By George G Morgan
Those of you who read my columns and blog on a regular basis already know that I have a special affection for my maternal great-grandfather, Green Berry Holder. He is perhaps my favorite ancestor.
Born near Lawrenceville, Georgia, in 1843, the youngest of two sons, he was determined to enlist with his older brother in the Confederate Army in 1862. They served together until 1865 and both attested to having seen General Robert E. Lee ride his horse, Traveller.
Green Berry and his brother walked home to Lawrenceville, and a short time later the brothers and their parents moved westward to the area near Lindale, Floyd County, Georgia.
It was there that Green Berry began a remarkable series of entrepreneur ventures. He began to farm. He exploited the output of bats living in a cave on his property and founded the North Georgia Fertilizer Company. He was appointed first postmaster of, first, Lindale, and later of Silver Creek.
He and his wife, Penelope, produced 12 children: 6 sons and 6 daughters.
He moved the family north to Rome, Georgia and established the Rome Mercantile Company, a very successful wholesale and retail business.
In future years, Green Berry continued to speculate in real estate and other investments. He was on the boards of directors of two banks in town.
Ultimately, his attention turned to politics. In April 1904, he won one of two seats to the Georgia House of Representatives. He served two years and returned home. Then in 1908, he was reelected to another two-year term.
Taking My
Research Further …
You know how it is when you think you have a lot of evidence of certain facts, but then you decide to take your research further? Well, those elections started to interest me. I wanted to know to what political party Green Berry Holder belonged and on whose ticket he ran.
Well, I went online to the Georgia Archives Web site at http://sos.georgia.gov/archives, and decided to use the “Ask an Archivist” service. I crafted an e-mail inquiring whether the Georgia Archives had legislative records going back to the terms during which Green Berry Holder served.
After a week, I received an e-mail with two PDF links attached. The e-mail told me that Green Berry was a Democrat, and the two PDF files were from the digitized Atlanta Constitution. The two documents contained the images of the reports of the election results for Floyd County. Here was contemporary proof of my great-grandfather’s elections!
As if that wasn’t enough, I received a call from the images archivist. She informed me that in the Vanishing Georgia collection, she had discovered a compiled photograph of the Georgia House of Representatives for 1905 and 1906. For $10 plus $5 out-of-state shipping, the archive would scan a TIF image of this large, 18″ x 24″ photograph for me.
My order was in the mail the next morning! Less than a week passed and a CD arrived.
The moral of this story is to never give up. There are some amazing pieces of information and evidence in many places that you just haven’t yet discovered. What a great find this photograph was, and my heartfelt thanks go to the wonderful people at the Georgia Archives in Morrow, Georgia.
Happy Hunting!
George
© 2006 Copyright George G. Morgan. All rights reserved. Reproduction in any format is strictly prohibited without written permission. Please contact George at aha@ahaseminars .com for more information.
This column is made possible through the efforts of the Questing Heirs Genealogical Society of Long Beach. For more information about that society, go online and visit www.qhgs.info.
