A HOSPITAL FOR HORSES

The Horse Infirmary on the Parsons Place

Up on the Buckeye Road in the northern part of Laurens County where Laurens and Johnson Counties join is the old Parsons Place, the sixty-five-hundred acre ante-bellum plantation of Dr. Thomas A. Parsons. In the latter months of the Civil War, Dr. Parsons leased a portion of his pasture lands to the Confederate government for the establishment of an infirmary for the care of sick and lame horses. The horse was critical for the cultivation of crops, transportation of troops, and scouting of enemy movements.

The infirmary was located on the southern end of the Parsons Place in northern Laurens County and the extreme western tip of Johnson County about a mile east of the Oconee River. The land was good for horses- plenty of good water, rolling hills, and good grasslands. Dr. Parsons, a native of Burke County, moved to the area in the 1850s. An exact date is impossible to determine since there are no extant records which show when and from whom Dr. Parsons bought the place. It is likely that Dr. Parsons moved to the area when it was a part of Washington County, prior to the creation of Johnson County in 1857. Oddly enough, there are no recorded deeds in the Clerk's office of Laurens County, even though a portion of the lands are inside the boundaries of Laurens County.

Dr. Parsons practiced medicine in Burke County for about fifteen years before moving to the banks of the Oconee River. As a doctor in Burke County he owned relatively few slaves, only about twenty. When he moved to what became the Ringjaw District of Johnson County, he purchased more slaves to maintain his large plantation. The 1860 census of Johnson County enumerated sixty four slaves on the Parsons Place. Dr. Parsons was the second largest slave owner in Johnson County, second only to his neighbor, John B. Wright, who owned one hundred fifty six slaves. Parsons and Wright together owned nearly one-fourth of all the slaves in Johnson County at the beginning of the Civil War. On May 15, 1861, a public meeting was held at the courthouse in Wrightsville for the purpose of forming a militia company for service in the Confederacy. Dr. Parsons took an active role in the meeting. His wife, the former Malvina Virginia Jones of Burke County, made a temporary flag for the company that later became the Johnson Grays, who were officially designated as Company F of the 14th Georgia Infantry.

The summer of 1863 was the time in which the armies of the Confederacy suffered mortal defeats at Gettysburg and Vicksburg. During that summer, the Confederate Army changed its policy on the care of sick horses. Good horses were becoming hard to find. At all times before the change, sick or lame horses were either turned loose to fend for themselves or put out their misery. The government decided that it needed to maintain a good stock of horses and that new measures for the rehabilitation would be needed.

The three thousand acres on the lower edge of the Parsons Place was centrally located in the Department of Georgia, South Carolina and Tennessee. The climate was temperate. The land was located twelve miles south of the Central of Georgia Railroad depot at Oconee. The tract featured a good supply of sugar cane and nearly two hundred acres of Bermuda pasture. Immediately after the lease agreement was signed, the government began the erection of stables, lots, and feed houses, along with sufficient quarters for the men who would care for the horses.

Capt. J.G. McKee, characterized as a man of great zeal and fidelity was in command of the post. Capt. McKee, who had been disabled in the service of the Confederacy, was a former resident of Columbus, Georgia. W.P. Davis and J. Dasbrow were employed as farriers and surgeons to care for the horses. Capt. McKee initially had in his employment about fifty slaves and eight white men, who themselves were former soldiers, disabled during their military service. In the winter of 1864, the men were busily preparing the area for an additional twenty-six hundred horses.

Horses suffering from glanders, distemper, and other ailments were segregated into different sections, a safe distance from each other. Wounded or injured horses were placed in separate and roomy stalls to prevent further injury. During the day the horses were turned out into the pastures and exercised as much as possible. The workers curried, combed, and washed every horse each day. The sick ones got daily attention from the doctors.

Capt. McKee maintained a systematic and highly efficient operation. Glanders diseases was thought to be fatal to horses in most cases. On his visit to the Parsons Place, a Richmond newspaper writer found that over thirty five cases of the dreaded disease had been cured. He reported that the employees were dedicated to their profession and treated the horses with the same compassion shown toward wounded soldiers. Of the total number of horses sent to the infirmary until mid-January 1864, eighty-five percent had been returned to the army. No horse was sent back to service without a meticulous inspection. Those who weren't well enough to return were advertised and sold to farmers.

Unfortunately, no other records of the infirmary have been found. Although the operation was apparently successful, it is difficult to determine just how long the infirmary was operated. In November of 1864, the sixty thousand man right wing of Gen. William T. Sherman's Union Army passed within a few miles of the Parsons Place on their march toward Savannah. It is a reasonable certainty that Gen. Joseph Wheeler and the four thousand cavalrymen under his command would have made provisions for the removal of the horses when they passed by the area in their attempt to get in front of Sherman's army.

The Parsons Place has since been divided into several smaller tracts, although a large portion of the original place is owned by a single timber company. The Johnson County Boat Landing, which actually lies in Laurens County, is located near the southern end of the tract near the mouth of Deep Creek. Any sign of the haven for diseased and injured horses is gone. This is a story which might have been never discovered had it not been found in an obscure and distant newspaper by an avid historical researcher. It should serve as an example to us: that we should chronicle our lives so that generations to come will know us and how we lived.