The Deadliest Town in Georgia

Some towns get hit by disaster once and disappear. Others take a hit and keep coming back for more.

From a preacher’s curse that erased an entire county seat to a 30-foot wall of water that swallowed a sleeping Bible college campus, Georgia's past is littered with tiny communities that fate and Mother Nature simply wiped from the map. No place, however, has paid a higher price than Gainesville, Georgia. It’s a city that has survived a devastating downtown fire, two catastrophic tornadoes decades apart, and a deadly industrial accident that killed workers before they even knew what hit them.

In this episode of Haunts & Hollows, mystery author Liam Ashe peels back the folk tales to reveal the true stories behind Georgia’s most lethal towns. These stories have now been told for generations, including a mad preacher calling for the wrath of God, more than 100 child workers trapped beneath a burning cotton mill, and entire families who were buried as they died, side by side in unimaginable conditions.

Because sometimes the scariest stories aren’t the ones we make up around a campfire. They’re the ones carved into headstones.

Haunts & Hollows: True Tales of the Gothic South is the podcast for anyone who yearns for stories of haunted plantations, of deals made at midnight crossroads, of creatures lurking in moss-draped cemeteries. But where did these tales actually start? Turns out, the real history behind Southern folklore is wilder, stranger, and a whole lot darker than the stories themselves. With each episode, Liam uncovers the true tales hiding underneath the myths of the Gothic South.

Subscribe now and never miss a tale. And whatever you do tonight, be sure to lower the lights, lock the doors, and pull up a rocking chair. . . things are about to get interesting.

Transcript

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When most people picture the peach state, they think of warm summers, magnolia trees, and front porches. But beneath all that southern charm, there's a forgotten legacy of towns shaped by storms, floods, and fires. Forces of nature that change entire communities forever. Some are even wiped off the map. Today I'm diving into the deadliest towns in Georgia. These are places where Mother Nature didn't just make headlines, she rewrote history. From tornadoes that leveled massive factories to floods that swallowed entire schools. These stories are powerful, heartbreaking, and unforgettable. Now I want to be clear, this isn't just about the statistics, how many died and how tragically. This is about real people, real towns, and real moments when everything changed in a heartbeat. So I invite you to sit back, clear your mind, and step with me into Georgia towns where the dead outnumbered the living. Welcome to Haunts and Hollows True Tales of the Gothic South. I'm your host, mystery author Liam Ash. In this episode, I'll be exploring the folklore behind some of Georgia's most lethal towns, as well as the true stories that may have inspired these urban legends. This episode of Haunts and Hollows is sponsored by my friends at Arcanactus. They encourage you to unlock your curiosity with their collection of the odd, the unusual, and the obscure. If you lived in rural Georgia some 200 years ago, life wasn't always easy. The first big hurdle was just surviving your own childhood. Researchers recently estimated that before the 1880s, as many as 25% of infants wouldn't make it to their fifth birthday. That's one out of every four children. If you're a tombstone enthusiast like I am, you've probably seen the hundreds of children's graves that pop up like wildflowers across old rural cemeteries. If you did successfully make it to adulthood, there were countless other dangers just waiting to take you out. A simple accident, for example, even a cut could lead to infection, which could easily lead to an early grave. Then you add on the widespread diseases that might have treatments but no cures. That was another grim reality. And finally, you had Mother Nature. The big difference with her is she didn't just erase you, she could erase your entire town. Folklore loves the trope of ghost towns that have simply disappeared from the map. I'm going to take a look at a few of these today, and I want to finish with one community that disaster after disaster just keeps going, no matter how many times death comes to town. The legends hanging over one of Georgia's most storied dead towns say it wasn't a natural disaster that did it in. It was actually a curse. Established way back in the year 1797, the tiny village of Jacksonboro was once the seat of Screven County, and for maybe 50 years or so it was a thriving rural community in Southeast Georgia. Everything was just fine until the arrival of Lorenzo Dow in 1820. Dow, if you haven't heard of him before, was an itinerant Methodist preacher, and that basically means he was a preacher without a church. And he was traveling the state spreading his fire and brimstone sermons on the evils of slavery. At that time, that wasn't always a popular message in the rural South. Everyone called him Crazy Dow because of his long hair and his hunched back and his complete disregard for personal hygiene. As lax as he was with bathing, he was just as wedded to his mission. Some records suggest that he traveled more than 200,000 miles during his life, preaching to crowds of 10,000 people or more. To give you some idea of how big he was, he wrote an autobiography in 1804. For several years it was the second best-selling book in the States. Only the Bible sold more copies. So, back to 1820. Lorenzo Dow rides into Jacksonboro. He calls for all the townspeople to repent of their sins. This was another equally unpopular message. So the townspeople did what townspeople do, and they started pelting him with eggs and vegetables. It didn't work. According to eyewitnesses, Lorenzo preached even louder. So, more eggs and more vegetables. Finally, he walked to the town's saloon and split a keg of whiskey with a hammer. That did the trick, and the townspeople turned violent. A local merchant and fellow Methodist named Seaborn Goodall stepped in and hid Lorenzo away at his home. The next morning, Seaborn tried to sneak the preacher out of town at sunrise, but Lorenzo had a better idea. Just as they crossed the bridge leaving Jacksonboro, Crazy Dow started preaching again, which led to even more eggs and more vegetables. This time Lorenzo let them have it back. In his parting words, he called on God to curse and destroy the town. As an afterthought, he then asked God to save only the home of Seaborn Goodall. Over the next 30 years, Jacksonboro's fortunes fell like so many thrown eggs and vegetables. Sudden windstorms began to take the roofs off of homes and barns. Fires claimed several buildings. Even the usually quiet Beaver Dam Creek started flooding its banks without warning. The final nail in the coffin was the move of the county seat to nearby Sylvania. By the 1860s, Jacksonboro had begun to disappear entirely. Today, the only building that remains is the Seaborne Goodall House. So Lorenzo's curse may have worked after all. If you happen to drive by, visit the nearby cemetery, there are a few gravestones still standing, though that's more than what remains of Jacksonboro. Whether they were done in by a curse or just bad locations, there are hundreds of former towns just like Jacksonboro across the state. As settlers moved south from the northern colonies, little towns sprung up, first along rivers and the seashore, and then later along the new rail lines. All of these ships and trains brought people, materials, and, most importantly, jobs to these out-of-the-way spots. While the coastal and river towns often boomed, the railroad towns faded as newer trains needed fewer stops, or rails were replaced altogether with the new interstate system. Drive the southern half of the state and you'll find names like Godfrey, Swords, and Appalachie. In their prime, they were hot spots, with whistle stops, rail warehouses, churches, plantations, and mills. By the early 1900s, they each had simply dried up. A bowl weevil epidemic in the 1920s, followed right behind by the Great Depression, crushed the industry in the area. Some 30 years later, rural railroad lines started closing up, and soon the towns did as well. Most left behind a few houses, some rundown buildings, and a cemetery or two. If you want to walk through the final recorded histories of these towns, search online for ghost towns in Georgia and then take a look for local cemeteries. Burial grounds like the Swords Community Cemetery, Appalachian Prior Cemetery, Midway Historic Cemetery, and dozens more are all waiting silently for their towns to thrive again. While these towns died due to neglect, others suffered a more direct hit at the hands of Mother Nature. Once a booming town that rivaled nearby Savannah, the ghost town of Sunbury is now lost to time. It was founded in 1758 by Captain Mark Carr under a land grant from King George II, and for a short time at least it was a success. Sunbury was blockaded during the War of 1812, which crushed its economy. Nature did its part with a wicked yellow fever outbreak in 1820, which killed more than 10% of nearby Savannah residents. Two massive hurricanes leveled the community in 1804 and 1824, and by the American Civil War, virtually nothing was left of the original town. Today, Sunbury is pretty much all but forgotten. All that remains of this once vibrant community is the consecrated lot of the Sunbury Cemetery, now surrounded by the homes of a suburban residential neighborhood. Occupying one of the original three town squares, the cemetery currently hosts only 34 grave markers, but the actual burial count is thought to be several hundreds higher. The stones that do remain mostly bear the names of members of the early Sunbury families, names like Dunham, Fleming, and Law. One of my favorite graves there is that of Elizabeth Law. She was the mother of Reverend Samuel Spry Law, and a woman known for formidable resilience. Historians note that she reportedly prevented English troops from burning down her homestead. Every time they'd set a fire, she would rush in and put it out. The British eventually got tired of this, gave up, and left Elizabeth and her house alone. Other towns fared only a little better when nature called. The city of Savannah withstood more than its share of tragedies over the past 300 years. Thought to be one of the worst hurricanes in early U.S. history, the Great Ogee Hurricane of 1804 killed more than 500 and flooded downtown Savannah for days. Thirty-five years later, the Sea Islands hurricane struck the Georgia coast just off the city. That one left more than 2,000 residents across the South dead, mostly due to storm surge. In Savannah proper and the nearby Sea Islands, the surge was thought to measure 20 to 30 feet tall in places. A pair of yellow fever epidemics in 1820 and 1876 killed thousands in Savannah alone, and likely far more if slave casualties were properly counted. And in 1889, what has come to be known as the Great Fire destroyed thousands of homes and buildings. By the next morning, more than 40 acres of the city had been erased from the map. But, like every time before, Savannah carried on. Back in the 1970s, the rural college town of Tocoa faced an unimaginable tragedy. It started almost a hundred years earlier when local businessman E. P. Simpson built a rock crib dam to run a power plant for the growing community. Over the years, the dam grew and grew until it was nearly 30 feet tall, 400 feet long, and backed by a massive lake. Flash forward to November 1977. Several days of nonstop rain had soaked to the town, perhaps as much as 7 inches of water in less than a week. It may not sound like much, but that's another 75 million gallons of water being held back by that dam. Sadly, it didn't hold for long. At 1.30 a.m. on Sunday, November 6th, the dam cracked. A 200-foot-long section at the dead center of the wall collapsed. That sent a 30-foot wall of water rushing over the 186-foot crest of the falls. Right beneath the falls lay tiny Tacoa Falls Bible College. By the time the deluge reached the campus, it was a juggernaut of water, trees, and boulders that leveled everything and everyone in its path. By the time the flood burst through, power had already gone out, so officials began ringing bells and calling for students to make their way to higher ground. For many, it was less than three seconds of warning. When the waters finally receded, nearly 40 students, faculty, staff, and family members were dead. Another 60 were injured, and 27 houses and trailers were completely gone. Like Savannah, though, the college carried on and still welcomes students today. If you're looking to award the title of the deadliest town in Georgia, there's only one candidate for that blue ribbon. Founded as Mule Camp Spring, the quickly renamed town of Gainesville, Georgia boomed during the Lumpkin County gold rush of the 1830s, and when the gold tapped out, cotton and poultry kept the spirits high for decades. As you might have already guessed, that high didn't last for long. It all kicked off on December 23, 1851. A fire started in the back of a building called the Mansion, which was also known as Thornton's Tavern. It was an old log building on the east side of the main square. Winds spread that fire until nearly every downtown building was ablaze. The locals fought the flames with pails of water from their wells, but the fire had them outgunned by a mile. By the next morning, which was Christmas Eve, a few brick buildings and charred chimneys were all you could see standing among blocks and blocks of smoking ash. To Gainesville's credit, no one lost their life during the fire. There was one unnamed young boy that died later after falling into an open well. It had been covered over and hidden by the smoking debris. For most towns, that would likely have been remembered as our darkest hour. Gainesville wasn't nearly that lucky. Just 50 years later, another disaster would level a stretch of downtown and kill more than a hundred locals. Back in the early 1900s, cotton was still king in this part of the country. The Gainesville cotton mill was part of that boom, and it brought crops, jobs, and money to the town. Now, just after lunch on June 1st, 1903, death came from above. At 12.45 p.m., locals heard what survivors say sounded like a locomotive engine on the tracks. They swore they could even see the familiar column of smoke coming across the fields. Turns out it wasn't smoke, it was a massive tornado. And when I say massive, I'm talking an estimated F4 out of a possible F5 on the modern Fujita scale. In less than two minutes, the funnel cut a four-mile path straight across the edge of the town. Because it was the early afternoon, more than 700 workers had just returned to the Gainesville cotton mill from a lunch break. That meant that the building was at full capacity. And keep in mind, this number included nearly 250 children, all from ages 8 to 16. They worked on the highest floor of the mill, which is a worst case scenario during a tornado. When the funnel struck, it ripped the top floor clean from the building and killed more than 30 of these young workers. Another 30 to 40 died when the storm leveled a cluster of workers' cottages. Inside were mostly children and the elderly waiting for the working adults to return home. And death didn't stop there. Nearby, a 40-foot-wide iron cupola from a drain pipe was thrown into the air by the funnel. When it landed, it crushed several stragglers. Two local shops, the Logan Store and Jones General Store, were also reduced to rubble. That killed the nearly dozen people who had fled there for shelter from the storm. In all, more than a hundred people died and more than 200 were seriously injured. On an odd side note, there is a small plot of graves now at the end of the local airport's runway. It is still known as the Gainesville Mill Cemetery, but none of the tornado victims are thought to be buried there. As you may have expected, for many years this disaster went down in local legend as the newest, worst catastrophe to ever devastate Gainesville. Unfortunately, Mother Nature was not quite done, not by a long shot. Some 30 years later, another tornado outbreak moved across Alabama and southern Georgia in the early morning hours of April 6, 1936. At just after 8:30 a.m., the system of storms reached Gainesville. This time two enormous funnel clouds developed. They cut a pair of brutal paths right across the city's downtown district. Just like the tornado in 03, the funnels hit the cotton mills particularly hard. At the Cooper Pants Factory, there was a little more warning, and the managers and workers were ready. When the alarm sounded, many of the 125 employees, again mostly young women and children, fled to the safest place they could think of, the factory's basement. At first, this seemed to have worked because it saved them from the initial crush of the storm, but the good luck didn't last. After the tornadoes had passed, what was left of the factory collapsed and caught fire. This trapped the huddled employees beneath the blaze. To make matters worse, the storm had left most of Gainesville without power, water, or any form of communication. The fire department was practically helpless to assist, though they did what they could to put out the flames. By the time the smoke had cleared, more than 70 employees, more than half of the workers on site, had died in the blaze. In all, more than 200 people perished, 1,600 were injured, and almost as many were left homeless. Even today, that storm remains the fifth deadliest tornado tragedy in U.S. history. If you ever visit Gainesville, the original cotton mill still stands. The Cooper Pants Factory, however, is long gone, though a plaque dedicated to the victims sits just off a lonely street corner parking lot. Instead, make your way over to Alta Vista Cemetery. Do a little searching, and you're sure to find victims of both disasters buried there. Many of the dead were relatives caught off guard by the early hour of the storms. Some of the ones we found include siblings William and Helena Anderson. There's also Flora Reed Burts and her daughters, Helen and Evelyn, also Clarence and Irma Ellis, Fanny Gertrude Gaines and her daughter Gertrude Kathleen, Lorenia, Rosa Lee, and Willie May Bales, all seven members of the Grig family, and too many more to list. Normally, this would be more than enough death for one town, but Gainesville wasn't out of the woods yet. The final tragedy occurred almost a hundred years later. This time it wasn't tornadoes or cotton mills, it was poultry farming. Within a few years of the last tornado, cotton farming had mostly moved overseas. The locals instead jumped to chickens to pay the rent. By the 2000s, Gainesville had earned the name the poultry capital of the world. In fact, that industry employed thousands, and it was, by a huge margin, the town's leading source of revenue. On the morning of January 28, 2021, the day shift was just clocking in to the Prime Pack Foods processing plant. Without warning, a massive industrial freezer malfunctioned and released liquid nitrogen coolant into confined spaces that housed the workers. If you're not familiar with liquid nitrogen, at room temperature it vaporizes into a cloud of invisible nitrogen gas. That gas displaces the oxygen from the air, and you'll never know until it's too late. Workers in the area died almost immediately of asphyxiation. When word spread that there were dead employees as the result of an explosion, more workers rushed to the area to help, which led to even more fatalities. As you might expect, an investigation was launched, and the blame was put squarely on Prime Pack Foods for poor safety and training. One official called the multiple deaths entirely avoidable. So now, more than 200 years after it was founded, the deadly town of Gainesville continues to thrive. Its closeness to Atlanta makes it a prime choice for city folk looking for a little peace and serenity. And on that, Gainesville does deliver, at least until death once again comes to town. Next up on Haunts and Hollow's True Tales of the Gothic South, I'll be taking a look at twelve lethal ladies, fatal females, brutal brides, and wicked widows. It's an even dozen deadly dames who snuff out lives like others snuff out candles. Want more folk legends and true tales from the Gothic South? I invite you to subscribe to this podcast. You'll get a new episode every other week. In each, I will uncover the places, the people, the customs, and the stories that lurk in the shadowed history of the South. You can also check out my latest book, Florida Coast, for a guided road trip tour to more than 80 of the darkest, most shadowed spots in the Sunshine State. If you want to see me in person, visit me online at hauntsonhollows.com for a list of my latest releases and a schedule of cons and events that I attend all around the South. Until then, safe travels.