“Officers should be instructed that bars simply bent may be used again. Pile the ties  into the shape for a bonfire, put the rails across, and when red hot in the middle, let a man at each end twist the bar so that its surface becomes spiral.” 

—Wm. T. Sherman (Special Field-Order: July 18, 1864) 

William Washington Gordon Monument 

In 1739, James Oglethorpe was facing severe opposition within the Colony. A heatwave and drought the prior summer had devastated local crops. Food and provisions were in short supply. War with Spain, feared an impending threat, kept Oglethorpe busy developing defensive military posts outside Savannah in the southern Georgian wilderness and throughout the coastal islands near Florida. 

That September, the Stono Slave Rebellion occurred in South Carolina. Two dozen colonialist died, with twice as many slaves killed. Rebellious slaves, led by a literate slave named Jemmy, were promised freedom and land near St. Augustine by the Spanish. They didn’t make it.  

On October 5th of that year, Chief Tomochichi died. Under the personal direction of Oglethorpe, a monument to Tomochichi was built in the middle of Percival Square, which was renamed Wright Square. 

That memorial to Tomochichi would later be desecrated to honor a Savannah railroad magnate 

William Washington Gordon served as the Mayor of Savannah when news spread that escaped slaves had joined with Native Americans from Florida to attack Georgian farmers in 1836. The following year, 150 Irish railroad laborers marched on Savannah over a wage dispute with the local railroad company. Severe economic depression and a bank panic hit the area in 1837, as well. 

Gordon was the first President of the Central Railroad and Banking Company of Georgia. After serving as the Mayor of Savannah from 1834-1836, he was elected to the Georgia General Assembly to both the House of Representatives and the Senate. His granddaughter, Juliette Gordon Low, would go on to found the Girls Scouts. (see PFS # 32.) 

Construction of the Central Railroad and Banking Company of Georgia began in 1835. Its completion into the Georgian interior, where much of the cotton for trade was grown, quickly became essential to the export and import trade running through the port of Savannah. 

Gordon’s efforts to build the Central of Georgia both saved and expanded the Savannah economy. Unfortunately, William Washington Gordon would die at age-46 in 1842 from a common disease of the day: Swamp Fever, which took the lives of many rail workers and Savannah city residents alike. 

Determined to show its appreciation for William Washington Gordon, the railroad decided to build and dedicate a monument to his memory. The site chosen was Wright Square. The location was directly over Tomochichi’s memorial built under orders from Oglethorpe a century prior — this, despite objections from Gordon’s family. Gordon’s family would raise funds for a new monument to Tomochichi, completed 16-years later located nearby the William Washington Gordon Monument in Wright Square. 

During the Civil War, the Union Blockade inhibited traffic on rails into Savannah. And when his army made its destructive March to the Sea, the Central of Georgia lost 140 miles of track to Sherman’s field-order to twist the steel rails into ‘Bow Ties’ by bending the rails around a tree. ‘Sherman’s Neckties’ would be seen throughout Georgia by the end of the Civil War in 1865.