American Life Histories
Manuscripts from the Federal Writers' Project
1936-1940

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Reminiscences and Recollections of Old Savannah
(Georgia)

Page 19

"I was sent to old Franklin College, Athens Georgia, in August 1844, when I was 14 years old. At Augusta I took the the Georgia Railroad to Union Point 90 miles away, from Union Point to Athens on a branch road of 40 miles, only very recently built. Five nights a week the passenger service on this road was by horsecar, and was an all night trip, and not a very comfortable one either...... There was a long bench running the whole length of the car on each side. On the sixth night the car was hitched to a freight train consisting of a baggage car and a freight car, and the whole attached to a small steam engine called "The Fire Fly." At one very steep ascent the train would be stopped and the engine would be fired up. When it was thought it had steam enough to climb over the top of the grade, she sould be started off to make the climb. Often before reaching the top the engine stopped for lack of steam power and would roll back to the bottom of the incline to the starting point to be fired again. This procedure was sometimes repeated three or four times before the Fire Fly went over the top.

Page 21

"I recall a party given by Miss Callie Lumpkin, daughter of John Henry Lumpkin, who afterward became Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Georgia...... My brother Sydenham......had entered the University... Altho' he was only 16 yrs old and did not know a single note of music he was kind of musical genius. At this party he played a descriptive piece of his own composition called "The Battle of Palo Alto.... Descriptive of the battle he would imitate the bugle calls, roll of drums, boom of cannon and the rattle of musketry. And when the battle was at its height there would be apparent confusion, but through it all you could occasionally hear the booming of the cannon, roar of the drums, bugle calls, and the rattle of musketry. As the battle ended, and the victory was won by the Americans, the piece ended with the playing of Yankee Doodle in the liveliest and most spirited manner.

"Another thing, I recall in regard to this party - a long table was set and a place assigned to each of us by name. At each place an iced cake was placed and on each cake a motto of some sort, two lines of rhyme. The one next to me was this: "Grace by name and Grace by nature, Oh Grace thou art a charming creature." And mine was: "In books, nor love, nor courting tardy, A nice young man is Charlie Hardee."

Hardee, Charles Seton Henry
Reminiscences and Recollections of Old Savannah
131 pages
Compiled 1928 by Martha Gallandet Waring.
nc. np.
Publishers and printers not named.

Text from: Library of Congress, Manuscript Division, WPA Federal Writers' Project Collection