Wednesday, October 8, 2003
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Wednesday, October 8, 2003 |
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Sheriff's granddaughter becomes a Fayetteville flapper By BRUCE L. JORDAN
[Turn of the century Fayette County was a world away from what is now our congested suburban community. Although it was a poor farming area, the people that built the towns were proud people, striking characters whose faces if not for the early development of photography would have been lost forever. Those black and white photographs captured the times and the flavor of the people that developed this county during the past century. Here are some of the untold stories behind those intriguing but otherwise silent pictures.]
F. B. "Tobe" Brown served as sheriff of Fayette County from 1904 to 1918. The daughters he raised for some time in the upstairs living quarters of the Fayette County jail grew up and began having his grandchildren while he was still serving as the county sheriff. He also owned a farm just south of the Fayetteville town square along what is now known as Ga. Highway 85 South, in the area of what is now Melear's Barbecue. The store he and his wife Bunch owned on the square was now also his son-in-law's pharmacy. The sheriff's daughter Lois ran the pharmacy while her husband, Dr. E. C. Seawright, traveled the county treating patients. The upstairs portion of the store was a silent movie theater. Dr. and Lois Seawright had began their own family, having two daughters, Mildred and Evalyn. Mildred was a lively, free-spirited, vivacious brunette who became very popular around town as well as anywhere else she went. Mildred Seawright was bright, energetic and enjoying the times which, to her, were progressive and exciting. Born in 1908 and during her young life in the town of Fayetteville, she had experienced the introduction of electricity in their homes, running water, phones in their kitchens and perhaps the most significant advancement for her, the automobile. She had grown up watching her grandfather perform the office of sheriff, traveling the county on horseback, and her physician father, Dr. E. C. Seawright, serving the people of the county by traveling by horse and buggy to their homes. In her lifetime she would see travel advance by leaps and bounds with the introduction of the motorcar. When Mildred was a young girl her Aunt Louvalle took her for a ride in one of the first automobiles to hit Fayetteville. At the young age of 4 she could not imagine how the new contraption would change her life. In the early 1920s Dr. Seawright brought home to the family a new Ford motor car. For Mildred the possibilities for travel were now endless. Although the advancements in Fayetteville were not quite as dynamic as things going on in urban America, the young people of Fayetteville were excited by the quality of life they were now enjoying compared to lifestyles their parents had experienced. Mildred was making the most of it with her friends and their new-found freedom to travel comfortably. When Mildred was born, a trip to some places in Fayette County could be a day's ride on rough roads riddled with deep ruts and washes from heavy rains. Not only were roads improving but her mode of travel had greatly advanced. She was now not only able to travel Fayette County but anywhere in the state of Georgia with just a few hours' ride in her family's Ford. Mildred was as exciting as the times she grew up in. She was the gorgeous daughter of the town doctor and granddaughter of the county sheriff. The looks she inherited from her mother and the sweet Southern charm she enjoyed in spite of that same mom left her difficult if not impossible for men to resist. Mildred Seawright would serve as significant a purpose to the community as any male leader of her time. As her mother and grandmother had done before her, she would reach outside her home county to find a man of character and live with him in her small hometown where he would make her home his home. The husband she would bring to Fayetteville would dedicate himself to improving the quality of life in the small town she grew up in and where they would together raise their children. Meanwhile, about a hundred miles southeast across the state, another prominent family had great plans for a beautiful daughter who possessed great poise and refinement. Joe and Mary Sheppard of Milledgeville were in a position to raise Lillie Sheppard with all of the amenities that come with means. Lillie was turning heads in Milledgeville. One of those heads turned was Jack Day, an up and coming businessman in Milledgeville. Neither of these families had anything to do with Fayetteville but the courtship of John and Lillie would eventually change that. The name Jack Day would soon be a household word in the growing but still small town of Fayetteville.
NEXT INSTALLMENT: Transplants begin to make history. Bruce L. Jordan is the author of two regional best-selling true-crime books, "Death Unexpected," about 100 years of murders in Fayette County, and "Murder in the Peach State," about famous murders in Georgia history. Both are available from Amazon.com. You may e-mail him at bruceljordan@yahoo.com. Lt. Col. Jordan heads the Criminal Investigation Division of the Fayette County Sheriff's Department.
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