Richard's Story- 1800- Louisville, Georgia

Like everyone else in the family, Richard would have greatly enjoyed a day off from farm chores to take a trip to town. Rocky Comfort Creek quickly met with the broader, faster flowing Ogeechee River, and four miles down the Ogeechee was the closest town- Louisville. This was an easy ride by horseback, and not a bad walk, either. And Louisville was not just any town; it was the capital of Georgia. 

State Seal of Georgia, from Trousset encyclopedia, Paris, 1886 - 1891

Here Richard and his father and brothers would run into not just local plantation owners, but others like his uncle Jonathan Kemp, who were gentlemen serving in the Georgia legislature. Great men came to Louisville, and it would have been a gathering place for men of power and wealth. This was no provincial backwater- it was the center of government. Here, in 1798, the Georgia Constitution was crafted. Here the state seal was designed- a U.S. flag and a wharf holding hogsheads of tobacco and bales of cotton (the chief exports of the state) and the motto “Agriculture and Commerce” and three pillars representing values of the time- “wisdom, justice, moderation.”

Louisville was also the market center for the entire region. Richard and his family may have shipped their goods downriver on a flatboat or carried them on pack horses when they conducted their trade in town. Tobacco was traditionally packed into barrel like hogsheads, which were then hitched to mules or oxen to be rolled along the path to the docks. Tobacco was evaluated, sold, and stored at the large tobacco warehouse that had been on the Ogeechee near Louisville. From there the tobacco was shipped downriver to the seaport of Savannah.

The post office was at Louisville- here Jesse Womack would send and receive letters from his far-flung family members, and receive news of what was going on in the nation. The city had been laid out on 40 acres of squares and streets to encourage orderly growth. There were no doubt shops and businesses...here was a fine  colonial open market house where Phoebe could buy cloth and sewing materials, coffee, sugar, and salt. Here Jesse could find tools and ammunition. Here the young people could seek out others of their own age.

Market House, Louisville, Georgia. From Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, HABS GA 82-Louvi 1-2

 Also at Louisville was the now infamous slave market, built in the earliest days of the colony, in 1758. Traders returning from Africa would bring slaves here to trade to upland plantation owners. The unfortunate souls would have met their new masters here, at the slave market. We can only imagine the sights and sounds of this place on days when a shipment of slaves came in for sale.

"Whitney Gin" wikipedia, public domain

Richard’s keenest interest at the time, however, was no doubt the new cotton gin. Men and boys from many miles around would have flocked to see this incredible piece of machinery. Louisville had one of the first  commercial cotton gins in the world, and it is said that Eli Whitney mailed his patent from the Louisville Post Office. 

If the Womack’s grew any upland cotton, Richard and everyone else on the farm would have been all too familiar with the tiresome task of bending over a basket for hours to separate the tiny green seeds from soft cotton boll by hand. This job was so time consuming that it was difficult to make upland cotton productive. Now, with the new gin, 50 pounds of cotton could be seeded in a day. 

Did Jesse and his sons meet Eli Whitney? It is entirely possible. We do know that Eli traveled to Louisville and spent time there. All of the planters would have wanted to meet him to talk with him about his incredible invention. With tobacco profits decreasing and cotton profits increasing, it is almost certain that Richard, along with many other planters, young and old alike, saw cotton as the crop of the future. 

They were right. The cotton gin was the impetus for change. Now increasingly wealthy planters needed more and more land to grow the fluffy white fiber, which was to be planted, harvested, and borne on the shining black backs of more and more negro slaves.

        Richard Womack's world, and that of the south, had changed forever.

First Cotton Ginf from Harpers Weekly 1869 Illustration depicting event of some 70 years earlier (wikipedia-public domain)