Oxford

By Erik Blackburn Oliver

The notion that the stateliest of oaks germinates from an altogether miniscule acorn has special meaning for the community of Oxford, Georgia, whether used literally to describe the Prince of the Forest or metaphorically depict large and long serving families or the birth of a great university. Emory College was rooted in the soils of Oxford for 80 years, growing in fits and starts until 1919, when, with relative suddenness, it was transplanted to Atlanta. In the wake of that move, the community shrank from a Methodist stronghold to an institutional afterthought. Yet, both the community and the campus endured and thrived again, as both old and new families put down fresh roots and engendered a deep sense of place, fellowship, service, and celebration.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
• Release date: Jun 23, 2014
• ISBN: 9781439645901

Erik Blackburn Oliver

Oxford native and historian Erik Blackburn Oliver has interviewed numerous longtime residents, consulted the works of previous Oxford and Emory historians and chroniclers, pored over thousands of photographs in public and private collections, and plumbed census records to piece together this testimonial collage in tribute to his beloved hometown on the eve of its 175th anniversary.

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patience.

INTRODUCTION

It is not an exaggeration to say that many students, staff, and faculty at Emory University in Atlanta today have only vague knowledge of Oxford, Georgia, the tiny community some 40 miles east where Emory College was chartered in 1836 and resided for nearly half of its life. It is also not an exaggeration to say that a great many people throughout Georgia and the Southeast 100 years ago were very much aware of Oxford. Seven decades before that, Oxford garnered national attention when the Methodist Episcopal Church split in half along regional and ideological lines, prescient of the Civil War to come.

Much has been written about the early Emory years and the role Coca-Cola played in bringing the college to Atlanta in 1919 and ultimately onto the international stage as a preeminent university of the Southeast. Likewise, the survival and evolution of the old campus through several incarnations into Oxford College of Emory University is well documented.

Thus, this book is less focused on Emory than on the town of Oxford and its people, particularly of the mid-to-late 20th century (from which more photographic evidence survives). As such, the first chapter provides only a brief summary of the first 80 years for context. The rest of the book is a collage arranged to give the reader a sense of the community over time. Piecing together a handful of available images defies continuous chronological order, so the chapters instead highlight themes of family, longevity, place, preservation, fellowship, service, celebration, and life.

It must be admitted that racial divides and inequality continue to foster lopsided historical accounts. Research for this project has made it abundantly clear that white families tend to have many more times the number of historical photographs than the precious few passed down through African American families. It is hoped that this book, though still heavily lopsided, will be received as a more inclusive effort. Surely historians of the future will benefit from the modern profusion of digital images readily taken with ubiquitous mobile devices.

In 2014, Oxford celebrates its 175th year since incorporation. Though we are well into the new millennium now, this book for the most part does not extend beyond the 20th century. The year 2000 is a logical end to the volume. Much has happened in the last 14 years that deserves recognition; however many of the players, including the author, are still actively engaged in the life of the community. Thus it is better left to a future work to bring the historical record up to date.

Now, with parameters, caveats, and apologetics aside, the reader will benefit from a brief explanation of how and why Oxford came to be and some revelations about landscape, life, leadership, and the scope of educational and religious influence in the earliest years.

Before there were public universities, institutions of higher learning in the United States were founded under the auspices of religious denominations. Such institutions were then as much or more focused on advancing religious growth as on preparing students for secular professional careers. In the Southeast, the Methodist Episcopal Church was a dominant force, and Georgia Methodists endeavored in the early 1830s to found a college of their own.

Their first idea was to establish a program that would require its young men to sustain the school by working in both the field and classroom. Founded in Covington, the institution was called the Georgia Manual Labor School. However, the students were not inclined to undertake farming, and the trustees could not attract sufficient interest or funds to make it work. Thinking it might appeal more if expanded and made still more integral to the religious ideals of Georgia Methodists, they purchased some 1,400 acres north of Covington that a few years before had been Creek Indian land and set out to create a whole community dedicated to God and education. They called the community Oxford after the college town in England where Methodist founder John Wesley had been a student. They named the college in honor of a prominent Methodist bishop, John Emory, who had recently died in an accident.

Prevailing accounts claim founding president Ignatius Few was the first settler in a veritable wilderness, the thickness of which would have made it impossible for surveyor Edward Lloyd Thomas to lay out the town with his measuring chains and rods as he did in 1837. Logic dictates that much of the land was already in the process of being cleared and prepared for crops and homesteads when Few relocated there. Emory College opened formally in the fall of 1838 with some 20 students, 3 of whom would become the first graduates in 1841. On December 23, 1839, the Georgia Legislature approved incorporation of the town of Oxford.

In his address at the Seney Hall cornerstone ceremony in 1881, Atticus Haygood explained that most of the founding trustees did not possess formal education. They were Methodist ministers, plantation owners, self-made businessmen, or practitioners of law or medicine without professional degrees as we know them today. Public record reveals most of them were slaveholders, as were several early Emory presidents and professors. Again, logic and oral tradition indicate that those enslaved people provided much of the labor to farm the land and erect the homes and campus buildings.

None of the campus buildings erected before 1850 have survived, but a small number of the first homes remarkably still stand. Here or there, former slave cabins remain close to such homes, outbuildings now repurposed as pool houses, shops, garages, or storage units. The visitor with a careful eye might pick out wells of stacked stone and remember that water was not piped to the town until the first quarter of the 20th century. The absence of more early homes is also a reminder that, in the absence of any electricity for the better part of a century, fire was a merciless inevitability.

Life was hard. People were sold. Children often died young. Life expectancy overall was short. Belief in an almighty and benevolent creator who had a purpose for every individual and promise of eternal life for the faithful was the source of