Georgia and Georgians - the Digital Library of Georgia

GEORGIA AND GEORGIANS 3167land. He afterward rose to the rank of brigadier-general of militia; was amember of the First Congress under the constitution of 1787, and a UnitedStates senator from Georgia in 1795-96. While thus serving he was implicated in the notorious Yazoo speculations, and died under a moral cloud atLouisville, Georgia, July 30, 1801.BUTTON GWINNETT, one of the three signers of the Declaration of Independence who represented Georgia, was an Englishman, going from Bristolto Charleston, South Carolina, when he was about forty years of age. Afterward he moved his mercantile interests to Savannah, and became a largeplanter of the Midway District, where Lyman Hall was widely known as aphysician. The two served in the Provincial Congress and, with George Walton,affixed their signatures to the historic declaration. He was also a member of the famous Council of Safety, succeeded Archibald Bulloch as president and commander-in-chief of Georgia and died in May, 1777, as the resultof a duel with Gen. Lachlan Mclntosh, whose influence he had attempted toundermine as a military commander.J. T. DEESE. Of the officials of Bleckley County, one who through hispublic service has made himself known to the people is J. T. Deese, ex-memberof the Georgia Legislature, and now serving his second term in the capacityof county clerk. Primarily a farmer, Mr. Deese has demonstrated the factthat the residents of the rural districts are eminently capable of dignifiedand able service as public servants, and his record is one which will bear theclosest and most searching inspection.Mr. Deese was born in Wilkinson County, Georgia, April 13, 1866, and isa son of Joel and Nancy (Lord) Deese. His father, a native of South Carolina,moved to Alabama at the age of nineteen years, and two years later came toGeorgia and settled in Wilkinson County, where he became a large slaveowner and prominent and influential planter and citizen. He served in severallocal offices within the gift of the people, and while engaged in the dischargeof his duty in some official way, was assassinated in 1870, when he was sixtyfiveyears of age. Mrs. Deese was born in Georgia, the daughter of a NorthCarolinian who was an early settler of the Cracker state, and here she waseducated, reared, married and passed her entire life, dying in 1900, at theage of eighty-one years. In the family of Joel and Nancy Deese there werefive children, namely: William M., who at the outbreak of the Civil warbecame a member of the Wilkinson Rifles, a military organization in the armyof the Confederacy, and met his death at the battle of Sawyer's Lane; onechild who died in infancy; Mrs. Dr. W. N. Fleetwood, the wife of a wellknowncitizen of Cochran; and J. T.J. T. Deese was granted exceptional educational advantages in his youth,attending first the country schools of Wilkinson County, and later the highschool at Hawkinsville, the agricultural school at Thomasville, the M. G. &M. A., at Milledgeville, and the State University at Athens. He was nextappointed as a cadet to the Georgia Military Academy, at Savannah, andafter one and one-half years in that institution was given an appointment tothe United States Military Academy at West Point. After several yearsMr. Deese entered upon his career as manager of cotton compresses at Hawkinsville and Griffin, and when he left the latter place returned to farmingventures in Pulaski County, which he has continued to the present time.Mr. Deese has taken an active interest in politics, having been a stanchsupporter of the democratic party, and in 1911 became the candidate of thatparty for the lower house of the Georgia General Assembly. Duly elected,he served capably and energetically for one term, and upon his return toCochran was elected clerk of the newly-formed County of Bleckley. He isnow serving his second term in this office and is giving the people the benefit