Joseph Emerson Brown

In November 1864, as General William Sherman’s army approached Milledgeville while the legislature was in session, Governor Joseph E. Brown worked to pack Georgia’s state records and move as much state property as possible to safety. The records were loaded onto rail cars, and a train carrying the state records and family members narrowly escaped Sherman’s army, leaving Milledgeville and reaching Macon, Georgia, the next morning before continuing into southwest Georgia. After arriving in Montezuma, Brown left his family and returned to Macon to join Georgia troops defending the city as Sherman’s skirmishers engaged them. At a place thirty miles southeast of Montezuma where the train crossed Blackshear Road, in the pine forests, Brown had bought a 1300 acre tract the year before and established a home there, which became a refuge for women, children, and the state archives and served for a time as the temporary capitol of an invaded but unconquered state. Many years later, 48th district Senator C.M. Mckenzie recorded a resolution stating that Governor Joe Brown’s home in the City of Cordele, where the Suwanee House now stands, had briefly been the temporary capitol of Georgia and the place where the archives and great seal were kept safe from the invading army. Brown kept his home in Crisp County until July 9, 1872, when he sold the 1327 acre tract.

Cordele, Georgia · United States