Category Archives: Abbeville GA

Ocmulgee Wild Hog Festival, Abbeville

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In honor of the 25th anniversary of the Ocmulgee Wild Hog Festival, I’ll be posting a few photos from Abbeville today. Having attended this festival, I can attest to what a fun time it is. This Mother’s Day weekend, the weather promises to be nearly perfect and if you’ve never been, do your best to make your way to the little town of Abbeville to experience one of Georgia’s most popular festivals. From the festival website, here’s the story of how it all got started: The Ocmulgee Wild Hog Festival evolved from Abbeville’s Flight Through the Pines and May Day Festivals. Mr. D. C. Yancey did not want the yearly festivals to die so he went to Lanier Keene, Masonic Lodge Mason, and asked if he thought the Masons would like to help with a yearly festival. So Mr. Yancey met with a few of the masons and local citizens; Bill Sims, Lanier Keene, Tommy C. McCall, Jake Keene, Pricilla Whitman, and Dean Clements. These people decided that a festival would go on but now it needed a name.  Mr. Bill Sims stated that if they could get a few thousand people to come to the Opossum Festival over in Dexter, why not a Wild Hog Festival. So the Ocmulgee Wild Hog Festival began. The festival started with $750 from the May Day Festival. Each year the Masons have sold BBQ & Stew and the Abbeville Volunteer Fire Department has sponsored a street dance after the closing of the festival. For a few years, the Masons even had a womanless beauty pageant. Our lifelong family friend, Julia Davis, was also an early promoter of the festival.

New Hope Primitive Baptist Church, Wilcox County

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Though this building (located behind a more modern church home) has long been in disuse, it represents an important development in Baptist history. It is not the first New Hope Church building, whose congregation is described in the Georgia historic marker text seen below, but it’s part of the story. I am unsure to the date of its construction, but judging the architecture, I’d guess it’s circa 1880-1910.

New Hope Primitive Baptist Church was constituted in July 1830. The presbytery officiating were: Wilson Conner, David Wood and Jordan Baker. Minutes of the church for the first 12 years were lost, and there is no record of charter members, but the church roll of March 5, 1842, lists 53, many of them pioneers of this section. It was at New Hope Church that the division in the Primitive Baptist denomination occurred, when some withdrew and formed a Missionary Baptist Church.* The Rev. Richard M. Tucker was the first recorded pastor, in 1842. George R. Reid was clerk in 1842.

*Liberty Baptist Church in Brooks County is among the earliest Missionary Baptist church buildings still in existence, dating to 1841, and though contemporary to the rift outlined here, was part of a larger fringe movement of Mission work and Sunday schools seen as too “newfangled” by most traditional Baptists of the day.

Update: This church was demolished sometime in 2014.

 

Ocmulgee Fins, Feathers & Furs, Abbeville

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T. F. Sapp Grocery, Abbeville

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This old mural for T. F. Sapp is one of several important historic survivors in Abbeville. I hope an attempt is made to preserve it. It likely featured a Coca-Cola advertisement at one time.

Wilcox County Courthouse, 1903, Abbeville

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Abbeville, best known for its annual Wild Hog Festival, is also home to one of the most beautiful Neoclassical Revival courthouses in the state, designed by Frank P. Milburn. Two more architecturally significant public buildings, a college and jail, were once located in Abbeville but are long gone.

National Register of Historic Places