"Echoes Of The Past - Part 3"
(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)
John Thompson's old store set where Lloyd Jones abandoned store is
standing today.
The families in this outlying farm district who came to Odum to trade, so
I'm told by Mrs. Susie Dent Daniel, were Thomas Dent, born in 1829, and
moved to this section from Appling and Coffee County. Here he married Miss
Nancy O'Quinn. They settled about a mile from the Altamaha River (at the
site of Arlie Anderson's fishpond which lies across the road from Lonnie
O'Quinn's house). Mose Spence (father of Mr. Allen Spence, prominent judge
and lawyer in Waycross), Nancy and Betty Wilson, their brother, George
Wilson, Sol Pye, Alec O'Quinn (father of Peter O'Quinn - of which a number
of descendants are still living in this county), Bill Floyd, Isham Ogden (place
now owned by Tommy Horton, once owned by my father, Emory F. Dean, in
which my father retained the oil, gas and mineral rights when he sold it).
LAWLESSNESS AND TERROR REIGNED AT ONE TIME IN ODUM
One interesting and sad story relating to Odum's past happened about the
year 1888, so relates Mr. Melton Boyd, when one Henry Joyner killed the
railroad operator, by the name of Cannon. The fued revolved around some
picture frames which were ordered by an old negro living in Odum. Mr.
Joyner, seeing the frames, desired to pay the charges and take them. Mr.
Cannon refused him his desire, knowing that this would be unlawful. Upon
Mr. Cannon's leaving for his vacation, Mr. Joyner besieged the relief operator
and took the frames, declaring this was as Mr. Cannon would have it. Upon
returning from his vacation and finding the frames missing, Mr. Cannon
engaged Mr. Joyner in a fist fight at the depot. Mr. Joyner became enranged
and rushed into the store of Mr. Leonard Carter and seized a knife and
returned to the yard at the Depot and knifed Mr. Cannon in the back, killing
him. Mr. Joyner was sentenced (to the best of Mr. Boyd's knowledge in Fargo)
and died in prison. Mr. Boyd says Mr. Cannon was a peg-legged fellow.
Mr. Boyd states he was born in 1873, eight years after the Civil War, in
Emmanuel County, fifteen miles from Swainsboro. His daddy was Henry
Boyd, who served four years in the Civil war, moving his family to Wayne
County in the year 1884 when Melton was a boy of eleven years. Henry Boyd
(Melton's father) bought a place from Jim Edenfield in 1884, and gave
$400 for 112 acres (the place was originally known as the Old Bell Place).
Mr. Boyd can remember playing in ditches and catching fish in ponds right
in the heart of Odum, along about where Cecil Withrow's house now stands
and where the depot is located now). The depot was removed in the year
1969.
Mrs. Susie Dent Daniel was born in 1878, about thirteen years after the
Civil War. Her father was Thomas W. Dent, born in 1829, and her mother was
Nancy O'Quinn. Mrs. Susie possesses a love letter written by her father to
her mother which is over a hundred years old. This couple settled about a
mile from the Altamaha River across the road from Mr. Lonnie O'Quinn's
present place. Mrs. Susie says the only neighbors she recalls in her very
earliest youth (around 1888) were the ones already mentioned - Mose Spence,
Nancy and Betty Wilson and their brother, George Wilson, Sol Pye, Alex
O'Quinn, Bill Floyd, Isham Ogden, and of course, her father, Thomas Dent.
CLICK HERE to proceed to the next part of this story.
