Civil War Articles by Julian WilliamsThe Dead River Saga Of The Rev. Elder Wilson Conner Continues
This article was compiled by Julian Williams.
Dead River - what a name. We are told that Dead River Church and Dead River Cemetery got their names from the fact that the Oconee River had changed its course and the live river went elsewhere and left the dead river water at Dead River (in present day Montgomery County, Ga.). When I read that I thought of another dead river oxbow, this one on the Ocmulgee, that came to be called Montgomery Lake, hardly a lake, home of the world's record largemouth bass. It still stands - the dead river lake and the world's record. The point is this: don't discount dead water - there might be a big big fish in there. The big fish from Dead River was none other than the awe-inspiring, all-enduring, brave, colorful, fighting, exhorting, rip-roaring and controversial figure called Wilson Conner - The Reverend Elder Wilson Conner of Dead River.
Last week we saw clearly that the Reverend Elder Wilson Conner was a man of tremendous scope and vision. His range of operations took in family raising, soldiering, politicking, holding public office, preaching, starting churches and probably about anything that came to hand - even starting countries. Even riding his horse over 35,000 miles was an event itself. To accomplish these objectives he had to be a man of great drive and endurance. His purposes were not ephemeral and unenduring but were as clear and eternal to him as the Spring Lake water of the Willcoxes, just above Jacksonville, Georgia. His horse drank more than once from those cold cold waters - and so did he. His daughter, Louisa, must have liked the water, too. She married John Willcox III and they had a lot of little Willcoxes. That probably had nothing to do with the water.
And last week we saw The Reverend tell Governor Mitchell of Georgia that he and his soldiers, resplendently honorable and brave to him, but ragtag redneck Georgia renegades to certain others, were off on a mission of God, country, and general principle. Mind you, this would not be the last time the word "mission" would come up. If the Spaniards could cry, "God, gold, and glory," then he could run them out of the country for the reasons stated above. They would indeed become the victims of one of his very first missionary efforts. "Mission," to Elder Conner meant a heap of things. We will see other applications later.
The clandestine move upon the Spaniards, Florida, and the Indians came to be called the Patriots War. While some would call it a "sneak attack," Patriot Conner and his men would call it a brave and noble military venture (mission) to rid the country (or, potential country, right now belonging to somebody else, namely, the Spaniards) of an enemy. Wilson Conner was one of the main patriots. So was his neighbor, Lodowick Ashley of Telfair County. Those Ashleys were mobile folks, too. The whole idea was to go down to East Florida and take it away from the Spanish and then eventually turn it over to the good old U.S. government and it would become a part of the country. Seemed simple enough. And it was great for anyone wanting to break the monotony of catching catfish out of the Oconee and Ocmulgee rivers. In other words, it would be a real adventure.
The simplicity started to slake slightly when Governor Mitchell called upon General George Mathews to conduct this excursion, definitely already illegal, into the northeastern bowels of Florida. The presence of General Mathews on the agenda caused more than one eyebrow to scowl and sulk in something close to horror. He had been the same gentleman, as governor, who had put everything and everybody in a stew with the Yazoo Land Fraud. Its solution, if it could be called that, had changed the very face of Georgia, geographically and politically. But to his credit, if he didn't know how much land was in Georgia, "he had signed legislation to discourage the foreign slave trade by requiring any person importing slaves into Georgia from the West Indies or East or West Florida to pay the state a fee of ｣50 for each slave."
All in all, General Mathews, once Governor Mathews, could probably be faulted more for bad advice from his consultants than intentional malfeasance. But we know what they say about intentions and there was no way Mathews could get off the hook of close scrutiny and public ridicule.
And as the Reverend Elder Wilson Conner mated his mission and abilities with those of the infamous General Mathews, it is no wonder that history refuses to acknowledge the "acquisition effort" relative to East Florida as the grandest stroke of them all. Wilson Conner, though, didn't care a hoot about all this philosophizing. All he wanted to do was topple Fernandina Beach and Amelia Island and whack the daylights out of the Spaniards. He wanted to wave his gilded sword over the ramparts smelling of the brine of the Atlantic. He wanted to doff his cockado hat at his troops and see the smile of victorious achievement on their tired faces. He wanted someone to come along and say: "Mission accomplished!"
But lest we anoint him with a hand less than kind, picturing him as a bloodthirsty warrior, remembering not his zeal as a man of God and a missionary, let us look at what he did outside the fortifications of that wicked isle he intended to extricate from the fist of the men from Spain.
Gene Barber, a Florida writer, tells us that the diligent and persisent Elder Wilson Conner not only held forth in the art of war but "of almost equal magnitude was that, as far as history has told us, Elder Wilson Conner - son of a Revolutionary Soldier and progenitor of the Baker County Conners - directed the first Christian service outside the Roman and English rites in Florida." (It might be added that many folks also say that Wilson Conner was a Revolutionary soldier himself, albeit a mighty young one.) "Mission" to Wilson Conner had several meanings. Starting the first Baptist church in Florida was just part of the package.
Barber continues:
"In 1819 he helped a band of Americans living along the Spanish side of the Saint Mary's River form the Pigeon Creek Baptist Church (formally chartered a couple of years later) - Florida's first Baptist Church. From Pigeon Creek went assistance to other communities such as Emmeus and North Prong's Mount Zion (both also on the Saint Mary's). These, together with those being established by Elder Conner, became locally known as the "Conner Faction" or "Connerites.""
Yes, Brother Reverend Elder Wilson Conner was bigger than life and reined in for no man or obstacle. As Gene Barber once again says, "One wonders at the successes of the image-makers and re-writers of history when folks heros are made of n'er accomplishers and blow hards such as Daniel Boone and Davy Crockett, but doers-with God and guts are passed over."
Now, that might be a little hard on ole Davy because we will look in on him again in Congress with General Coffee. That, along with the Alamo, put him in pretty good stead.
But, that's not taking away anything from ole Wilson either. There were challenges ahead but nothing he and The Lord together couldn't handle. He was truly "a man with a mission."
Credits:
Albert Sidney Johnson for "Longpondium";
C.T. (Chris) Trowell for info on General John E. Coffee and General John R. Coffee;
Peg Conner Corliss for notes on Wilson Conner;
Gene Barber for The Way It Was;
Ed Jackson for Today In Georgia History;
Floris Perkins Mann for History of Telfair County;
Ann Carswell for letters of and notes on Gen. Mark Willcox;
The Coffees (Internet);
Willcox Family History by Martha Albertson;
Telfair History (1807-1987);
info furnished by Gertrude Wilcox Williams and Diane Williams Rogers and others.
