family seemed to splinter over time. I kept digging with online searches from different angles and scrubbing details in the post, picking at it like a scab. I couldn’t stop and Barb wondered why I was spending so much time rooting around in this one post.
Earlier this week, while searching for details about the Statenville Railway owned by my grandfather, I came across the Georgia Historic Newspapers site which gave me a way to search old copies of local papers. In a month of detailed Google searches, I hadn’t come across it before. On Monday, I used it to find a number of articles about the railway. On Tuesday, it occurred to me to search for “Garbutt Lumber” and up popped nearly 100 new articles. I began working my way through them.
Many of the articles were duplicates or want ads, but a few gems emerged, including the cute “Some Aged Booze” snippet and the robust “A Wantonly Wicked Waste” rebuttal.
Then I came upon this June 10, 1920 article “Child’s Head is Sawed Off” and was aghast but also laughed at the awful absurdity of the tragedy. There, in a couple inches of column space and about 150 words, is a terse account of the worst kind of accident imaginable, ending with the dry, “The father was prostrated.” I’d say so.
I popped the article into my post, misinterpreting it at first by thinking that Allie had been operating the saw. I plunged ahead with other articles and didn’t really process the article’s possible importance that day. I didn’t think too much about it the next day, either, as I searched a bit further on other terms and once again figured I had wrapped up the post.
Last night, I was talking to my daughter Allie and happened to mention the post. She hadn’t read it yet so I recounted a couple of fun facts like the booze story and then laughed my way into the macabre child’s death story. I stumbled on the words “my grandfather killed a kid.” That’s when it began to really hit me how truly awful the whole episode must have been.
For the morbidly curious (me), you can check out this video of a sawmill to get an idea of what the carriage, whirling saw and dust conveyor more or less look like (you’ll have to imagine the great crusher and furnaces). Then take the machinery back 100 years. It’s not a pretty sight, but you probably don’t need to watch the video to get the idea.
It had to have been a hideous scene, made so much worse by the involvement of the bereft father. I can’t stop imagining the immediate horror of the moment, the anguish of the father and my grandfather, the calling of police and the awful cleanup.
I began to think about the possible ramifications and why we had never heard about this tragic event. So many more questions open up. Was it a coincidence that the Statenville mill stopped operations and closed that same year? Was it tied to Allie’s opening of a “big Valdosta mill” in 1920 and moving the family from Statenville to Valdosta in either 1920 or 1923-1925 (we have conflicting dates for the move). What about the subsequent sale of the Valdosta mill and shuttering of the Statenville Railway in 1924? The following year, Allie Garbutt opened a mill 100 miles away in Jesup, effectively setting himself into a self-imposed exile from his family for the next 35 years. He would stay in Jesup for a week or two at a time and only come back to Valdosta for short periods, according to Mom.
When the accident occurred, Allie was 40 years old and had been operating sawmills for nearly 20 years. His family consisted of six boys and three girls: JW (19), Glenn (17), Elmo (15), Arthur (13), Frank (10), Harry (8), Sister (6), Ruth (4), and Sara (1). The family must have known about the incident at the time — how could they not? Statenville was a very small town and the story was in multiple papers. Did Mom ever know, once she grew up? Was it hushed up? Did Allie consider himself guilty? Could he brush it off as an awful accident? Is this related to why Lida Mae rarely left the house in Mom’s memory, not even to Mom’s high school or college graduations or wedding?
What became of W.C. Dean and his family? What further interaction was there between the Garbutts and the Deans? I haven’t been able to find anything.
Is this why (or partly why) none of Allie’s boys followed the family’s three-generation tradition in the lumber business? Did it contribute to the various tragedies of the boys? All but Glenn drank, did drugs, spent time in jail, were “unstable” and generally losers in Mom’s words. They were also mean to Mom and the other girls. Any more dark material there? Was there more to Mom’s not very subtle words describing Frank’s “harassment” and “Harry really made me miserable…I really hated him.”
While we’re wondering about things, was Glenn actually gay and maybe Phebe was his beard? He is such an outlier to the other boys, escaped the family, didn’t get married until 40 and never had kids. Plus he was the sweetest, gentlest of gentlemen. Just wondering. Regardless, more power to him for making a life of his own in New York.
These genealogy searches are supposed to be fun, turning up interesting connections to historical events and characters. Or they’re exercises in historical reckoning like in Finding Your Roots when Henry Louis Gates confronts some white celebrity about their slaveholding ancestors (yeah, we have that to deal with, too). What about when they turn up family ghosts and stories deliberately hidden?
I’ve been puttering around with the Billzpage site for about three years now, from time to time wondering if or when I would encounter a vein or thread worth mining for a more concise story — an article or book or TED Talk. Something interesting enough to tell on its own. This may be it, were I so inclined. I’m not at all sure I want to dwell on this story, but it’s hard to unsee once it’s in your mind.
I gave Sue a call to see if she had any inkling of this story (or any other dark tragedies) from her years of gatherings with our Garbutt cousins. She hadn’t, but she sent me a contact for Ann Carroll Edwards who would be the likeliest to know of anything. I’ve written her and we’ll see where this leads. One way or another, I expect there will be more to this story.
Here is the response I got from Cousin Ann Edwards a couple of weeks later. Safe to say she hadn’t heard of the incident. Also safe to say her own recollections are scarcely more detailed than mine.
Hi Bill. Spring is upon us in South Georgia and I am putting in new landscaping at my little house across the street from Katie’s house. It has been a year since I moved in and I am amazed at how much work goes into a relocation. I was unsuccessful in locating the papers I thought I still had; they may be at the lake so don’t give up. One thing I remember about the boys from [Mother/Sister?] is that they kept a large number of hunting dogs in the yard and every time she went outside they got her dirty jumping up on her. She said they worked during the day and hunted all night. Of course Glenn was our golden knight and I know you have memories of him. The next two. Elmo and jw left early and were in the merchant marines on the west coast. I guess they were not interested in the lumber business. I don’t remember much about Arthur. Harry was a policeman here in Valdosta he rode a motorcycle. Frank and Ann Garbutt lived in Jesup where they grew pecans and she had a plant nursery. I recall they fought a lot. Many of the boys had problems with alcohol. I know the lumber business was hard work but they did quite well with it. I assume the reason for moving the mill was depletion of millable sized trees and the amount of time for trees to regrow. I know this is too long. Maybe we should have talked. I hope you are all well. Come to see us and we will put the coffee pot on.
The title of this post comes from a description of the town of Statenville, Georgia, being 8 miles from Mayday, another tiny town. I can’t resist the lyrical quality of the phrase.
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