Did you know that a Philadelphia Quaker had an impact on the education of African American students in Monroe County?
“I should like to help the little country schools,” Anna Jeanes said, so she established a foundation that supported Jeanes supervisors in rural schools in the American South. Supervisors visited the schools, often one room in a church or lodge, providing encouragement, support, and instruction for the teachers there. Here in Monroe County Annie Whitehead had the longest tenure as a Jeanes supervisor, working from 1950 to 1973.
Did you know that the publisher of a local newspaper fatally shot the Monroe County Clerk of Superior Court in 1850– was not convicted?
The two had a “difficulty,” as the expression went. The Clerk of the Superior Court, Rufus J. Pinckard, sent the county’s legal ads to a Macon newspaper to run instead of placing them with “The Bee,” the local journal. So Joseph Cohron, the irate publisher of “The Bee,” shot Pinckard on the courthouse square. [Admittedly Pinckard was walking with a cow hide whip in his hand at the time the two men met.]
Did you know that Juliette is not the only feminine place name in the history of Monroe County?
“Eleanor” was the name the Georgia legislature gave in 1907 in the act of incorporation for the mill community established by Captain J. M. Ponder for his workers. Its name came from Eleanor, his younger granddaughter. His older granddaughter was Juliette, but the town on the Ocmulgee River had already taken that name.