(Father)
Written By ~ Judy Griffin
Harry was known as 'Happy Harvey' in the town of Folkston. People say he always had a smile on his face. I was told that he was an exceptional electrician.
------------------------------------------------May 17, 1940
NEW LIGHTS FOR STAPLETON PHARMACY. The brightest spot in the Folkston business district now is Stapleton's Pharmacy. They have this week installed the most modern interior lighting system providing almost actual daylight. The new installation is the recently-developed florescent lighting fixtures which is the nearest to actual daylight of any artificial light yet devised. E.C. Gowen with the aid of Harry Harvey installed it. Proprietor E.B. Stapleton saw to it that all fixtures were in exact alignment and all cords in proper yanking distance. The store was the first business in Folkston to install a bright neon electric sign making them a real pioneer in the field of bright lights.June 5, 1942
FOLKSTON BOYS NOW IN NEW ARMY AIR CORPS POSTS. Folkston boys recently sent to Texas for training in the Army Air Corps have been sent to new locations. Johnnie Allen is said to be somewhere in California. Bill McQueen is at Paine Field, Washington state. Junior Stapleton is at Duncan Field, Texas. Harry Harvey remains at Shepherd Field where he is taking a five months course with an aviation radio unit.December 11, 1942
SPECIAL FLAG DEDICATED TO MEN IN SERVICE. A special flag was dedicated at Folkston Methodist Church last Sunday, in honor of all of the members of the church in the armed services, which included Dr. J.L. Sawyer, Dudley Jones, Lambert Erwin, Baynard Gowen, J.E. Harvey, Robert Harrison, Harry Harvey, Alva Hopkins, David Littlefield, Candler Littlefield, Franklin Roddenberry, Emmet Stapleton, Jr., John White, Harold White, Louie Passieu, William A. McQueen, Kenneth Mills, J.W. Vickery, Jr. and Charles P. Willson.
October 1, 1943
HARRY HARVEY HOME FOR VISIT. Cpl. Harry Harvey, serving at a San Diego, California air base, arrived Tuesday to spend a short leave here with his parents, Mr. and Mrs. J.E. Harvey.
December 14, 1945
SERVICEMEN HOME FROM THE WAR. Among the veterans who have returned during the past week after being discharged from service are the following: Robert W. Harrison, Jr., Douglas Mills, Harold White, Alton Mizell, Fred Robinson, Ray Gibson, Hugh D. Higginbotham, James L. Askew, Malcolm A. Grooms, Abram H. Stewart of Savannah, Harry Harvey and Billy Cooper. ------------------------------------------------Timeline
- 1930 Age: 13
- Name: Harry D Harvey
- Birth Year: abt 1918
- Gender: Male
- Race: White
- Birthplace: Georgia
- Marital Status: Single
- Relation to Head of House: Son (Child)
- Home in 1930: Militia District 32, Charlton, Georgia
- Map of Home: View Map
- Dwelling Number: 102
- Family Number: 109
- Attended School: Yes
- Able to Read and Write: Yes
- Father's Birthplace: Georgia
- Mother's Birthplace: Georgia
- Able to Speak English: Yes
- Neighbors: View others on page
- Household Members:
- Name Age
- James E Harvey 42
- Addie V Harvey 42
- Leray Harvey 23
- Herbert J Harvey 17
- Grace L Harvey 14
- Harry D Harvey 12
- Joseph E Harvey 9
- Margrett M Harvey 5
- 1940 Age: 22
- Name: Harry Harvey
- Estimated Birth Year: abt 1918
- Gender: Male
- Race: White
- Birthplace: Georgia
- Marital Status: Single
- Relation to Head of House: Son
- Home in 1940: Folkston, Charlton, Georgia
- Street: Block No 6 Begin Noin St Bethcan Rowt 23 And Route
- Inferred Residence in 1935: Folkston, Charlton, Georgia
- Residence in 1935: Same House
- Sheet Number: 12A
- Occupation: Electrician
- Attended School or College: No
- Highest Grade Completed: Elementary school, 6th grade
- Hours Worked Week Prior to Census: 40
- Duration of Unemployment: 64
- Class of Worker: Wage or salary worker in private work
- Weeks Worked in 1939: 0
- Income: 0
- Income Other Sources: No
- Neighbors: View others on page
- Household Members:
- Name Age
- Joseph E Harvey 50
- Addie Harvey 52
- Harry Harvey 22
- Joseph E Harvey 18
- 1942 13 Apr Age: 25
- U.S. World War II Army Enlistment Records, 1938-1946
- Name: Daniel H Harvey
- Birth Year: 1917
- Race: White, citizen (White)
- Nativity State or Country: Georgia
- State of Residence: Georgia
- County or City: Charlton
- Enlistment Date: 13 Apr 1942
- Enlistment State: Georgia
- Enlistment City: Fort Mcpherson Atlanta
- Branch: Branch Immaterial - Warrant Officers, USA
- Branch Code: Branch Immaterial - Warrant Officers, USA
- Grade: Private
- Grade Code: Private
- Term of Enlistment: Enlistment for the duration of the War or other emergency, plus six months, subject to the discretion of the President or otherwise according to law
- Component: Selectees (Enlisted Men)
- Source: Civil Life
- Education: 1 year of high school
- Civil Occupation: Electricians
- Marital Status: Married (?)
- Height: 63
- Weight: 110
- 1950 Age: 38
- Married Agnes Crews
- 1951 Age: 39
- Judy born
- 1952 Age: 40
- Moved to St.Simons Island
- 1953 Age: 41
- Danny born
- 1955 Age: 38
- Name: D Harry Harvey
- Gender: Male
- Residence Year: 1955
- Street address: Ocean View av nr Ocean Blvd St. Simons
- Residence Place: Brunswick, Georgia, USA
- Occupation: Machinist
- Spouse: Agnes A Harvey
- Publication Title: Brunswick, Georgia, City Directory, 1955
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
(Grandfather)
Written By ~ Jack R. Mays, Charlton County Historian
He stood on the platform at the foot of the tower stairs. Held high in his right hand was a tower operator's train order hoop with the green tissue-like train orders fastened with a metal clip. He was much too close to the swaying steam locomotive but in an instant someone on the engine had hooked an arm into the hoop and snatched it from the telegrapher's grip.
Joseph Emmet Harvey had been doing this since 1903 for the Atlantic Coast Line Railroad. It is Tuesday, May 3, 1927, and he is just beginning his new job at the Folkston tower. He has worked in his hometown, Hortense, for twenty-four years. He will work another twenty in the Folkston tower before retiring, because of eye trouble, in 1947. A 44 year railroad career will be divided between these two jobs. He was born in that part of Pierce County that later became Brantley, on the farm of his father, W.M. Harvey, a pioneer settler of the region. He learned the Morse Code at night, after working on the farm all day, and at age 13 quit school to take a telegrapher's job with the Atlantic Coast Line Railroad. He began as assistant station agent at Hortense. He took a regular job there in 1903, the same year Henry Ford began making his Model T Fords.
The weekly county paper heralded the family's arrival in its personal columns:
"Mr. J.E. Harvey and family moved from Hortense to Folkston this week. He will be the new third trick (midnight till 8:00 a.m.) operator at the Folkston tower."
The news spread fast in the little town built around the railroad depot. Harvey's family was his wife, Addie Bagley Harvey, whom he married in 1906; two girls, Grace and Margaret and five boys, Tyson, Leroy, Herbert, Harry and Joseph Emmett, Jr. The seven moved into a home just across the tracks from the tower. It had once been the Methodist parsonage, but now was owned by C.S. Buchanan. The Harvey's bought the home on October 17, 1929 for eighteen hundred dollars. J.E. Harvey and his family quickly became a part of the town as they joined in the social and religious activities of the community. Emmett Harvey knew his job well. The clicking of his telegraph sounder kept Folkston in touch with the rest of the world. Not only did the telegraph office handle railroad traffic, it was the town's Western Union telegraph office. Important news, good and bad, was spelled out on Emmett Harvey's typewriter. Soon his seniority would earn him the first trick (8:00 a.m.-4:00 p.m.) job at the tower.
A kind-hearted, jovial man, Emmett Harvey found satisfaction in helping others. In the early days of World War Two, a half-dozen youngsters, too young to enlist in the army or navy, sought jobs as tower operators with the railroad. J.E. Harvey and Morris Powell taught them to telegraph without pay. Most of the students were hired by the railroad for good paying jobs.
J.E. Harvey gave his talents and energy eagerly to those in need of help. A frail, recently-widowed woman moved into a home near the Harveys in 1939. The home's septic tank would not function. The kindly Harvey, his crosscut saw in hand, built her a new one of crossties. Such events were commonplace with the smiling telegraph operator.
The children grew up and left the home. Harvey and his wife became active members of Philadelphia Free Will Baptist Church and he joined the Woodmen of the World fraternal organization. Harvey always enjoyed telling of his first visit to Folkston in 1904, and what he found here. He could recall only two stores, owned by Jehu Paxton and H.J. Davis. The county seat had just moved to Folkston from Traders Hill. Folkston's post office was in the Price Robinson house which later became the Frank Smith home, along the east side of the railroad tracks. At 4:30 Sunday morning, May 2, 1948, Addie Harvey woke her husband. She complained of chest pains. He took her to the hospital immediately but at 6:30 a.m. she died of a massive heart attack. She was 60. He had been retired less than a year. Emmett Harvey became a lonely man.
In December 1951, Folkston's Justice of the Peace, W.E. Banks, died. A restless Emmett Harvey ran for the open post against V.A. Hodges. Only 167 votes were cast but Harvey had a 13 vote margin; 90 to Hodges' 77. The retired railroader began his second career which made him friends all over the country.
He married hundreds of couples in his home across from the telegraph tower. The other JP duties, collecting past due accounts, and issuing warrants, were done well. The Justice of the Peace office furnished him additional income which he freely spent on the needy, especially little children. Emmett Harvey had a soft spot in his heart for little children.
He continued his activity at Philadelphia Free Will Baptist Church and became its Sunday School superintendent. He gave generously of his money and energy to those in need. But, in early 1965 his health began to fail and on September 9, 1965 death came to him. He was 76. J.E. Harvey was buried in Pineview Cemetery in Folkston beside Addie Harvey, the wife he loved so dearly, who had preceded him in death seventeen years earlier. From its earliest days, Folkston revolved around its railroad depot and tower. Joseph Emmett Harvey, Sr., for a long time occupied center stage from his chair in the tower. His family, across the tracks, and the community they lived in, became interwoven. Those that knew and loved the Harveys will remember with fondness the family who lived and worked beside the railroad tracks from 1927 until 1965.
Charlton County Herald Friday May 7, 1948
Railroads Tie Charlton County Communities Together
Soon after the turn of the century, in 1904, Charlton County began to blossom. Those were days before the roaring twenties. Theodore Roosevelt was in the White House, and the nation was enjoying prosperity. Charlton County came in for its share. In 1904 in the south end of Charlton County, a mid-western newspaper publisher, P. H. Fitzgerald publisher of the American Tribune, an Indianapolis, Indiana newspaper, pushed his 1904 Colony Company there to migrants from the mid-west.
The settlement had formerly been named Cutler Station. Fitzgerald would name the community the City of St. George, a memorial to a young grandson, George, who died before his time. Fitzgerald had begun a similar colonization project in Texas. The development in Texas failed, and stockholders were offered shares of the Saint George colonization to surrender their shares of the Texas development.
The Saint George project soon failed also, and fell into the hands of a court-appointed receiver. Funds received from the Receiver were used to build St. George's first schoolhouse. P. H. Fitzgerald almost went to jail for the developments. Instead, he pled guilty to mail fraud and ordered to pay a $1,600 dollar fine. Thus began the 20th Century for Charlton County. In Folkston in 1904, as the new century began, settlers were celebrating winning the County Seat of government from Traders Hill in a close election in 1901. Folkston had begun to prosper since the first trains passed through the town in 1881, as they traveled between Waycross and Jacksonville. In 1904, Charlton County had a new courthouse, in Folkston, replacing the decaying log courthouse at Traders Hill.
The railroad was king. Folkston took its name from a Waycross, Georgia physician, Dr. William Brandon Folks whom acting as a land agent for the railroad, had acquired the rights of way for the rail lines to lay their tracks through the county. The railroad remained king in Folkston for nearly a half century. Employees of the Atlantic Coast Line Railroad Company got special treatment from area merchants. The railroad would see that their employee paid their bills. The railroad depot building in Folkston was one of the busiest places in town in 1904. The town had a population of less than 200. H. C. Page was the station agent. Daily, merchants would pick up supplies from the freight room. Passenger trains, stopped all through the day to pick up and discharge passengers.
However, it was in 1912, as Folkston became a town of 355 people that a telegraph tower was built in Folkston by the Railroad Company. Then the community began to keep more quickly in touch with the rest of the world. Radios did not come until the 1920s. Until then, Charlton county people read of world happenings in daily newspapers, usually the Savannah Morning News. Scores of young Folkston men would gather on the grounds at the base of the telegraph tower to hear results of prizefights and World Series baseball games. The telegraph operator, reading the clicks from a sounder as the news wires transmitted the action, would relay the information to the crowd below. In 1912, Folkston youngsters heard Boston win over the New York Giants in the World Series from the lips of the tower operator.
During those times, the telegraph operator became the most important man in town. Western Union messages were sent and received by the railroad telegraph operator for people throughout the county. It was over those telegraph wires that the people of Folkston learned of political elections, and of the sinking of the Titanic. Folkston owed lots to the railroads, and few complaints came about its operations in Folkston. Housewives didn't complain of the cinders scattered by steam locomotives as they roared through the city. The women would scurry to pick their white linens from their clotheslines and carry them into the house until the cinders ceased to fall.
Today, there stands beside the feed store of Billy Thrift, an ancient wooden building, complete with
shutter-windows. J. E. Harvey, Sr., one of Folkston's earliest telegraph operators, said that building was
operated as a store when he first came to Folkston in 1904.
There can be no doubt that without the railroads there would be few settlements in Charlton County,
and throughout the nation. The towns sprang up along those rail lines as America adventured into more
territory. Folkston and Saint George are certainly no exception.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
(GGrandfather)
Written By ~ Judy Griffin
William Madison was born in Bryan County, Georgia and eventually moved to Wayne County, Georgia. He was the owner of a little county store in Hortense Georgia.
William Madison was married twice. His first wife was Martha Mozelle Raulerson. She died after the birth of her 5th child. Their children were James D., Joseph Emmett, Nettie Mae and Martha Mozelle.
William next married Leila Hays. Her first husband, John P. Dixon, was shot and killed in a field.(no more info). She and William had 7 children. They were Agnes Saffrone, Archie Columbus,Jasper William, Hubert Parker, Dora Lee, Marion Carmel and Lilly Uldine.
At the time of his death Willam Madison lived in Brunswick Ga. with his daughter Nettie Mae. He was 69 years old. He died of Bright's Disease and congestion of the lungs.
- Wm M Harvey
- United States Census, 1900
- Name: Wm M Harvey
- Event Type: Census
- Event Year: 1900
- Event Place: Militia Districts 335, 1308, 1493, 1565, Lulaton, Hortense, Atkinson, Nahunta, Wayne, Georgia
- Gender: Male
- Age: 35
- Marital Status: Married
- Race: White
- Race (Original): W
- Relationship to Head of Household: Head
- Relationship to Head of Household (Original): Head
- Years Married: 2
- Birth Date: 1865
- Birthplace: Georgia
- Marriage Year (Estimated): 1898
- Father's Birthplace: Georgia
- Mother's Birthplace: Georgia
- Household Role Gender Age Birthplace
- Wm M Harvey Head M 35 Georgia
- Lela Harvey Wife F Georgia
- James D Harvey Son M 13 Georgia
- J Emmett Harvey Son M 11 Georgia
- Nettie M Harvey Daughter F 8 Georgia
- Mary M Harvey Daughter F 6 Georgia
- Agnes S Harvey Daughter F 1 Georgia
- Johnie V Dixon Stepdaughter F 5 Georgia
District: 95 , Sheet Number and Letter: 17A , Household ID: 237 , Line Number: 1 , Affiliate Name: The U.S. National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) , Affiliate Publication Number: T623 , GS Film Number: 1240227 , Digital Folder Number: 004120090 , Image Number: 00745
----------------------------------------------------------------------- William M Harvey
- United States Census, 1910
- Name: William M Harvey
- Event Type: Census
- Event Year: 1910
- Event Place: Hortense, Wayne, Georgia, United States
- Gender: Male
- Age: 44
- Marital Status: Married
- Race: White
- Race (Original): White
- Relationship to Head of Household: Head
- Relationship to Head of Household (Original): Head
- Birth Year (Estimated): 1866
- Birthplace: Georgia
- Father's Birthplace: Georgia
- Mother's Birthplace: Georgia
- Household Role Gender Age Birthplace
- William M Harvey Head M 44 Georgia
- Leila Harvey Wife F 36 Georgia
- Agnes Harvey Daughter F 10 Georgia
- Archie Harvey Son M 8 Georgia
- Jasper Harvey Son M 6 Georgia
- Hubert Harvey Son M 3 Georgia
- Dora L Harvey Daughter F 0 Georgia
- J Viola Dixon Daughter F 14 Georgia
- William M Harvey
- United States Census, 1920
- Name: William M Harvey
- Event Type: Census
- Event Year: 1920
- Event Place: Hontense, Wayne, Georgia, United States
- Gender: Male
- Age: 44
- Marital Status: Married
- Race: White
- Race (Original): White
- Relationship to Head of Household: Head
- Relationship to Head of Household (Original): Head
- Birth Year (Estimated): 1876
- Birthplace: Georgia
- Father's Birthplace: Georgia
- Mother's Birthplace: Georgia
- Household Role Gender Age Birthplace
- William M Harvey Head M 44 Georgia
- Lelia Harvey Wife F 46 Georgia
- Jasper Harvey Son M 14 Georgia
- Hubert Harvey Son M 12 Georgia
- Don Lee Harvey Daughter F 10 Georgia
- Carnell Harvey Son M 8 Georgia
- Uldine Harvey Daughter F 2 Georgia
- W Modson Harvey
- United States Census, 1930
- Name: W Modson Harvey
- Event Type: Census
- Event Year: 1930
- Event Place: Hortense, Brantley, Georgia, United States
- Gender: Male
- Age: 65
- Marital Status: Married
- Race: White
- Race (Original): White
- Relationship to Head of Household: Head
- Relationship to Head of Household (Original): Head
- Birth Year (Estimated): 1865
- Birthplace: Georgia
- Father's Birthplace: Georgia
- Mother's Birthplace: Georgia
- Household Role Gender Age Birthplace
- W Modson Harvey Head M 65 Georgia
- Lela Harvey Wife F 55 Georgia
- Uldine Harvey Daughter F 15 Georgia