"Echoes Of The Past - Part 2"
(NOTE: The following appeared in the 1985 Odum Homecoming program and was written by Hazel Dean
Overstreet. It is being reproduced here for the Odum, Georgia website....KH)
Mr. Odum was an able business man. An old history book in the possession
of one of Mr. Godfrey Odum's grandsons, Mr. Genell Odum, of Odum, states
that Mr. Odum in the year 1900 could command, upon a moment's notice,
$10,000.00 (no little sum in those days) and owned a vast tract of land,
consisting of twelve thousand acres (12,000). About the year 1934, Mr.
Odum's Estate was dissolved, division being made among his heirs and
descendants.
Mr. Melton Boyd (considred the oldest man in Odum in the year 1955,
being 81 years of age) says that he and his wife, Bessie Collins, were married
the year Mr. Godfrey Odum died, 1904. He further stated that Mr.
Odum owned 52 lots of land that ranged in scope from Nesbit (known today
as Redland) to the Devil's Woodyard (known today as Brentwood), a tract of
about ten miles in length and equivalent to 12,000 acres.
In 1866, when the railroad bed was laid through this town by the East
Tennessee, Virginia, and Georgia Railroad (known to old timers as the E T V & G),
the town of Odum went by the numerical number of Five.
So to sum up the names and dates of this place, it would be thus:
1867 - Haslam (For the sawmill owner by this name)
1868 - Satilla (for nearby Satilla Creek)
1870 - Number Five (for the railroad station)
1880 - Odum (for early settler Godfrey Odum)
John Boyd was born on March 23, 1878, and his brothers, Melton Boyd and Somp Boyd,
were three of the oldest men I could find to get information from on Odum's
history.
By 1888, there were only a very few houses in the town of Odum. The
Tyler O'Quinn house stood where Mrs. Connie O'Quinn Thompson's house
stands today. The 'Old Blue House' where Eldridge Withrow now lives was
built about this time by Mr. Melton Boyd's father-in-law, Jim Collins, for Mr.
John B. Roberson, merchant. This was about the year 1889.
About the year 1892, a house was built on the present site of Gene Tyre's
house (formerly Lewis Tyre's home) for Bascom Carter, merchant in Odum.
Ryal Reddish, father of One-eyed Jim, Dude, and Georga (deceased) lived
here, also.
CLICK HERE to proceed to the next part of this story.
