Week 6 – COMMUNITIES – Family and Land

Census and purchase records from the 1870s and 1880s confirm that former slaves and their descendants purchased land on or near their former plantations. In Harrington, the largest African American community on St. Simons Island, they worked as farmers, fishermen, laundresses, carpenters, and day laborers. They worshipped at First African Baptist Church, founded in 1859 and built in 1869. African Americans from all around the island traveled to attend worship services here until the 1890s when the First African Baptist decided to begin a mission church, Emmanuel Baptist Church. The church ladies, said it was a “long hard ride” from South End and when the men came up, “they preferred to wander off to go hunting or fishing” instead of attend church services. The South End Community near the pier village was also settled by former slaves who later worked service-oriented jobs at the island resorts, such as Sea Island or the King and Prince Hotel.

Today street names in the communities memorialize the families who once lived there. Murray Lane, Mama Lou Lane, Hunter Drive and Ramsey Lane recall the families in Harrington. Belle Murray shared songs in Gullah dialect with Lorenzo Dow Turner for his late 1930s studies on Africanisms in the Gullah dialect. Mama Lou was the nickname given to Lucinda Armstrong by her daughter. Benjamin Hunter and his brother Charlie Hunter were expert fishermen and hunters who taught the Berolzheimers boys on Little St. Simons Island. Mrs. Isadora Hunter, also a member of the Whing (or Wing) family donated her portion of her family land to save the Harrington School which she attended in 1928. Mrs. Hunter, a tenacious community leader, “served on every committee” at the island’s First African Baptist Church and pushed voter registration for NAACP. The Ramsey brothers Tom, Abe and Adam lived at Ramsey Lane. Their sister Emma was one of the members of the Georgia Sea Island Singers.

On the South End, home to the Proctors and the Armstrongs, you will find Johnson Lane and Baisden Lane named for teachers Adrian and Louetta Johnson and Ralph Baisden. Proctor Lane recalls Adam Proctor who worked in the mills. Willis Proctor had a grocery store and was valet to Mr. Rockefeller on Jekyll Island. His sister Julia Proctor Armstrong was a housekeeper for Lydia Parrish. Both Julia and her husband Joe Armstrong, a stevedore with a deep booming voice known on the docks, helped Parrish organize performances of the Spiritual Singers of Georgia and to record the songs for her book Slave Songs of the Georgia Sea islands. George Lotson Lane memorializes a local citizen whose relatives Amy Lotson Roberts, Executive Director of the St. Simons African American Heritage Coalition (SSAAHC), and Griffin Lotson, a Commissioner for the Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor, have been instrumental in saving and sharing African American history. Everett Street was named for Dutch Everett and Mary Gould Everett who ran Everett Groceries. Dutch kept his family history and shared it with Eugenia Price, author of the historical St. Simons Trilogy.

Near present day McDonald’s and Ace Garden Store Jewtown was nick named for the Levison brothers who ran a general store near to the sawmills. Oliver Lane is named for Harry and Reuben Oliver who worked at the mills and trucked logs. Petty Lane and Plum Broke Lane may have been signs of the times for community families.