Rensselaer Republican, Volume 27, Number 20, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 January 1896 — THE G. A. R. CITY. [ARTICLE]

THE G. A. R. CITY.

Veterans of the War Founding a Town In Southern Georgia. .Many veterans of the Grand Army of the Republic are again "marching through Georgia,” says an Atlanta correspondent. This time they are coming on & peaceful mission, and are coming to stay. They have started in to build a city in the southern part of the State. Thirty-five thousand acres of fine rolling land have been purchased and options have been secured on (»s»,< M_M > more. The co-opera-tive colony, for such it will be, is located in Irwin County, on the ground made historic by the capture of Jefferson Davis after the fall of Richmond. The. colony now has a population of 3,000 which it is believed will increase to 25,000 before the close of die year. A town site has Fern laid off covering 1,000 acres. The streets are being graded, sewers put in, and a water supply ia being provided by a system of artesian wells, it was not intended for the settlers to go in until after the first of tha year r»r along toward spring, but the "aooners" could not be held back. However, upon tlieir arrival they were corrailed in one corner of the reservation and given permission to put upnny temporary buildings they pleased. Hundreds of shacks made of rough pine boards have been nailed together, and the immigrants are roughing it. But they are nil contented and believe thoroughly in the-fu-ture of their experiment. The idea of a Grand Army colony was started l)y Philip Fitzgerald, a pension attorney and capitalist of Indianapolis. ’He says that he found the old soldiers complaining of the cold in winter. The exposure of their campaigns is telling on them in their old age and they cannot stand what they once could in the way of snow and ice. There was a very prevalent wish among jjie veterans for a home amid congenial neighbors in a mildjMk mate. So a co-operative colony jeeted. Thus far the members of the colony repg resent a population of 54,000, the most of which is expected to migrate southward and settle at and around Fitzgerald. It is a thoroughly organized movement, and has a great deal of Significance not onjy for the South, but also for the West. Many mechanics from Pullman, 111., have joined the movement. They come for work and a home which they can get for very little money. The land costs only $3.50 an acre, and it is good land, too, covered with the long-leaf pine and the best fruit soil in the South.