Where North & South Reunited
Where North & South Reunited
Beneath the pine trees lay the graves of Rebel and Yankee soldiers—including Hageman’s great-grandfather Adrian Hageman, a member of Indiana’s 93rd Infantry—who overcame bitter sentiments and forged friendships with their former enemies in the town they built in southern Georgia.
"You won’t find another city like Fitzgerald anywhere in the country," adds Hageman, a retired railroad conductor and current city council member. "It actually was born out of the Civil War."
Thirty years after the war ended, P.H. Fitzgerald, an Indianapolis newspaper editor and veterans’ pension attorney, proposed a Southern colony where aging Union soldiers could escape bitter Northern winters and a prolonged Midwestern drought.
With help from Georgia Gov. William J. Northern, a Confederate veteran, the colonists—the majority of whom were 2,700 Union veterans and their families—bought 100,000 acres of land and established Fitzgerald.
Living in shacks and covered wagons, the colonists faced many hardships the first year. Food was in short supply, disease and exposure to the elements claimed dozens of lives, and the Northerners had to overcome the skepticism of their Southern neighbors.
Still, the colonists persevered. They surveyed and platted the town, named the streets after Confederate and Union generals and warships, built homes, schools and churches, and cleared pine forests to plant corn and cotton. In 1896, the state Legislature incorporated the colony as a city.
To honor their accomplishments, the colonists, who hailed from 38 states, organized a harvest celebration with separate Union and Confederate parades. However, when the band struck up a march, veterans in gray, recognizing the accomplishments of the colonists, stepped into formation with veterans in blue, and all marched as one beneath the Stars and Stripes.
"They built for a future, and they expected it to be a big future," says Sherri Butler, a local historian and writer for The Herald-Leader, the community’s weekly newspaper. "I think that kind of dream is something that carries on around here today."
Today, Fitzgerald thrives as an agricultural and industrial center, boasts a medical center and technical college, and serves as the seat of Ben Hill County.
While Fitzgerald has changed considerably over the last century, the town still honors its unique heritage of harmony and cooperation between former adversaries. The downtown sidewalks sport blue and gray concrete stones, and many of the original structures remain, including the 1896 Hageman home, the 1897 Herald-Leader Building; and the 1902 railroad depot, which houses the Blue & Gray Museum.
Chock-full of history, the museum tells the story of the town’s founding, exhibits artifacts from its Civil War past, such as Yankee muskets and Rebel swords, and contains a wall honoring the town’s pioneers, some of whom married and formed a lasting bond between Northerners and Southerners.
Frances Heirs, 95, is a product of one of those unions. Heirs’ mother, Bertha Twiss, arrived in Fitzgerald in 1895 from Minitare, Neb., and married Arthur Howell Denmark, a Quitman, Ga., pharmacist who moved to town in 1902. In 1909, they had Frances, who still lives in the home built by her father a century ago.
"I was born here. My father had a pharmacy here for 50 years, so I grew up here," says Heirs, a retired schoolteacher and jeweler. "I went to school here. I married here. It was my home and it still is."
Which just goes to show that the strong bonds forged by Fitzgerald’s founders endure today through its people, all of whom have American blood coursing through their veins.
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