Jump to content
Main menu
Main menu
move to sidebar
hide
Navigation
Main page
Recent changes
Random page
Help about MediaWiki
Special pages
Niidae Wiki
Search
Search
Appearance
Create account
Log in
Personal tools
Create account
Log in
Pages for logged out editors
learn more
Contributions
Talk
Editing
Watkinsville, Georgia
(section)
Page
Discussion
English
Read
Edit
View history
Tools
Tools
move to sidebar
hide
Actions
Read
Edit
View history
General
What links here
Related changes
Page information
Appearance
move to sidebar
hide
Warning:
You are not logged in. Your IP address will be publicly visible if you make any edits. If you
log in
or
create an account
, your edits will be attributed to your username, along with other benefits.
Anti-spam check. Do
not
fill this in!
== History == Named after colonel Robert Watkins, Watkinsville was first named in records in 1791. It was located on the dangerous western frontier of the new United States. The Methodist Church played a prominent role in the city's early history.<ref>{{Cite web|last=Luckett|first=Robert|date=February 2006|title=Watkinsville|url=https://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/articles/counties-cities-neighborhoods/watkinsville%3famp|access-date=August 20, 2020|website=New Georgia Encyclopedia}}</ref> The [[Georgia General Assembly]] incorporated Watkinsville in 1815. Watkinsville had previously been in Clarke County. Oconee County was created from the southwestern part of Clarke County in 1875 by the Georgia General Assembly. === 1905 lynching === {{Main|Watkinsville lynching}} On June 30, 1905, Watkinsville saw one of the worst outbreaks of racial violence ever in Georgia. In one instance, eight men (seven of whom were black) were pulled from a local jail and [[Lynching|lynched]]. The lynching occurred due to two events. One of which was accusations that Sandy Price, one of the black males, assaulted a white woman named Weldon Dooley at her home in Watkinsville. Secondly, unsupported rumors spread that black males had killed a white couple known as the Holbrooks. This provoked the town people further. Price tried to flee from a crowd of angry locals, who chased and fired at him. He escaped the crowd of people, but was captured by the law and placed in jail. News of Price's jailing reached the people and they began planning his killing. People from the surrounding areas gathered together and forcefully retrieved the key to the jail cells from L. H. Alken, the marshal of the local jail. According to two eyewitnesses, the mob tied the African Americans and one white man to posts outside the jail after retrieving them, then shot them multiple times with [[pistol]]s, [[rifle]]s, and [[shotgun]]s. The only survivor of the killings was Joe Patterson, who was shot in the head and torso, but found still breathing by the crowd. One black male inside the jail, Ed Thrasher, was spared from the lynching. Another incident occurred on 1917 that could have been racially motivated.<ref name="Watkinsville">{{cite news |last1=Thompson |first1=Adam |title=Group to look for lost graves from notorious 1905 lynching |url=https://www.savannahnow.com/article/20071122/NEWS/311229812 |access-date=March 29, 2020 |publisher=Savannah Morning News |date=November 22, 2007}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |url=https://digihum.libs.uga.edu/exhibits/show/the-lynching-project--murder-a/georgia-historic-overview/oconee-county |title=The Lynching Project: Oconee County Β· the Lynching Project: Murder and Memory in Georgia Β· African American Experience in Athens |access-date=August 20, 2020 |archive-date=June 22, 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200622012802/https://digihum.libs.uga.edu/exhibits/show/the-lynching-project--murder-a/georgia-historic-overview/oconee-county |url-status=dead }}</ref>
Summary:
Please note that all contributions to Niidae Wiki may be edited, altered, or removed by other contributors. If you do not want your writing to be edited mercilessly, then do not submit it here.
You are also promising us that you wrote this yourself, or copied it from a public domain or similar free resource (see
Encyclopedia:Copyrights
for details).
Do not submit copyrighted work without permission!
Cancel
Editing help
(opens in new window)
Search
Search
Editing
Watkinsville, Georgia
(section)
Add topic