This is the story of a family who lived about three miles north of Springfield in the community known today as the Bethel Church community.
Around 1907-08, after the railroad came to Effingham County, this rail stop, where the Gnann House was located, was known as Bethel Station.
George Bergman Gnann, was born on Oct. 28, 1824, and died on Sept. 23, 1890. He married Rebecca N. Dasher, who was born on Dec. 12, 1824, and died on May 5, 1900. They had seven children, with two of them dying at an early age. James Augustus and Anna Marietta Gnann, who died young, were both buried in a small community cemetery on their property (now known as Gnann Cemetery, this cemetery name is documented in Historic Effingham Society’s book “Effingham County Cemeteries.”). The other five children, Jacob Martin, George Albert, Ella Victoria (Gnann) Reisser, John Sylvester and Frederick Bergman Gnann, all lived to an old age. Ella Victoria Gnann was born on March 6, 1858 and died on March 27, 1940. She married Virgil Herbert Riesser, who was born on Nov. 4, 1851, on May 20, 1879 and died on May 8, 1918. (They are my great-grandparents).
George Bergman Gnann married Rebecca Dasher on Dec. 14, 1847. By the time the Civil War started, George Bergman was in his late 30s. In 1863, a company of local militia was organized at Springfield and was accepted into Confederate service. On Aug. 4, 1863, the unit was mustered in and Captain Anderson P. Longstreet was appointed commander. This company was known as the Effingham Minute Men, 12th Georgia Cavalry Battalion. Soon after it was combined with other units to form the 12th Regiment, (Wright’s) Georgia Confederate (Militia) Cavalry, and Captain Longstreet became the colonel of the Regiment.
Capt. Charles H. Thiot became the commander and the unit was then known as Capt. Charles H. Thiot’s Company. This Confederate militia regiment was made up of mostly older men and young boys. They served as cavalry scouts, riding the roads near the marshes on the Georgia coastline and reporting any ships or troop movement for six months into 1864, when their enlistment ran out.
When General Sherman came through Effingham in December 1864, George Bergman Gnann was at home. Family history tells that he outsmarted General Sherman’s army. As the word came that the Federal army was moving toward South Georgia, my great-great-grandfather (George Bergman Gnann) made a desperate attempt to save some food from the Federal Army.
He had a barn full of corn. Out in his cow lot, he dug a hole and took the top part of a wagon off of the frame and buried the wagon body in the hole. He filled the wagon body with all the corn he could put in it, placed boards on top of it, and then he covered it with dirt.
He hauled the yellow dirt he removed from the hole out into the woods in piles and covered the hole containing the corn in the wagon with topsoil. He let the cows back into the cow pen, and by time Sherman’s Army arrived on Dec. 6, 1864, the cows had stomped the ground enough that they never knew the wagon body full of corn was buried under their feet.
Sherman’s Army burned his old blacksmith shop, which they said was being used to help the Confederate cause, butchered all his cows to feed their army, and they found the yellow dirt piles out in the woods, which had nothing buried under them. He was able in 1865 to dig up his hidden wagon and feed his family and have seeds to plant in the spring.
This picture of the family was taken prior to 1879. My great grandmother Ella Victoria Gnann (Reisser) was a young girl in this picture. She married in 1879, so we know the picture was taken before her marriage. The back row left to right are: Albert Gnann, Ella Gnann, their cousin Belle Gnann, and Martin Gnann. Seated up front are their parents: Rebecca (Dasher) Gnann and George Bergman Gnann (no he is not General Ulysses S. Grant), the youngest son is Johnny Gnann and the other young man by his father is my great uncle Bergie Gnann.
Sometime after this picture was taken, the Gnann family built a two-story house. Later, Rebecca and George Bergman Gnann died and their son John Sylvester Gnann (great uncle Johnny) who married Ella Gertrude Weitman lived in the house. Their son, Eugene S. Gnann (born Oct. 14, 1892, died April 5, 1981) inherited the old place and lived there all of his life.
In the late 1980s, the old two-story house burned down and after his second wife Alma Rentz Gnann’s death in August 1989, the property was sold and became a mini farm subdivision.
The preceding was written by Norman V. Turner, great-great grandson of George Bergman and Rebecca (Dasher) Gnann, and one of the many descendants of people buried in the old Gnann Cemetery off the Eugene Gnann Road in Effingham County.
Additional information: An accompanying photograph of this house is included. It originally was unpainted. By the 1950s, I remember that it was painted white. More than one generation of the Gnanns at the time lived in the large house with the younger generation sleeping on the upper floor. Family members describe the house as having a huge hall running through the house as seen in the photo shown here.
Some of the relatives remember outbuildings in the 1930s, including a commissary with platform for freight received and shipped on the railroad just north of the house sitting very near the tracks with a platform extending up to the rails. My great Uncle Harry Hinely, the oldest son of Horace and Julia Ellen Hinely, who had 12 children and lived nearby, shipped barrels of bread and flour from Savannah, where he was working to help his family.
The relatives recall that there was a grits mill in the commissary. It is believed that potatoes and cane syrup sealed in cans were also shipped by the railroad from farmers in the area among other farm products. There was a cane mill powered by a horse or mule walking in circles and a cane shed with boiler not far from the house.
The home site had barns on the property and buildings to store feed. There was also a wash house and building to store canned goods. Nearby was a working smokehouse where meat was smoked to preserve it and a shed where the meat was cut and tended to on butchering days. They made sausage which was smoked and also cooked the fresh sausage, canning it in jars. Lard for frying and baking was rendered in a big black wash pot.
The farm had a cellar used to store potatoes and in the winter, some potted plants were usually stored to keep them from freezing. In the days of the last descendent who lived there, Eugene Gnann, he and wife Alma had many chicken houses scattered about in the backyard and they produced lots of eggs for sale. “Mr. Gene” drove his truck filled with lots of crates of eggs to market. For many years after his death, his old black Chevrolet truck sat underneath a shelter in the yard covered in layers of dust.
This farm in its day was self sufficient, raising practically everything necessary for their livelihood outside of staples such as salt, flour and coffee. According to one of the living Gnann relatives, from memory of overnight visits in 1933-35 to their grandparents’ house, not too far behind the house, on the left was a small house, with a wooden floor above the ground that a black man who worked on the farm lived in. This was many years after the Civil War and this man was a trusted person allowed to live very near the house and he helped with the farming and chores. It was customary that farmers provided lodging for a worker/and or his family as tenant farmers or workers who were paid through the commissary and or a financial arrangement.
From visits in the 1930s and 1940s, some of the oldest living descendants remember the buildings and sheds around the yard to be up to date well kept buildings with good tin roofs for the times. As buildings deteriorated, the Gnanns rebuilt or maintained them and some of the chicken houses and sheds looked new in the eyes of the grandchildren as they now remember the old Gnann farm site.
A good ways from the house there is a family and or community cemetery known as Gnann Cemetery where two children of the family are buried.
Look forward to next week’s column on the history of Gnann Cemetery and the people who are buried there.
This part of the article was written by Susan Exley, also a great great granddaughter of Rebecca D. and George Bergman Dasher. Exley writes or compiles this weekly column for Historic Effingham Society. If you have photos, comments or information to share, contact Exley at 754-6681 or email her at: susanexley@historiceffinghamsociety.org.
