Georgia and Georgians - the Digital Library of Georgia

GEORGIA AND GEORGIANS 2907HENEY HAEDING TIPT. For eighty years one of the most prominent namesin Georgia has been that of Tift. The pioneer Georgian was the late NelsonTift, who came to the state in 1835, and whose career is sketched on otherpages. When the Legislature was forming new counties in 1905, one of thosecreated in South Georgia was named Tift, and the county seat, now a flourishing little city, was named Tifton in about 1890, for Henry H. Tift.During the past forty or forty-five years no one figure has been moreconspicuous in the material, civic and institutional upbuilding of this sectionof South Georgia than Henry Harding Tift, and it is not without good reason that a good many people popularly associate the name of the county andthe city with his enterprise. He was a man who, realizing the great wealthof natural resources not only in timber but in agricultural lines, establishedsawmills, built railroads, caused the establishment of agricultural experimentstations, colonized the country with sturdy and thrifty farmers, and lent hispersonal agency and his material resources to the steady development of thisportion of the state. He is now seventy-five years old, but hale and hearty,and as active as most men at fifty.No doubt Mr. Tift regards with special satisfaction the growth and prosperity of Tifton. It was originally a typical lumber village. It is now thecenter of a large and prosperous agricultural community. Many permanentbusiness structures have been put up along the streets, the city has a completewater and sewerage system, splendid educational facilities, one of the handsomest postoffice buildings for a small city in Georgia, a fine courthouse, anda very modern hotel to name only a few of the attractions of this town.For the past thirty years he has given the best of his time and labors to theupbuilding of Tifton and Tift County, and always in his characteristicallymodest and unassuming manner.Henry Harding Tift was born at Mystic, New London County, Connecticut, March 16, 1841, a son of Amos Chapman and Phoebe (Harding) Tift,and is of sturdy New England ancestry. The name was originally spelledTefft, and some branches of the family still retain that spelling. Most of thefamily descendants are still found in the states of Rhode Island, Connecticutand New York, and the first of the name to come South was the late NelsonTift. The two American ancestors were John Tefft, who died at Portsmouth,Rhode Island, in 1676, and John Tifft, of Nassau, New York.Amos C. Tift, who died at Mystic, Connecticut, at the age of seventy-sixin 1883, was a merchant by occupation and had exceptional business capacity.He was quite well known in the South, especially at Key West, Florida. Mr.Tift's mother, a noble Christian woman who devoted herself to the mental,moral and religious training of her son, died in 1903 at Mystic, Connecticut,at the age of eighty-one.Henry Harding Tift was one of a family of seven children. As a boyhe attended the Connecticut public schools, and completed his training atGreenwich Academy in 1859. At the age of eighteen he began a three yearsapprenticeship in a machine shop and then became a steamship engineer,employed by some of the steamboat lines operating between New York andvarious Southern ports.After five years of this work he joined his uncle Nelson Tift at Albany,Georgia, a city which was founded by Nelson Tift. In 1870 Henry H. Tiftbecame general manager of the N. & A. F, Tift Manufacturing Company atAlbany. He remained there 2l/2 years, and in 1872 joined his cousin N. F.Tift and established the first sawmill at Tifton, which was then an unimportant station on the railway line. He was one of the pioneers in the lumberindustry of South Georgia,' and his judgment and industry enabled him todevelop the business at Tifton to extraordinary proportions. In a few yearshe had acquired about 65,000 acres-of timber lands, and the output of hismills was many million feet annually. The center of his operations was at!< ii-«*>-