Nimrod Jackson

Billy Powell, from Fort Valley, is a newspaper journalist and the author of four books. He loves to research and write about local history.

Nimrod Jackson (1795-1866) was a distinguished Crawford Countian. In 1850, some 160 years ago, Nimrod was honored by the Southwestern Railroad. The flag stop at Byron was named after him and called “Jackson Station.” Although Nimrod’s surname initially applied to the railroad flag stop, the settlement there became known as “Jackson Station.” The town was officially named Byron in 1874.

The location of Jackson ’s burial site, although known to his generation, was forgotten with the passage of 144 years since his death. For the past several decades, numerous attempts have been made by Peach County historians and Jackson ’s descendants to find Nimrod’s cemetery, but with no success. There were no clues other than the belief that he was likely buried on his land in eastern Crawford County . Based on his land holdings on courthouse records, this would place his cemetery somewhere between Byron and the Bibb County line. Being such an expansive area, no one seriously expected to find Nimrod Jackson’s grave. For all intents and purposes, it was a closed case until Crawford County historian Sidney Goodrich got into the act. Among Sidney ’s collection of maps was one that identified the locations of 139 cemeteries in Crawford County . As Sidney and I scanned the map index, we spotted the Nimrod Jackson Cemetery . It was identified as site Nr. 15 in a section of eastern Crawford County that bordered Peach County in the south and Bibb County in the north. The cemetery was marked at the point where Jordan Road intersects Scout Road . This locale proved to be in error--the Crawford County map needs changing!

This writer conducted a search of the above mentioned area on February 11, 2010. Driving north of Byron on Scout Road and finding nothing resembling a cemetery at the Jordan Road intersection, he drove further north to the Holcomb Valley Road intersection. No cemetery was obvious in that area either. Equally discouraging was the fact that the residents along Scout Road had never heard of Nimrod Jackson, much less his cemetery. After driving northward to the bridge at the Bibb County line, I turned around and headed back to Byron. As I drove south down Scout Road , I noticed a narrow clay road leading up an incline into a pine thicket. I decided to make one final search, before calling it a day. As I drove to the top of the hill, there on my left and inside the woods was a cemetery covered in undergrowth. I exited the car and excitedly started checking the graves for inscriptions. Some graves appeared to be over 100 years old, but they were unmarked. My heart jumped with joy when I found that the graves that did bear inscriptions carried the surname “ Jackson .” Nimrod Jackson’s cemetery had been found! Had this ‘one-in-a-million’ final search not produced positive results, I would have given up and returned home.

Nimrod Jackson’s cemetery is located approximately one-half mile north of the Holcomb Valley Road-Scout Road intersection. It’s on the east side of Scout Road , about 150 feet off the highway. You must drive up an incline leading into the woods. Directly behind the cemetery is the home of Chuck and Callie Pittman (unseen from Scout Road ), who own a landscaping business on Hartley Bridge Road .

The saga of Nimrod Jackson goes back to the 1840s when the Southwestern Railroad was built from Macon to Echeeconee and then to Byron and Powersville and on to Fort Valley . Since the railroad had already named Echeeconee as Station Nr. 1 and Powersville as Station Nr. 2, the Byron flag stop was given the intermediate designation of Station “Number One and One-Half.” When the rail line became operational during the late 1840s, Nimrod Jackson began maintaining a wood rack to resupply the wood-burning locomotives that stopped there. His wood rack, surrounded by a dense forest with only a narrow road leading to and fro, stood north of the present Byron depot, not there during Nimrod’s day and not built until the 1870s. In 1850, because of Jackson ’s loyalty and service to the fledging railroad, the flag stop was named “Jackson Station” in his honor.

The settlement there began to grow in 1860 when William Hays built a general merchandise store that was operated by Seaborn Hartley. That same year a post office was established. In 1867, a second store was erected by Dr. C. H. Richardson, a native South Carolinian, who became Byron’s first mayor. By 1870 a number of homes and cottages had been erected near the downtown area with the area’s total population edging toward 300. The townspeople wanted to name the settlement “Richardsonville” after the beloved Dr. Richardson, but Richardson opted to name the town Byron, after the famous Brittish poet, Lord George Gordon Byron (1788-1824). In 1874, the town was officially named Byron by an act of the Georgia Legislature. Byron remained a part of Houston County until Peach County became Georgia ’s 161^st county on January 1, 1925. Peach County was created from parts of Houston and Macon Counties through a constitutional amendment approved by the Georgia General Assembly on 18 July 1924. The constitutional amendment was ratified by Georgia voters on 4 November 1924 by vote of 77,052 to 31,211.

Nimrod Jackson was born October 22, 1795, in South Carolina . He married Elizabeth Busbee (1792-1879) in 1814 and they settled in Crawford County . Their union produced 12 children: Parmelia, Martha, Felder, Mitta, Ebenezer, Eliza, William, Elizabeth, John, Rabun, Perry, and Green. Nimrod was a large property owner and owned land along the railroad. He also was a great hunter, who hunted with the Creek Indians, particularly Chief William McIntosh (1775-1825). Legend has it that Nimrod acquired land from the Indians in exchange for a cow and a calf. Some historians say that Chief William McIntosh gave Jackson all the territory comprising Houston County, but we have no way of confirming this. History does record, however, that Indian braves killed Chief McIntosh because he gave away so much land. Nimrod Jackson fought in the War of 1812 under Captain John Lee and Captain Benjamin Frazier of the Georgia Militia. After Nimrod’s death in 1866, his widow, Elizabeth, was granted a veteran’s pension. Nimrod’s will was probated in Crawford County on November 5, 1866. According to genealogists on www.genealogy.com, Nimrod was a cousin of President Andrew Jackson, and they both came from the same area of South Carolina . It is interesting to note that numerous descendents of Nimrod Jackson still live in the Byron and Crawford County areas.

Nimrod Jackson purchased the land on which the cemetery resides in 1842. He and his wife, Elizabeth, are buried there, but their graves are unmarked, and expectedly so, as Nimrod has been dead for 144 years and Elizabeth for 131 years. Nimrod’s great granddaughter, Dollie Lena Jackson, is buried there, and her tombstone is engraved with identifying information. She was born in 1894 and died on February 19, 1918. Her infant daughter, buried beside her, was born January 18, 1918 and died four days later on January 22, 1918. Dollie Lena’s husband was Crowell Cleveland Jackson (1883-1951) whose parents were James E. and Sarah Stokes Jackson—another set of Jacksons , no known kinship to Nimrod Jackson. Crowell Cleveland Jackson later married Mary Armanda Kneece; they had four children.

Dollie Lena’s mother and father were Marion and Mattie Jackson-- Marion being the grandson of Nimrod Jackson. Marion Jackson’s parents were Felder and Martha Jackson--Felder being Nimrod’s son, and one of Nimrod’s 12 children. Also said to be buried there are Dollie Lena’s parents, Marion and Mattie Jackson, and Dollie’s sister—Sallie. The graves of other family members buried there evidently have sunken into the ground and are covered with 100 years of debris and undergrowth. During the mid to late 1800s, stones and not cement slabs were often used to mark a grave. Further, several mounds of dirt in proximity to this site indicated that land clearing has been accomplished in past years and that some graves inadvertently may have been bulldozed over.

In closing, the decades-old search to find the final resting place of Nimrod Jackson has ended. We now know who he was, what he accomplished, and where he is buried. We even have a picture of him, courtesy of his great, great, great granddaughter, Betsy Peavy Murdock of Byron, Georgia.

My appreciation to Crawford County historian Sidney Goodrich and genealogist Dwayne Powell, my brother, for their truly outstanding contributions to the quest to find Nimrod Jackson.

A huge thanks goes out to Mr. Billy Powell for sharing this information and photos with us!

At Nimrod Jackson Cemetery, from left are: Byron Historian Jackie Hays Edwards, Betsy Peavy Murdock (great, great, great granddaughter of Nimrod Jackson), Bob Murdock, and Bill Robertson (second cousin of Nimrod). Bill's brother, former Byron pharmacist Ben Robertson, not pictured, is also a second cousin. All are from Byron.

Nimrod Jackson and wife, Elizabeth Busbee Jackson, circa 1830.

Grave of Dollie Lena Jackson, great granddaughter of Nimrod Jackson

Infant daughter of Crowell Cleveland and Dollie Lena Jackson. Died four days after birth in 1918

Jackson Cemetery sits 150 ft. off Scout Road