| by the book |
Flannery O’Connor; athletes like three-time gold medalist
skeet shooter Vincent Hancock; artists like Benny Andrews
and David Driskell; musicians Zac Brown and Foogiano; and
scientists Crawford Long and Benjamin
Hunt.
There were, however, many famous
people who lived in the Lake Country
but are rarely associated with this geography.
Baseball great Mickey Mantle
spent his final years at Lake Oconee;
guitarist Blind Willie McTell lived in
Milledgeville and played with Bob
Dylan and the Allman Brothers. Chickfil
A founder and CEO Truett Cathey
was born in Eatonton. Oliver “Ollie”
Hardy of the renowned comic duo,
Laurel and Hardy, spent his childhood
in Madison and his teenage years in
Milledgeville. The “I-didn’t-know-that”
list gets much longer. With this issue,
we spotlight three stars who rarely
make the Lake Country Heritage “hit
list,” but who had direct ties to Georgia
Writers Hall of Fame inductees.
William Seward
William Seward was born in 1801 in
upstate New York. At 15, he entered
Union College. He and his father often
quarreled over money. In his senior
year, Seward took a ship to Georgia
where he accepted a position as the
17-year-old principal of Union Academy
on Old Phoenix Road.
He boarded at Turnwold Plantation.
The school later burned and was
rebuilt as Phoenix Academy, where
Joseph A. Turner attended school.
Turner owned Turnwold, and Joel
Chandler Harris went to live there as a
teen, writing for Turner’s newspaper.
The author of the Uncle Remus
stories, Harris was inducted in the Georgia Writers Museum
Hall of Fame in 2000. And William Seward? In 1839, he
became governor of New York, and in 1849, a U.S. Senator.
He would become Secretary of State under Abraham Lincoln
and Andrew Johnson. He is best known for negotiating
the purchase of Alaska for a mere $7 million.
Sonny Terry
You might recall his bluesy harmonica duet (with Brownie
McGhee) on the front porch in the opening scene of the
movie, The Jerk, with Steve Martin. He was in the Broadway
versions of Finian’s Rainbow and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, and
performed at Carnegie Hall.
Before serving as Abraham Lincoln’s Secretary
of State, William Seward served as the
principal of Union Academy on Old Phoenix
Road.
16 LAKE OCONEE LIVING | WINTER 2021