The Macon Telegraph, Aug. 13, 1992
Tale of two cities
Stevens Pottery, Coopers
grew old with one another
In days gone by, Georgia’s small towns were known as “whistle stops” or simply as “the crossroads”. For a variety of reasons, many have died. This series of articles, scheduled to run monthly, will attempt to document as many of the towns in the surrounding 35 counties as possible and explain why they were there and when and how they died. Much of the accounts by older Georgians.
By Bill Boyd
The Macon Telegraph
Stevens Pottery
and Coopers. They were Baldwin County’s twin cities.
Two towns that
straddled the same railroad less than one mile apart. But towns that were
uniquely different.
Stevens Pottery
and Coopers leaned on each other through the years.
One was a farm
center. The other depended on industry.
One had a school.
The other had a post office.
One sang “The Workin’
Man’s Blues.” The other danced in silk stockings.
For a hundred years,
they prospered together. Then the world around them changed.
Farmland that was
once rich with watermelon, cotton and corn is now covered by a green blanket
of commercial pine forests.
Population of the
two towns has dwindled steadily over the past 50 years.
Trains that once
transported crops to market now haul trees to pulpwood plants...if they
run at all.
The school, post
office, railroad depot, businesses - everything is gone now except for
a few buildings, a rusted hulk of a brick-making plant and a few souls
who remember the old days.
Early Stevens Pottery
As might be surmised
from its name, Stevens Pottery was a town founded by a person named Stevens
whose first plant produced pottery.
Henry Stevens,
who grew up near pottery plants in England, worked his way to America aboard
a merchant ship, landed a job as a railroad conductor and arrived in Middle
Georgia in 1850.
An ambitious and
enterprising fellow, Stevens bought a sizable tract of timber land in the
southwest corner of Baldwin County in 1854, and he discovered “an
extensive and valuable deposit of fire-clay” according to an 1895 book
“Memories of Georgia”.
After putting a sawmill
into operation in that area, he built kilns and began to produce the first
sewerage pipe ever produced in the South. The plant also turned out pottery
and stoneware.
During the Civil
War, Stevens’s plant produced “knives, shoepegs and Joe Brown pipes” for
the confederacy according to the history book. And, because of that General
William T. Sherman burned the plant to the ground in 1864.
Stevens rebuilt
the plant after the war and sold it to his sons in 1876.
By the turn
of the century, the Stevens plant employed some 300 people and produced
only brick.
The late T. L.
Wood recalled in a 1984 interview with the Associated Press that Stevens
Pottery acquired a reputation as a rough-and-tumble town where shootings
and stabbings were commonplace at night and on weekends.
“My mother wouldn’t
let me go down there when I was a kid.” he said.
But when he grew
up, Wood, like many residents of Stevens Pottery and Coopers worked there
for at least a while, and he remembered the plant as a “dirty, dusty, crude-looking
place, (where) the work was hard- hauling brick in wheelbarrows and things
like that.”
Wood escaped the
hard labor in the plant by operating a general store; and getting the town’s
post office located in his store.
But others stayed
with the hard work and long hours, and as late as the 1950s, a person could
work all of the overtime he or she wanted as the plant turned out brick
for the booming sugar refineries in Cuba.
Early Coopers
William M. Cooper,
described by great-grandson Cullen Wood as “a hard-shelled preacher” came
to southwest Baldwin County in 1844 and established a store beside the
tracks being laid for a Central of Georgia spur line from Gordon to Eatonton.
But it was the
next generation of Coopers residents that developed the town economically.
Thomas Jefferson Cooper, William Cooper’s son, continued to run the store.
Rollin W. Ivey and James M. “Jim” Lee were the leading farmers/buyers/shippers
of the area’s farm produce.
Cullen Wood, the
Cooper descender, said: “This was once one of the most prosperous towns
in Georgia. Whole trainloads of watermelons would leave here. I heard that
Coopers was the watermelon capital of the world before I ever heard of
Cordele claiming that distinction.”
Coopers was indeed
different from Stevens Pottery, said Wood, who also worked in the brick
pant when he didn’t have enough carpentry work to keep him busy.
“The difference
was the people.” he said. “People who lived here were teachers, merchants
and the like. Stevens Pottery had a reputation for violence. Coopers was
silk stocking country compared to Stevens Pottery.”
Cooperville School was
established in 1893 and educated children from both towns for 60 years.
In it’s heyday,
Coopers boasted several general mercantile stores, a gin, a doctor’s office,
a telephone exchange and a train stop. Train tickets were sold from the
Cooper’s home that faced the railroad tracks.
It’s population
peaked at about 700 in the early part of this century.
The declining years
Several events contributed to the decline
of
sister cities Coopers and Stevens Pottery.
First, the road
through Steven’s Pottery and Coopers was paved in the early 1950's and
suddenly everything seemed to be going away from the area, Wood recalled.
Rail service declined;
the passenger service ceased entirely in the early 1950's.
Old farmers died and
few of their educated sons and daughters returned. Many of the smaller
farms were soon swallowed up by other interests, and the flow of produce
through Coopers, became only a tricke.
In the 1960's a
new, straighter highway - Georgia 243 - was built and it bypassed the business
sections of both towns.
But the biggest
blow to Stevens Pottery came from events too big for the town to control.
The United States cut off trade relations with Cuba after Fidel Castro
came to power, and the demand for brick from the Stevens Pottery plant
stopped almost overnight after the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion in 1960.
The plant, which changed
hands a couple of times after the Stevens family sold out, tried to stay
alive by processing clay for other brick making plants.
That worked for
a while, but as the demand for the plant’s services declined steadily through
the years, the end finally came in 1963 - almost exactly 100 years after
the death of its founder, Henry Stevens - the plant died also.
By then, T. L.
Wood, the hub of the town’s businesses, had closed his store and retired
as postmaster. The post office also closed for good.
For a time, tourist
came to Stevens Pottery to look for old pottery, but its been years since
anyone has asked Cullen Wood for directions to the plant.
Now rust eats away
at the giant tubes, towers and catwalks, and kudzu is gradually throwing
a blanket over the plant.
Fewer that 200
people now live in Stevens Pottery The nearest stores are half a mile away
along Georgia Highway 243.
Coopers is only
slightly bigger, but Wood says -with hope in his voice - that maybe things
are turning around for his hometown.
“Coopers has grown
some in recent years. “ he said. “It’s a peaceful place to live, a good
place to raise children. Folks are beginning to move back here. Coopers
will always be here, I’m sure... even after I’m gone.”
Eileen Babb McAdams copyright 2004