Joshua J Driskell

Joshua Driskell

b. 5 Jun 1799 in Worcester County, Md

moved to GA Nov of 1820

married Julia E. Mathis(b. 12 Dec 1812)

they were married 15 Oct 1829

doesnt say where Julia Mathis was born....

This info from Bible of James H. Driskell of Monticello (county seat) Jasper

County, GA

here is a Driscoll Cemetery there - some family member has the Bible of

James H. Driskell -

This was posted on the JASPER COUNTY, GA web site under USGENWEB

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From the Monticello news 8 oct 09.

.S. "Chick" Wilson 08.OCT.09

I think that I have heard about “Devil’s Half Acre” for most of my life but never knew any of the basic facts of the story.

I now know that the acre is located just over the Jasper-Putnam line where Hwy. 212, Bradley Road and Rabbit Skip Roads converge in Putnam County just past the Checking Station Road.

This is now a very quiet wooded spot called Stanfordville. Luckily we found a great historian in a local resident there, Lynn Stanford, related to the Manville family here, who brought us written evidence of Devils Half Acre’s past.

In fact, his great-great-great-grandfather was said to first purchased a half-acre for a “store” which really was a “saloon.” Now this all happened long before there was a Monticello or Eatonton, in the late 1700s or early 1800s.

The surrounding counties were just being formed and thousands of settlers were flooding into this area following the land lottery of 1792. There were all sorts of individuals and all tough for the task.

I now would like to quote a few facts from a great history story by Patty Almy, written in 1960, and furnished me by Mr. Stanford.

“Twenty four fist fights in one day would be reason enough to call Stanfordville “Devils Half Acre,” but they had better reasons than that. For Devil’s Half Acre, when it was first settled, was the meeting place for all the lawless men in Putnam, Baldwin, Jones and Jasper Counties.

It was centrally located, and the lawless ones just gathered there. It is said that the first half acre was purchased for a saloon, and later they added another acre and put two more saloons on it.”

All the gamblers, drunkards, cock fighters, and just plain fighters at first found a home there.

There was a race track where bets would range from 50 cents to $50 and a cock pit where fans would root their roosters to victory.

Indians would come and shoot corn from forked sticks and buy whiskey with their winnings, and whiskey flowed like water from the many saloons.

The bar rooms and post office would often be the start for fist fights that made up in ferocity for the lack of equipment. Since there were no boxing gloves, bare knuckles and anything else enter the ring or circle.

Some big shot would draw a circle and dare anyone to push him out and that would be the start of it as all his friends and kin would rush in to accommodate him. One of the fights resulted in one of the men named Davis, having his nose bitten off (they fought sans rules in those days) and from then on, he was known as “ Snip Nose Davis.”

Mr. N.L. Maddox, Sr.’s father said that these men cared “little for gospel and nothing for law” and that the beginning of Stanfordville was colorful if nothing else.

Many tales arose from Stanfordville’s beginnings that have come down through the years as good as they were when they happened. One man, Merriman Pound, once bet that he could vote twice. He voted the first time and as he went up the second time they asked his name and he said “Merriman still,” and won the bet.

He was Brack and Tom Pound’s great-great-great-grandfather (1760-1843), a Patriot and Indian fighter who lived there at the time and is buried there in the old Pound Cemetery.

White’s statistics sorrowfully note that Stanfordville was known as Devil’s Half Acre because of the wickedness of its inhabitants (some said God wouldn’t have it so he gave it to the Devil) but hopefully says (in the late 1840s) that it had become law abiding and reformed by the Methodist.

Most of the real settlers were from Maryland and the names of Stanford, Pound, Young, Mathis, Cox, Driskell, Maddox and Odom figure in the true history of the section.

Stanfordville is so centrally located that it was once considered for the capitol of the state, but nothing came of it.

As the years passed, Stanfordville grew. It had a female academy, Jefferson Academy for boys, a hotel, five stores, five blacksmith shops, two shoe stores, a tailor shop, a wood shop, three tanneries, a Post Office and a Methodist Church.

It was truly, before the War Between the States, a thriving community. Many prominent men came from there including the Rev. Carey Cox a Methodist Minister, Walter Mitchell who was Secretary of State and Lacurgus L. Stanford a State Senator.

After the war, Stanfordville began to go down. Slowly the homes and buildings were abandoned; folks moved away, and it became Putnam’s more famous ghost town. It is said that part of the old J. L. Benton home (Segal now) on Forsyth Street in Monticello was moved from the half acre area.

Doesn’t this remind you of Dodge City and the beginning of the old West and it all happened at the edge of Jasper, Jones and Putnam Counties, hard to believe, but now you know a little more about the history of “Devil’s Half Acre.”

You may be proud of this beginning or not, but history is history, and this is what was the beginning and formation of a free nation that we now live in.

Most of the “fighters” and decedents noted, probably later became Confederate Soldiers and again fought valiantly and hard for a lost cause in the “War of Northern Aggression.”