Author Description

This account of life in Bullock County from the earliest days of white settlement until 1940 is taken mainly from the local newspapers of the period. Most of the information comes from The Statesboro Eagle, The Bulloch Times, the first Bulloch Herald, and The Statesboro News. Much information was obtained from Statesboro: A Century of Progress, 1866-1966, compiled from the old papers by Leodel and G.C. Coleman, editors of the second Bulloch Herald. These early journalists were good writers and I have used their exact words as much as possible. They have an immediacy and feeling that nay paraphrase of mine would fail to achieve. I have tried not to repeat information covered in Brooks and Leodel Coleman's Story of Bulloch County, but of course there is some overlapping. In the first part of this story of Bulloch County the life of the people is shown mostly by the reminiscences of events experiences by the writers or by stories handed down in their families. There were no newspapers to record events in Bulloch until 1877, and only a few copies of the papers printed at Excelsior have survived. Most of the reminiscences recorded here were published in the Statesboro newspapers during the 1890s and 1900s. The section on the organization of the new county and the early courts and militia districts comes from notes made by Brooks and Leodel Coleman from the records of the legislature and the minutes of the Bulloch County Court.