When the Name is the Same

National Mayhaw Festival Colquitt, GA April 21 @ 10am

By Sam Burnham, Curator
@C_SamBurnham

I'd like to take this moment to make an announcement. ABG is going to be one of the vendors at the upcoming National Mayhaw Festival in Colquitt. It is never enough to simply write about the importance of small towns and the economy, so we've headed down to participate. As I often say, we're going out to get some Georgia on us. And so we are joining some friends in celebrating a wonderful little fruit known as the Mayhaw in an experience that our friends at the Colquitt-Miller County Chamber have dubbed "All the Biscuits and Jelly in Georgia."

Ah. I can see you have a question. "Colquitt is in Miller County? What happened to Colquitt County?" 

Yeah, travelling Georgia is not quite that easy. Same place names pop up but they aren't necessarily congruent. 

Let's look at some examples of how this can be easy.

Carrollton is a good one. It's the seat of Carroll County.

Lincolnton is agreeable as the seat of Lincoln County. 

But then it can get a bit fuzzy. 

Look at Dawson County. The seat is Dawsonville but the town of Dawson is the seat of Terrell County. Then Douglasville is the seat of Douglas County but Douglas is the seat of Coffee County. (Yes, we have a Coffee County. We also have a Bacon County which a person from Cook County could properly prepare in Crisp County, if you get out of bed on time as those in Early County likely do.)

It would be hard to imagine two more dissimilar places than Rabun County's scenic small town of Clayton and the busy airport area in Clayton County.  

We have Zell Miller's home of Towns County, which, despite the suggestive name, only has two towns, Hiawassee and Young Harris. However, they have a few communities that promise not to confuse us with other county names. Places such as Hog Creek, Fodder Creek, and Bugscuffle. And if you want to get to Tate City (not really a city) you have to forst go to Rabun County because you can't get there from here. 

Want to get really confused? Crawfordville isn't in Crawford County. Knoxville is in Crawford County. Crawfordville is in Taliferro County. You don't pronounce Taliaferro anything like it is spelled. The locals call by a word that I've only heard used by locals and is a strange mix between "Toliver" and "Tolifer." It is both of these words and neither at the same time. You wanna know how to say it? Go ask the folks at Heavy's BBQ or a ranger at the A.H. Stephens State Historic Park. They'll say it for you. Taliaferro County used to share a school with Greene County which is where you can find Greensboro but not Greenville which is in Meriwether County.Meriwether is in Baldwin County, near Milledgeville and we aren't even going down those rabbit holes. 

But back to Colquitt. Yes, Miller County. Colquitt County is close but that is Moultrie. Both Colquitts are named for Walter T. Colquitt, father of Alfred and Peyton, who have both been mentioned in numerous ABG posts. Colquitt is also the middle name of Uriah Meigs, the protagonist of our fictional stories that we've posted. 

Speaking of names, we have no current plans to  serve any biscuits. But we do plan to have some interesting and unique vintage goods offered through our ABG Mercantile that is our new enterprise, still under development. Want to find out more? Meet us in Colquitt, April 21st!

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