Category Archives: Dasher GA

Dasher, Georgia

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Dasher Museum

I first published this photograph on 15 June 2010 under the title “Wisenbaker’s Grocery & Market”, but I’m replacing it with a new post to update what I’ve learned, and to share a little about Dasher, thanks to an excellent brief history of the community by Faye Cook Wisenbaker. I believe this sign came from another building and was saved for its local importance.

Faye writes that all of the area south of Valdosta in present-day Lowndes County has connections to the Dasher and Wisenbaker families, who had their Georgia origins with the Ebenezer Salzburgers of Effingham County. James Wisenbaker and Christian Herman Dasher are the earliest known members of their families to have arrived in this frontier area of the Wiregrass Region. Dasher is believed to have arrived circa 1832. James Wisenbaker was his son-in-law and they had left the Lutheran faith in 1819 and began having services in their homes.

The area around Dasher was first settled circa 1842. Richard Herman Wisenbaker was also living in the area around this time, as he established “a congregation of New Testament Christianity” which would eventually be known as the Corinth Church of Christ, and today, Corinth Baptist Church. Faye notes that sometime before 1861, Wisenbaker “constructed a home using slave labor”.

The town was formally established as a station of the Georgia Southern & Florida Railway in 1889 at the residence of Virgil Franklin Dasher. By 1916, thanks to the timber and turpentine business, and the presence of the railroad, Dasher was a thriving place. The Dasher Bible School was established during that year and met in the Church of Christ until building a larger campus in 1928.

Dasher Bible School, 1928

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R. A. Lester, Sr. Hall – Named for Mr. Lester, who was instrumental in raising funds for construction of the school.

The Dasher Bible School was established in 1914 and this facility constructed in 1928. It is still used today, as the Georgia Christian School. This historical background appeared in a 2014 edition of the Valdosta Daily Times, when the school was celebrating its centennial: O.P. Copeland, P.W. McLeod, and W.J. Copeland led a petition drive to the Lowndes County school board in summer 1914. They wished to consolidate the Dasher and Union public schools then hold classes in the Dasher Church of Christ. They succeeded and held classes at the meetinghouse on Dasher’s Carol Ulmer Road. Willis H. Allen and Molly Powell led the school’s first classes. They separated lower and upper grades with a curtain strung across the room. To keep with public school rules, Allen taught Bible classes after the regular school day. Children did not have to stay for Bible classes though most did.

After this one year, the consolidation ended. O.P. Copeland, P.W. McLeod, and W.J. Copeland were named as the board of trustees, a school board was selected, and they named the new institution Dasher Bible School. Richard Wisenbaker donated land between the railroad and U.S. 41 South. In 1915, the school was built upon this land, the same land where Dasher Bible School by the mid-20th century became Georgia Christian School.