Planes, Trains & Heroes: A Story of Warner Robins and the Robins Region

FROM THE PEOPLE
“My granddaddy, Ernest Hugh Holleman, Sr., was drafted for the army during World War I
and was to report to Fort McPherson in Atlanta. He went to Echeconee to catch the train to
Macon then to Atlanta. When he reached the train station, he learned that the war was over and
that he could go home. It was November 11, 1918.”
- Steve Holleman
“In 1942, I worked in Macon in the long distance department of the telephone company.
There were only two circuits for long distance calls to Wellston at that time.”
- Janie Townsend
Several of the Mississippian mounds at
Ocmulgee National Monument feature defensive
trench work. These first Georgians took full
advantage of natural assets, such as high-ground
visibility, as well as creek and river transportation.
In 1690, the British established a fortified trading
post, whose archeological footprint is on the
grounds of Ocmulgee. Located on the Lower and
Middle Creek trading paths, it operated until
burned in the Yamassee War of 1715. Upon the
establishment of the United States, both George
Washington and Thomas Jefferson eyed the
southwestern frontier, Georgia’s Ocmulgee River.
By 1806, Fort Hawkins towered above the
Muskogee-Creek sacred grounds and represented
the Manifest Destiny philosophy of its new
government. The ancient trading path became
known as The Federal or Garrison Road. A
Pictorial History of Robins Air Force Base, Georgia
summarizes what happened next:
Houston County was created from land
ceded to the State of Georgia by the Creek
Indians in the Creek Treaty of 1821. The treaty
was negotiated at Indian Springs, which is now
a state park in Butts County, above Macon.The
Upper Creeks rejected the treaty but a delegation
of Lower Creeks, led by controversial half-white
Chief William McIntosh, signed it.McIntosh was
not only a Creek Chief but a Brigadier General,
USA, a first cousin of Governor George M.
Troup, and a rich man with numerous slaves.
He had three wives, two red and one white, but
attended the Methodist Church when he
visited his cousin, the Governor, in
Milledgeville. Milledgeville was the state capitol
in those days. A second Creek Treaty (1825)
negotiated at Indian Springs, in which McIntosh
ceded another slice of Indian land, cost him his
life. He was shot and scalped by a party of Creek
warriors. It didn’t change anything.The remaining
Indians of the Southeastern United States
were rounded up in the 1830s and moved to
what is now the state of Oklahoma. (1)
A Land so Dedicated describes the rationale
behind the forced removal of Native
Americans— what the Cherokee call “The Trail
of Tears” and the Muskogee call “The Trail on
which They Cried”—this way:
Ironically, it was the civilization of the tribes
and not their savagery that now most frightened
the Georgians. Both the Creeks in the South and
the Cherokees in the north were setting up
‘states’ asserting their sovereignty of the land.
Their lifestyle had taken on many aspects of
other pioneer settlers except that they would not
acknowledge the jurisdiction of Georgia’s government
over their tribes. (Nelson 40).
Next came farming, then trains. A few
pre-1950 structures remain in Houston County,
and the historic rail lines have merged into
Norfolk Southern.
By the time of the Civil War, both the
Confederate and Union soldiers used the Old
Federal Road. In fact, they engaged on what was
once the site of Fort Hawkins and what is now the
Ocmulgee National Monument in The Battle of
Dunlap Farm. By 1917, and in the same general
area, the United States chose author Harry Stillwell
Edwards’ family farm, Holly Bluff, for the site of
World War I Camp Wheeler and trained about
Chapter One ✦ 11