| THE INS AND OUTS OF HARRIS COUNTY by Ronald J. Rollins
Whitesville's Last Jail Escape ! Sometime in 1920
 Whitesville was once a thriving little city in the 1800's, with stores, hotels, carriage factories, and stage lines. The town also had a rowdy reputation; as the people traveled trough the town they bought supplies as well as wet their whistle at one of several saloons. So this leads me to believe the town must have also had a jail and peacekeepers.
The story, I will soon tell was told to me while I was cooking bar-b-que for our Fire Department's annual fundraiser. It was early morning with a long day coming ahead. We had sat out by our fires most of the early morning. With me that morning was Mr. John Norfleet, Mr. Ralph Griggs, and Mr. Sherman Norwood. One of the things I loved to do on these occasions was to ask the older residents about what they knew or heard told about old Whitesville. Mr. Griggs and Mr. Norwood were prime candidates for my questions, both of them are older Black men that were raised near here and still live here in Frog Alley off Whitesville St. (I still don't have an answer to the origin of Frog Alley, it's always been called that!)
 Here is the story they told--It seems it was a Saturday night and big Bo, a distant cousin, had been drinking shine with some of the boys he cut timber with. Bo and the boys were in Frog Alley having a good old time after work. As the night went on big Bo got more and more rowdy (he likes to fight when drunk); we begin to worry, as his wife don't allow him to drink and he has forgot he should be home. We decided we should fetch Bo and get him to leave the group of now drunks. What can we do with him, we can't take him home in his condition and he will be angry when he realizes he has left the drinking, he is too strong for us to handle. At 6'4" and 285lbs, he is a big young man. We thought a few minutes and remembered a short walk away was the old jail cell. The building wasn't much just a steel bar cage with a wood top and floor. Three sides had bars and one a bar door. It was sitting on a rock foundation like old houses sit on (stacked rock on the 4 corners). 
The cell was about 8x8 square and 8ft tall. We put him in the cell and laid him down thinking he will sleep it off and we can get him home in the morning no trouble! We got a lock from home and a blanket for him to sleep on. It was a warm summer night and not far from Ralph's house, if he gets loud Ralph can calm him down. The next morning we got the shock of our lives; the jail and big Bo were gone. We found them down the road near his home. Big Bo had rocked the jail off the rocks, put his legs trough the bars and toted the jail off with him, headed home to the wife he feared and loved.
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(Memories of Whitesville, Georgia Harris County. By Ron Rollins.) |
