James Willingham Fell Victim to His Own Benevolence (Tombstone Tuesday)

James Willingham
(1813-1844)

This grave is that of a man, who had he lived in these days would have received recognition from Carnegie. - Bridges Smith, 1917

POSTSCRIPT!
Awful conflagration and loss of life.

(Macon Weekly Telegraph, Georgia, 20 August 1844)

Our City has again been visited by a destructive fire; about 1 o'clock this morning, our citizens were aroused from their slumbers by the alarm of fire, it having broken out in a Gun-Smith shop occupied by P. Roux, and immediately spread with great rapidity, notwithstanding the extraordinary exertions of our citizens to arrest its progress. Eleven or twelve buildings were entirely destroyed, estimated in value, at about 35 or $40,000.

We have the melancholy task also to record the death of one of our most active and worthy citizens, Mr. James Willingham. It was occasioned by the falling in of the front of a house which had been blown down in part by powder.

By the death of Mr. Willingham our city has sustained the loss of an energetic and most useful citizen -- and the democracy of Georgia of a staunch and unflinching supporter.

As a foreman in our office we have not only lost a firm supporter in the great republican principles for which we are battling, but a sincere and ardent friend. In our next we will be more explicit. We have stopped the press to insert this short and confused account of this catastrophe.

After the death of James Willingham, the obelisk pictured above was placed over his grave in Rose Hill Cemetery. Inscribed is the following:

Erected by the Mayor and Council of Macon in honour of the Public Spirit which lost a valuable life in saving the property of his fellow-Citizens from the ravages of FIRE.
Over the week after the fire, it's occurrence as well as the death of Mr. Willingham was reported in newspapers across the country, including the District of Columbia's Daily National Intelligencer.

Approximately two weeks after the fire, another item about it and the man considered to be a hero was published in the Macon Weekly Telegraph on 3 September 1844:

"OBITUARY.Departed this life in this city, on the 20th ult. -- the night of the recent fire -- Mr. JAMES WILLINGHAM. The melancholy duty of noticing the death of this gentleman, has fallen to our lot; and when we recur to the intimate connexion that existed between us up to the period of his death, we are compelled to acknowledge ourselves inadequate to the task. It is well known that Mr. Willingham was the Foreman, in our office, as well as our friend; and if honesty, sobriety, and diligence, in the discharge of his duties, tend to the elevation of human character, his claims to that distinction were preeminent. In all the relations of life, his sterling qualities of heart and mind shone forth resplendently. He was the ardent supporter of Democratic Republican principles, the useful, active and benevolent citizen, the warm social friend -- the affectionate husband, and the tender father. They only who knew him intimately were able to appreciate his worth; and now that an inscrutable fist of the Almighty has taken him from our midst, they only can realize to the full, the loss which his family, his friends, and the community in general have sustained.

Mr. Willingham was born in Columbia county, Ga. on 1st November, 1813, and at the time of his death was consequently about 31 years of age. Many of our citizens were eye-witnesses of the sad catastrophe which occasioned his death, and could all have been present, farther comment would be unnecessary. With a chivalrous self devoting spirit he had ever been found foremost in the van where the lives or property of his fellow citizens was endangered. To him "the post of danger was the post of honor," and ever nobly did he perform his duty. On this night the intrepid Willingham was at his post and up to the moment of his death wherever his giant form was seen, his brawny arm wielded the axe -- the only efficient implement that could be then opposed to the destroying element. The building on which he was employed at that time, was a wooden one occupied by Mr. Kennedy as a Grocery, and owned, we believe, by Mr. Bishop. A number of persons were engaged at the same time in attempting to pull down the building while Mr. W., with others were cutting away the stronger studs and braces which supported it. Relying, alas! too confidently on his activity, he remained beneath the roof after every one else had deserted it, and we are told that had he retreated but a moment sooner, his valuable life would have been saved to the community, to his friends, and above all, to his interesting, but now bereaved family.

When it is remembered that our friend was actuated by no selfish motive, (having no interest in that part of the city.) but prompted a one by the most generous emotions of the human heart, he fell a victim to his own benevolence, we are lost in admiration of the man, and overwhelmed with sorrow at his untimely death.

To his bereaved widow, we alas! have not the consolations of Christian piety to offer, but we fervently pray, that this soul harrowing affliction may work for her temporal as well as eternal benefit, that "he who tempers the wind to the shorn lamb" will season this dread calamity with good to those little children who have been deprived of a fathers care long ere they could know a fathers love; and may she and they soon find that now belongs to them,

"Whatever God ordained, to bless
The Widow and the fatherless."
For our friend what more can we say. He died as a he had lived, a good and brave man, and there can be no earthly doubt that long ere this he has met with his reward in "mansions of bliss prepared for the just made perfect."

"A good man and an angel! these between
How thin the barrier! what divides their fate?
Perhaps a moment, or perhaps a year;
Or if an age, 'tis but a moment still.""

All Aboard for the Seeing-Macon Car

I recently found this and couldn't resist getting it on the blog quickly, even without any enhancements. Stay tuned for elaborations and photos!

[Update! The articles I have written to go along with several of the paragraphs in this 1917 news article are now linked from within.]

Macon Telegraph
16 December 1917
(Viewable online at GenealogyBank.)

"JUST 'TWIXT US
By BRIDGES SMITH

ALL aboard for the Seeing-Macon Car.

We will now leave the car and take a walk. This is Rose Hill Cemetery, taking its name from one of Macon's earliest public-spirited citizens, through whose efforts and by whose plans it was laid out and established in 1840. The first cemetery for the west side of the river is between Cherry and Poplar, below Seventh, and in it the pioneers of the city were buried. For many years it was neglected, but is now enclosed.

On this stroll we will point out a few of the graves of interest, leaving a more elaborate description of the many beautiful monuments and graves for a second visit.

The Ocmulgee river flows alongside, and before the Southern railroad was allowed to run through on the river bank there were a series of cliffs and bluffs, one of which was the usual Lover's Leap, with its usual tradition of the Indian maiden leaping from it to her death because her dusky lover had fallen a victim to an arrow of the enemy. The railroad cut out all the romance.

This is the Zeigler vault, and holds the bones of William Zeigler, who came here from South Carolina and died in 1855. Formerly there was a heavy plate glass window in the door, through which the hermetically sealed casket, with its elaborate silver handles and ornaments could be plainly seen. Shortly after General Wilson's army came to Macon in 1865, some vandal soldiers broke the glass and entered the vault. They had evidently heard a story in circulation that all Zeigler's gold had been buried with him, but not being able to get into the casket they stripped it of its silver ornaments and handles. It was then that this marble slab was put in place of the glass, thus shutting off a view of the interior.

Here is the grave of little Mary Marsh, the stage name of Mary Eliza Guerineau, whose fluffy dress caught fire from the footlights on the night of January 27, 1859, while dancing, and was burned to death before she could be rescued. She was a mere child, and was performing with the Marsh Family in the old Ralston Hall, the theater building that stood where the Fourth National Bank now stands. Her tragic death caused gloom all over the city. For many years the wreath of artificial flowers worn by the child on that night, enclosed in a circular metal case, remained on the top of the marble slab until some ghoul removed it.

For fifty years, in fact up to a few years ago, a lady in black visited the grave and covered it with flowers. No one knew from whence she came. She was never known to speak to any one, and all her actions were mysterious. It was supposed that she was the mother, and made this annual pilgrimage to Macon until death caused her to cease them.

Here is the Bond monument. Joseph Bond was one of the wealthy planters of antebellum days. Like many others of his day, he owned enough slaves to have made up a regiment, and land in Southwest Georgia sufficient for a site for two or more cities the size of Macon. He loved his slaves, and on one occasion, in the year 1859, when his overseer, from all accounts a man as brutal as the overseer in Uncle Tom's Cabin, was found by him beating a slave unmercifully, Mr. Bond interfered and was killed by the overseer. The imposing monument which you see before you was cut in Italy, and reached New York about the time of the break between the States. It was placed in a bonded warehouse in that city, where it remained until after the war and was then shipped here and placed in position.

Here is the grave of a man who did as much for Macon as any man, Elam Alexander, a contractor. He built Wesleyan College and other prominent buildings. He brought the magnetic telegraph to Macon, expended money in boring artesian wells, which proved failures, however, because of Macon being built upon solid rock, contributed to railroads and every public enterprise, and at his death left a fund, which by wise and careful management on the part of the trustees of the fund gave the city the three handsome public school buildings that bear his name. He died in 1863.

There is something as uncanny as it is unusual for a cemetery. On this lot are the graves of nine victims of a kinsman who slew with an axe almost his entire family. This was Thomas Woolfolk, and the extraordinary crime was committed one night in August, 1897. He paid the penalty of his deed on the gallows.

This grave is that of a man, who had he lived in these days would have received recognition from Carnegie. The inscription on the tombstone will tell you why. It reads:

"Erected by the Mayor and Council of Macon in honor of the public spirit which lost a valuable life in saving the property of his fellow-citizens from the ravage of fire."

This hero of Macon's village days was James Willingham, a printer. He died in 1844. His widow was the mother of Ben, William, Al and John Goodyear, well-known citizens now living.

This plot of ground is consecrated to the memory of Confederate soldiers. Nearly all the bones in these graves were removed from the old cemetery in the lower part of the city through the efforts of the good women of Macon, where the Confederate soldiers dying in the hospitals, and the remains of many dying elsewhere, were at first buried. On the 26th of April of each year memorial exercises are held here, and all these graves are strewn with flowers by both girls and veterans. No city in the South observes Memorial Day more than does Macon.

Adjoining Rose Hill is the Riverside Cemetery, which is one of the several forts or redoubts thrown up around Macon in 1864 to protect the city from the attacks of the enemy. They were thrown up to form a semi-circle, beginning on the east side of the river, where North Highlands is now, and extending to the Columbus road on the west side. That in Riverside is probably the best preserved, the others have been partially or fully destroyed to make room for improvements.

In former days Rose Hill was visited much more than now. Every fair Sunday afternoon it was filled with the younger people. In those days there was a number of springs of cold, clear water, all flowing into the little brook that is still here. One of the springs was the Crystal Spring within a cave, under the hill. It was walled up with crystallized rocks with an iron railing around it, and this was a favorite place to visit.

On the bank of the river, at the foot of Central avenue, was the "Lover's Leap," to be found in nearly all cemeteries that are situated on a river. It was here that the young people gathered and told of the legend of the Indian maid. That the legend was believed by many is evidenced by the fact that when these young people were on it, they preserved the utmost silence, hushing their talking to whispers. It was on this rock that Henry Watterson, during his residence in Macon, spent many a Sunday afternoon."