The Curse of Lorenzo Dow

In the early 1800s, Jacksonboro (Jacksonborough) was a promising little town and county seat in rural southeast Georgia. Today, nothing remains of the place at all except one old tree lined lane…

And one single house.

This one.

It was the home of Seaborn Goodall.

He built the home in 1815.  

 

It stands as the lone survivor of a town which fell,

according to local lore,

to the curse of Lorenzo Dow

Lorenzo Dow was a fiery Methodist minister.  He lived the life of the itinerant preacher, saving lost souls up and down the eastern seaboard.

Around 1820, he traveled through Jacksonboro,

but he stayed there less than one day.

You see, while Jacksonboro was a promising settlement, it bore more resemblance to a lawless frontier town of the Wild West than a quaint God- fearing village. There are no records of an established church, but the faithful met in the local meeting house. There were, however, established saloons. “They” say that there were as many saloons as other businesses combined.

Into this setting came Lorenzo Dow.

Now, by this time, his fame was well known in Georgia. He had ignited crowds of thousands…

…which ignited

 an entirely different fire

 in the Jacksonboro underbelly
if you know what I mean...

While he prepared the meeting house, local saloon owners tanked up the town rowdies for an evening of mischief. As the story goes, Dow had barely stood to speak when the place was surrounded by drunkards shooting off pistols and hurling rocks through the windows. They closed the shutters, but the noise from the outside finally succeeded in closing the service as well.

The faithful returned to their homes,

and the rowdies returned to the saloons…

…followed by Lorenzo Dow.

Did I mention that he was a fiery old fellow?

He barged into a saloon and broke open and overturned barrels of whiskey. The rowdies reacted just as you might suspect. He would likely have been lynched had Seaborn Goodall not followed Dow to the saloon as well.

Goodall stood up to the rowdies,

broke up the crowd,

and brought Dow to his home

to nurse his wounds

and keep him safe for the night.

Dow tried to leave the town peacefully the next morning, but he was roughed up by a bunch of hooligans with hangovers along the way. They finally let him go, but they chased him out of town pelting him with rotten eggs and produce as he went.

On the bridge at the town’s edge,

 Dow stopped.

And  as the story goes,

he shook the dust of the town
 from his feet,

raised his hands toward Heaven,

and called a curse

 on the town of Jacksonboro
but 

 a blessing

 on the home of Seaborn Goodall.

Well, over the next twenty years, one natural disaster after another claimed the buildings of the little town. People began to move away, and the town began to crumble. The final nail in the coffin came in the form of a railroad which was routed not through Jacksonboro, but six miles south in another quiet Georgia town. That little town became the county seat and my hometown.

By 1847, Jacksonboro was a desolate piece of landscape, barely reaching the status of ghost town.

Today, it's all gone.

All except that one old house.

Years ago, it was given to my chapter of the DAR to restore and preserve. 

I’ll yak all about her restoration 

 and the facelift that she’s getting this year

another time. 

Today, I just wanted to share the story behind

 one of my favorite old places.

Locals love to yak about the demise of Jacksonboro.

They like to focus on  

the Curse 

that Lorenzo Dow called down on 

one unworthy town. 

Me?

I'm the oddball.

I like to think instead of

the blessing

that Lorenzo Dow called down on 

one worthy house.

...but if a house be worthy, let your peace rest upon it...
Matthew 10:13