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The Barney History Project: The people, places, and stories of Barney, Georgia

Lumber, turpentine, and timber trams

Forest products supplied much of the cash economy that first gathered around the station. The Oglesby mill was operating at Barney by October 1897. Its railroad-car-sill work tied local timber directly to national railway manufacturing. In February 1898, E. A. Farrell reported a lively turpentine business at Barney. In May, newspapers described a destructive event at a sawmill owned by E. C. or E. O. Bridges. The reports agree that the mill, lumber, or railroad cars suffered damage, but they disagree over whether the cause was fire or a windstorm. The loss is established. Its cause and even the owner's initials are not.[7][13]

The main railroad drew smaller woods lines toward the town. A March 1899 account of Joe L. Hall's injury at Oglesby's mill also reported a timber line under construction east of Barney. The October 1899 town profile described Mitchell Brice's private tram extending west toward his mills, turpentine still, and agricultural operations. Later evidence supports a length of about seven miles for the Brice line. These were feeder operations used to move logs or other products to mills and loading points. They were not separate public railroads and should not be confused with the South Georgia Railroad main line.[14]

That arrangement explains much of Barney's economic geography. Logging camps, turpentine stills, farms, and mills could remain scattered across the district. Trams and wagon roads moved products toward the station. The common-carrier railroad then opened markets outside Brooks County. Barney's importance came less from the size of the compact town than from its role as the transfer point for a much broader production area.

The work could be brutal. Joe L. Hall's 1899 injury placed danger inside the mill complex. John Roberts survived being run over by a timber cart in April 1901 while handling a log reported to be seventy feet long. In January 1903, W. T. Reeves of Barney advertised for work as a woodsman in logging, sawmills, or railroads and claimed twenty years of experience. His classified advertisement is a small item, but it captures the overlap among the three principal kinds of industrial work.[14][15]

Several accidents followed in 1903. A February train wreck at the Little River trestle between Greggs and Barney killed Joe Niles and Baxter Dixon and injured J. K. Niles. Later that month, I. B. Ingram was hurt by a falling tree. In March, a Berryhill man died after a stump-puller accident. Newspapers disagreed over whether the victim was John or Charles Berryhill. The death is clear, but the first name remains unsettled.[15]

Naval stores remained part of the district after the Foster office disappeared. Reports surrounding the killing of Ben Smith in 1897 and Ed Blount's later arrest placed Black laborers at a turpentine still near Barney. That record is also evidence of racial violence and will be treated more fully below, but economically it confirms that turpentine work continued alongside the sawmills and railroad.[16]

The forest economy was not a short opening episode that vanished once the town formed. Mills, logging lines, woods work, turpentine operations, and railroad labor appear throughout the pre-incorporation years. What changed was the scale and organization of movement. The railroad station made it possible to combine the output of dispersed sites and ship it through one recognizable town.

Sources used on this page

Back to the Pre-Incorporation Era overview