Published: August 08, 2007 09:22 am         

Valdosta was a secluded safe haven during the Civil War

With Wild Adventures, Valdosta State University, its location off Interstate 75 and being just north of the Florida state line, Valdosta is gaining a reputation of being a destination — a getaway spot.

Yet, Valdosta was a destination as early as its first years of existence. And it was considered one of the best getaways in Georgia. Not a leisurely getaway but a safe getaway.

Valdosta provided many folks a secluded getaway from the ravages of the Civil War.

In 1859-60, Lowndes County residents created Valdosta to have a county seat along the path of a coming railroad. Lowndes literally shut down its county seat of Troupeville to create Valdosta. Railroads were that vital to a community’s prospects.

On July 4, 1860, the first train stopped in the new city of Valdosta. Had events not gone as they soon would, the train would have brought people to Valdosta, but major events would make Valdosta a refuge, then a home for many folks.

Within a year after the arrival of Valdosta’s first train, the nation was at war. Southern states, including Georgia, had seceded from the United States of America and had formed the Confederacy.

Like towns and counties throughout the South, Valdosta and Lowndes County saw many of its young men join Confederate forces and march off to war. Like most Southern agricultural communities, the absence of so many young men created hardships for Valdosta-Lowndes County families and its economy. As the war progressed, and the South began facing increasing defeats and set-backs, as Union forces penetrated into the Southern states and more battlefields were in the South, Valdosta felt even sharper economic strains, the absence of its menfolk, and the mournful loss of their lives.

But Valdosta and South Georgia were gaining reputations as safe havens from the war. Valdosta’s reputation for being far from the war gave the young city its first statewide and regional publicity.

“Throughout the war, Valdosta was advertised in all the major Georgia newspapers as a ‘safe retreat’ from the threat of Union bombardment,” writes Dr. Louis Schmier in his book, A Ray in the Sunbelt: Valdosta & Lowndes County. “Though spared the ravages of invasion and battle, not even inland Valdosta was safe from the effects of the Union naval blockade.”

Train or no train, during the war, Schmier notes, Valdosta’s store shelves were often empty. “Flour, salt and sugar were rare items. Meat, grain, and corn grew scarce. People could not get cloth or any notions.”

“Economy was a study as the war went on,” notes the General James Jackson Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution’s book, History of Lowndes County Georgia: 1825-1941. Shoes and clothing were preserved as best as possible. “Needles were soon so scarce that any lady fortunate enough to have several would put them under lock and key for safety.”

Such deprivations, however, were felt throughout the South as the war continued, often with invasions and battles, too. Not Valdosta. It was deprived but not in the immediate path of the war. Given this reputation for security, people came to settle in Valdosta.

One such family was that of Major Henry Holliday, the father of a boy who would become the legendary Western figure “Doc” Holliday of Wyatt Earp and OK Corral fame.

Late in the Civil War, Major Henry Holliday moved to the new town of Valdosta in hopes of protecting his family from Union forces.

“When Major (Holliday) first saw it, Valdosta was a dismal place,” writes Gary L. Roberts in his book, “Doc Holliday: The Life and Legend.” “... The only thing the town had to recommend it was that it was distant from the war. ... Gathering refugees made (Valdosta) even less attractive.”

While considered safe, Valdosta’s security was not assured. “In 1864, people were restless, not knowing what to expect in the way of news from the war,” according to “History of Lowndes County.”

Old men, teen-age boys, and furloughed soldiers formed a Home Guard to protect against possible Northern invasion. Shortly after this Guard was formed, they were called to Thomasville to quell reports of a “great excitement” there. They gathered old weapons, horses and mules and traveled to Thomasville to meet the enemy. Once there, the Guard learned the “enemy” had been a group of angry women whose husbands were away with the Confederate forces. These “soldiers’ wives had threatened to break into the Government Commissary to obtain food for their hungry children,” according to the DAR book. “The (Valdosta) Guards were sadly disappointed and much disgusted. They had failed to meet an imaginary foe.”

The closest battle to Valdosta was not in Georgia but in Florida. At only about 60 miles away, the battle in Olustee, Fla., is probably the closest site of a major Civil War battle to Valdosta. On the way to Olustee, Confederate Brigadier General Alfred Colquitt and his regiment camped a night in Valdosta. The Battle of Olustee was a short but deadly skirmish which left casualties of 1,861 Union soldiers and 946 Confederate soldiers. These were by no means the highest casualties of a Civil War battle but, given the number of troops involved, it was proportionately one of the war’s bloodiest battles, and the Union was routed.

Still, “Valdosta was now apprehensive that the Yanks would find even this secluded spot,” according to the DAR book. By late 1864, train service to and from Valdosta had halted with General William Tecumseh Sherman’s destruction of rails during his march to the sea across Georgia. But even as Atlanta burned and Georgia was ravaged during Sherman’s march to and occupation of Savannah, Valdosta remained cut-off from the world but safe.

In 1864, a group of Liberty County refugees arrived in Valdosta. They were fleeing the ravages of Sherman’s march. They organized what came to be the First Presbyterian Church of Valdosta.

Given Valdosta’s youth at the time of the war and the infusion of new residents, settlers and refugees during the war, perhaps Valdosta was better equipped than other Georgia and Southern towns to resume life after the war. With so little past history and no entrenched society, Valdosta had little nostalgia for its way of life before the war because there was so little Valdosta history prior to the war.

“(Valdosta) found it easier than other areas of Georgia to diminish the restrictive influence of the past and to concentrate on developing the future,” Schmier wrote in A Ray in the Sunbelt. “They were more inclined to consider the replacement of a society based on cotton and slavery with a society based on merchandising, manufacturing, and diversified farming.”

As one observer of Valdosta noted: “They really don’t have much to look back to. There’s no reason for them not to look forward to something different.”

Within the next three decades, Valdosta would build itself into a major stop in Georgia, as the world’s largest market of inland sea island cotton, and as the “Jewel of South Georgia.”

Valdosta built on its reputation as a getaway from the war to become a place to visit and live in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.