Death begins the countdown when we’ll be forgotten. There will come a time when there will be no one left to remember who we were, or what we did in life’s short span. “Death marks the beginning or the end of our legacy.” We will be largely unknown despite any fame or accomplishments.

A part of my legacy consists of four books written as a legacy crediting my life’s work and journey’s, donated to our Moultrie Colquitt County Museum. I credit my desire to write to my great-grandfather, born 1831, his father a Ship’s Chandler, (selling wares to the shipping trade). If not for his journal written in his usual hand (calligraphy), traveling from Cork, Ireland in 1843 (age 12) to Savannah, Ga., I would not benefit without this written legacy.

My legacy writing’s what I consider to be his continuing life’s legacy. I wrote a screen offering of his life, guided by his life’s journal entries. With his adopted brother, a baby tossed by a slave mother in 1831 (saved by my great-great-grandfather three months before my great-grandfathers birth) from a ship bound for destination unknown. Ship identified as one from Sierra Leone on African west coast.

The baby was adopted and given the name Chance O’Connor.

Age 12, both brothers stowed away on a two-mast coal fired schooner in 1843, bound for Savannah, Ga. The settled in Mt. Vernon, Ga., and acquired 600 acres of land. While on a trip to Charleston, S.C., to sell cotton and naval turpentine to port England in November 1859, Uncle Chance O’Connor wrote in their shared journal: “Unless the Commodity Tax is rescinded on Southern exports to the north U. S., they’re even talking war at Ft. Sumpter.”

The war developed. Both brothers were drafted and joined the Virginia militia, both wounded and survived the war. Three trips to purchase 600 spring-bred Hereford cows from Kings Ranch, 1878, 1882, 1889. Same trip Uncle Chance drove the herd to Georgia, while Great-Grandfather, James Benjamin O’Connor, headed north on each trip and purchased 600 Missouri mules. The mules were matched as to their gait and sold off for profit.

With two cotton gins, they purchased the cotton bales grown locally, from early 1870s until 1914. Pres. Wilson (prepping for WW- 1) put out a call for cotton and pork in October 1913: Cotton 2 cents per pound, Pork 3 cents. … AII the time lying to the American people, “We’re not going to get involved in the German war.” When sellers of cotton refused 2 cent offer, Pres. Wilson continued price offers,

When the cotton offer hit 25 cents in March 1914, Uncle Chance wrote “Brother James, it’s time to sell.”

They sold 25,000 on-hand bales cotton at 25 cents per pound to the U. S. Government.

Uncle Chance passed November 1914. James B. O’Conner passed 1918 (the year my older brother, Hoyle Shelton, was born 7/7 /1918). Hoyle died from a lightning strike 7/25/1925, buried in the Hamilton Cemetery, Montgomery County, next to Great-Grandfather.

I write so my heirs yet unborn shall know me.

Thomas Alton Rogers

Moultrie, Ga.