THROUGH
MOUNTAIN MISTS
Early Settlers of
Their
Descendants...Their Stories...Their Achievements
Lifting the
Mists of History on Their Way of Life
By: Ethelene Dyer Jones
Elijah
Webb Chastain, the fifth generation from Pierre
Chastain, “The Immigrant” was noted as a military man, lawyer, and
politician. He was the seventh of ten
children born to Benjamin Chastain (1780-1845), who moved his family in
1837
and was an Indian agent in the area that became Fannin County, Georgia. Elijah Webb Chastain’s mother was Rebeckah
Denton Chastain (1779-1872). This tenth
child was born in Pickens County, SC September 25, 1813 and died in an
accident
in Murray County, Georgia on April 9, 1874.
His sixty-one years were
notable. He
married Clarissa Susan Braselton on June 18, 1838 and they had twelve
children: Marian Josephine who married
Dr. Judson Linton Rucker; Rev. Benton Forsyth Chastain who married
Nancy
Elizabeth Morris; Benjamin Perry Chastain (1841-1859); Georgia Anne
Chastian
(1843-186) who married Lewis Crayton Allen; Rev. Oscar Fitzallen
Chastain who
married Mary Zenobia Addington; Mary Jane Chastain who married John
Sullivan
Addington; Lewis C. Chastain (b/d February 16, 1848); Eugenia Virginia
Chastain
(1850-died young); Emma Maria Chastain
(1853-1916) married William Dallas Smith; Judson Rucker Chastain
(1855
-1920) married Emma Frances Greenwood; Ida Amanda Chastain (1858-1930)
married
Allen Burton Dickey; and Sidney Johnson Chastain (1860-1882) married
Thomas A.
Willson. Of the twelve children, nine lived to adulthood, married and
eight of
the nine had children. Descendants of
the famed Elijah Webb Chastain are now found in a broad geographic
distribution.
Elijah Webb Chastain was termed
“Colonel,”
receiving this designation because of his service in the Seminole War
in
Florida in 1838 and later his service in the Civil War.
He studied law, as was the practice then, by
“reading” law in the office of established lawyers.
He was admitted to the Georgia Bar in
1849. He practiced in Gilmer and Union
Counties and at the young age of 21 he made a memorable speech on July
4, 1835
in Ellijay, Georgia that was printed in area newspapers at the time.
Gifted as
an orator and persuasive speaker, this quality would be a complement to
his
political career. He was elected Georgia
senator from Gilmer County and served in that capacity from 1839-1849. He served as a representative to the U. S.
Congress from 1851-1855. Some of his speeches in Congress have been
preserved:
notably on Union and States’ Rights (1852), the Kansas-Nebraska Act
(1854) and
the annexation of Cuba (1855). He was a
member of the Georgia Secession Convention and voted for Georgia to
secede from
the Union at a hotly-debated contest at the state capital in
Milledgeville,
Georgia on January 19, 1861. He resumed
his military career at age 47 and was commissioned a Lt. Colonel of the
First
Regiment, Georgia Regulars and later of the Eighth Regiment, Georgia
State
Troops. He and Civil War Governor Joseph
Emerson Brown were good friends. Many of
Chastain’s Civil War letters to the governor on behalf of his
constituents in
North Georgia plead dire circumstances, need for salt, and rampant
lawlessness
from raiders and renegades. He was appointed by Governor Brown to serve
as the
state attorney for the Western and Atlantic Railroad in 1857-1861, a
railroad
very vital to the Confederate forces.
Following the end of the Civil
War, Elijah
Web Chastain returned to Fannin County where he continued his law
practice and
managed his large farm. On a legal trip
to Dalton, Georgia in April, 1874, he
was drowned in Holly Creek April 9, swollen and flooded from spring
rains, as
he and his friends Col. John B. Dickey and Senator John A. Jervis
returned from
Dalton, Georgia where they had pled for the Dalton-Morganton Railroad. His body was recovered the next day and
burial occurred at the Toccoa Baptist Church Cemetery, Morganton, GA on
land
Col. Chastain had given to the church only a year prior to his death. The eulogy written by Congressman Hiram Parks
Bell has been preserved and gives a lofty account of this man whom
Chastain
historians as well as Col. Bell and others term “the most prominent
Chastain of
all time.” His “magnetic
personality…soldierly
bearing…and aggressive manner drew him into the limelight and his
magnetism and
easy success kept him there.” So wrote
James Garvin Chastain about Col. Elijah Webb Chastain in his “A Brief
History
of the Huguenots and Three Family Trees” (in The
Chestnut Tree, February, 1974).
Next in our line of notable
Chastains we
come to a son of Elijah Webb Chastain, namely Rev. Oscar Fitzallen
Chastain
(1844-1906) [sixth generation from Pierre “the Immigrant”] and his
notable
wife, Zenobia Addington Chastain (1848-1907). We can hardly remember
one of
these without also recalling the other, for their careers and interests
motivated them as a solid team for good.
Zenobia Addington established an academy in 1868 in Morganton
and was
able to get funding for this mountain school from the Peabody
Foundation. Oscar Fitzallen Chastain had
served in the
Civil War, as had his illustrious father.
When he and Mary Zenobia, daughter of March and Amy Elizabeth
White
Addington, were married December 18, 1872 in Union County by the Rev.
Thomas M.
Hughes, Oscar was a clerk in a store in Morganton, the then county seat
town of
Fannin County. No doubt, Oscar had been
attracted to the outstanding teacher of the school known as Zenobia’s
Academy.
Morganton Baptist Association of
Churches
was organized in 1893. In 1899, the
association took a bold step and organized the North Georgia Baptist
College in
Morganton, to be operated as a boarding school appealing to mountain
students. “College” was a broad term, for
classes were
offered from first grade through all the grades, high school, and about
the
first two years of college. Zenobia
Chastain, one of the best-educated women of the area at the time had
graduated
from a noted academy in Ellijay, Georgia headed by Professor M. C.
Briant. There she had been instructed in
history, the
classics, mathematics, Latin and Greek.
She was asked to come aboard the North Georgia Baptist College
as a teacher. Her husband, Rev. Oscar F.
Chastain, who had
been ordained to the gospel ministry on May 17, 1884, was named
business
manager of the college. At one time, due
to severe financial needs at the struggling college, the Chastains
mortgaged
their own farm and home to raise funds for operation of the school.
Oscar and Zenobia Chastain had
three
children, daughters Mariam, Mary and Nettie, all of whom preceded their
parents
in death. They took relatives and others
into their home to board so they could attend the college in Morganton.
In 1906
the Home Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention began joint
sponsorship with Morganton Association of the North Georgia Baptist
College and
named it as one of its “Mountain Schools.”
Nearby Blairsville operated a similar school called the
Blairsville
Collegiate Institute from 1904-1930.
Oscar Chastain died in 1906 at age 62 and his wife Zenobia died
in 1907
at age 60. Their joint tombstone in Morganton Baptist Cemetery has this
epitaph: “They loved God and their
fellowman.” Many who went through the
educational programs at Zenobia’s Academy and later the North Georgia
Baptist
College became noted teachers, lawyers, doctors, politicians and
upright
citizens. These two made a distinctive
mark as their vision and hard work become reality.
Theirs were noble lives, nobly lived.
[Next:
Continuing “Learning from the Past, Shaping the Future” we will
feature
Jason Coward Chastain, another sixth generation descendant of Pierre
“the
Immigrant” Chastain.]
[Ethelene Dyer
Jones is a retired educator,
freelance writer, poet, and historian. She may be reached at
e-mail edj0513@windstream.net;
phone 478-453-8751; or mail 1708 Cedarwood Road, Milledgeville, GA
31061-2411.]
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