Jackson County in 1796
A person who lives in an isolated house
As the Lyle patriarch drew his last breaths the country for whose independence he fought was imperiled again by its former imperial master. In the War of 1812 the British armed the natives to menace the frontier, endangering the settlers in Jackson County and other areas along America’s contested western border. Georgia’s authorities acted against the threat and ordered the construction of a fort on Hog Mountain near the headwaters of the Appalachee River in present-day northeastern Gwinnett County. The outpost was completed in 1813 and named Fort Daniel. A route which we now call Peachtree Road was cut through to Fort Peachtree, another hastily-built stockade 30 miles southwest on the Chattahoochee River. Fort Daniel stood about fifteen miles west of the Lyle home and was garrisoned by the 25th Regiment of the Georgia militia, which counted among its number Maher’s sons John and William Crawford. In the event the Brits’ native adjutants did not strike Jackson County.
William was born on December 21, 1770, in Virginia and married Elizabeth Boring, born on October 29, 1784, in North Carolina, on March 25, 1803, in Jackson County. Proximity may explain their matrimony: Elizabeth’s parents, Isaac Boring, Sr. and Phebe Browning, lived east of the Lyles along the Mulberry River. William was a farmer whose strict piety forbade labor on the Sabbath. The 1850 census discloses the value of William’s real estate was $2,500; in 1860 it was $4,000, and his personal estate was assessed at $10,804. The 1860 agricultural census shows his farm produced fifteen bushels of sweet potatoes, 75 pounds of butter, 35 bushels of wheat, 250 bushels of Indian corn, and 8,000 bales of hay. In the autumn of that year William died, two months shy of his 90th birthday; Elizabeth passed on September 17, 1863. The Battle of Chickamauga raged 150 miles to the northwest as her family was in mourning. William and Elizabeth had twelve children, born between 1804 and 1827. The firstborn was Dilmus Johnston, named for William’s brother Dilmus. This uncommon name comes from Catalonia, a region of eastern Spain, and means “a person who lives in an isolated house.” Dilmus Sr. inspired several successive generations of Lyles and associated families to use his name, yet it is surprising that William chose it because family lore recounts that they didn’t even get along. Dilmus Sr.’s métier as a purveyor of spirits may have had provoked his ire.Jackson is phenomenally rich in bottom lands. The county is a system of water courses. The head waters of the Oconee string through the county in perfect network. There are the Pond Fork, Allen Fork, Walnut Fork and Mulberry Forks of the Middle Oconee River. Then the trail of creeks, Sandy, Big and Little Curry, Crooked Creek, Cabin Creek, Turkey, Candler, Pond and Hurricane Creeks form the North Oconee, and these two branches of the river drain the lands for 10 miles and join just below Athens.—1886 Jackson County Edition of The Weekly Banner-Watchman, Athens, Georgia
Dilmus Sr. lived along the Mulberry River where in addition to operating grist and saw mills he ran a whiskey distillery whose product was so admired by the locals they begged him not to leave for the War of 1812 and thus deprive them his home brew. When the war ended in 1815 and the British blockade was lifted, Dilmus Sr. ordered from Nova Scotia two pairs of flint millstones, which arrived at Charleston harbor and were transported overland to the Mulberry River with great difficulty. Dilmus Sr. used the millstones for the next 32 years until in a macabre instance of peripeteia one of the massive granitic discs fell onto his foot and crushed it. Naïve to lethal infection and far removed from any competent practitioner of medicine, his family took him home, where he succumbed to gangrene on November 1, 1847.When the English arrive they build a house, when the Germans arrive they build a barn, and when the Scots-Irish come they build a distillery.—Appalachian saying
Mulberry train depot, ca. 1910
Sir: I held under the Government of the Confederate States the appointment of Post Master at Mulberry Jackson County Geo – a small country Post Office remote from any City – or Town. This office I held for the convenience of the surrounding community & certainly not for the honor or profit of the position. But the fact of having held it excludes me from the pardon & amnesty offered in you excellency’s Proclamation of May 29th 1865. I therefore, herewith humbly and respectfully submit to your Excellency my Special application for Pardon from the pains and penalties now imposed upon me by the Laws of the United States. I have taken and Subscribed the prescribed Amnesty Oath, which I shall observe and keep in good faith. My property is worth less than twenty thousand. Being above the Conscription age I have had no connexion with the Military Service in the Confederate Armies except a few months service in the State Militia under a Law of the State. It is my intention & purpose to be a loyal and useful citizen for the U.S. From that Government I expect protection and to that Government I give my Allegiance. I am Somewhat advanced in life with a large family mainly to raise and educate. With these responsibilities and duties resting upon me I cannot feel indifferent to the loss of what means I possess. The thought of living under the ban of the Government is deeply mortifying to me. I therefore appeal to your Excellency for the exercise of that clemency towards me, which has so signally characterized the official conduct of your Excellency towards so many others and invoke pardon from all the penalties to which I am now obnoxious. No proceedings have been instituted to confiscate my estate. All of which I have the honor most Respectfully to Submit As in duty bound &c &cDilmus Reid affirmed his support for the Constitution and the emancipation of the slaves in a loyalty oath signed in Athens on August, 14, 1865, witnessed by Major Matthias S. Euen, who filled in the blanks on the printed form: “The above named has florid complexion grey hair, and blue eyes; is 5 feet 9 inches high, aged 49 years; by profession a merchant.” The provisional governor of Georgia recommended a pardon, citing his position as “only a Country postmaster,” and passed on the application to the United States Attorney General. Mail to the Mulberry office was discontinued on September 28, 1866, but when it was reestablished in 1872 he was restored to his former position, which he held until his death in 1889.
This remarkable photograph is on display at the Crawford W. Long Museum
in downtown Jefferson. It portrays three of William Crawford Lyle's
sons; one of them is believed to be Dilmus Johnston Lyle.
Miles of Lyles
William and Elizabeth’s oldest son Dilmus Johnston Lyle was born on January 4, 1804, in Jackson County. On February 21, 1828, he married Sarah Polly Green, born on February 15, 1801, in Spartanburg, South Carolina to John Green and Jane Bickerstaff. His wife, known to her family as Sally, gave birth to eight children between 1829 and 1842. Dilmus seems to have been a farmer of limited means. The 1860 census gives the value of his personal estate as $560, in 1870 as $100; in none of the censuses does he claim to own any land. Dilmus is listed in the 1880 census, conducted on June 10, as the head of household with Sally and two of their children. It is believed he died later that year as no further records can be found. Sally died on November 21, 1893. Her obituary reads:
Sarah Jane Lyle was the second child born to Dilmus Johnston and Sally, on November 8, 1830. She can be found living with her parents in the Mulberry settlement in the censuses of 1840, 1850, and 1860. On December 9, 1860, she married William Henry Potter, a carpenter born in Rhode Island. Nothing is known of his parents or when he came to Georgia, except that he was previously married to Permelia Nixon on August 10, 1825, with whom he had eight children before her death in January 1860. According to the 1850 census he was born around 1795, yet the 1870 census lists his birth year as 1810. It is possible he lied about his age to Sarah Jane and her family, as he was about 35 years older than her and even older than her father. In the 1860s they had two daughters and two sons, the youngest of whom was trusted with the old family name Dilmus. In 1870 William listed the value of his land as $300 and his personal estate as $200. There is no further record of him, and the time and nature of his death and his place of burial are unknown.
Sarah Jane at Doster Cemetery: “She died as she lived a Christian”
Sarah Jane was just entering middle age when her husband died. According to subsequent censuses she was occupied as a farmer and was the head of household in which some of her children and grandchildren lived and worked as farm laborers. In 1910 Sarah Jane’s newborn great-grandson and my future great-grandfather Edgar Lee Tate lived with his family not far from her home west of Jefferson. They were farmers in an area known for corn, oats, hay, peas, and syrup, and the harvests were so plentiful and the climate so inviting that Jackson County’s population reached 30,000 that year—a sum not surpassed until 1990. The wild frontier Maher Shalal Hashbaz Lyle settled had changed in a century to a landscape of fields, pastures, mills, and railroads—a transformation witnessed and helped along by the Lyles and finally bookended by Sarah Jane Lyle Potter’s death on June 17, 1913, for which her grandson and my great-great-grandfather Alvin Crawford Tate penned this tribute:
The Jackson Herald, July 3, 1913
I'm writing to ask about your identification of Sally Green as the daughter of John Green and Jane Bickerstaff. I believe that to be the case, but we've been unable to definitively prove that Jane's last name was Bickerstaff. I'd like to correspond with you about the source of that information. Thanks
ReplyDeleteI'm writing to ask about your identification of Sally Green as the daughter of John Green and Jane Bickerstaff. I believe that to be the case, but we've been unable to definitively prove that Jane's last name was Bickerstaff. I'd like to correspond with you about the source of that information. Thanks
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