2 December 1904: Love Locked Up

On this day in 1904, the Weekly Banner published news of a recent local marriage that required some persuasion of the bride's parents:

LOCKED

Up Young Bride, But Parents

Finally Give Blessings

to Happy Couple.

   Love laughs at locksmiths is true but sometimes love forgets and gets locked up again.

   The first part of the aphorism was proven true on Sunday afternoon when Mr. Pink Hilyard and Miss Ophelia Hughes were married at the home of a friend near Winterville.

   Mr. Hilyard brought his bride back to the city and they went to the home of the bride's parents. A stormy scene followed and the parents refused to let Mr. Hilyard see his wife.

   Later during the evening the refusal was still adhered to and not until yesterday morning did the parents of Mrs. Hilyard relent and give the young couple their blessing.

--Weekly Banner, 2 December 1904, p. 5, col. 7.

Alas, Mr. and Mrs. Hughes had good instincts. Robert Pink Hilliard was well known in town for being arrested as drunk or disorderly (or both) rather than for being an industrious young man with a bright future. He was also only 18 years old, and Ophelia had only turned 16 a month earlier. In the 1904 Athens City Directory, his profession is listed as painter.

(click to enlarge image)

According to the 1910 U.S. Census, Ophelia and Pink were living with his parents on Lumpkin Street, with Ophelia at home, caring for their two sons, Hughes, age 4, and Douglas, age 2, and Pink listed as now working as a "hackman," or public carriage driver. 

However, the 1909 Athens City Directory lists Ophelia as living with her sister on Oconee Street, indicating the marriage was already showing signs of strain. Pink continued to rack up fines from his frequent appearances the Mayor's Court, to account for his for disorderly drunken behavior, at a cost of $2.50 to $30.00 per conviction. In 1912, he and two of his friends were convicted of robbery and sent to prison. Pink was pardoned and released in 1915.

In the 1920 U.S. Census, Pink is found living in a boarding house in Augusta, Georgia, with an occupation of "painter" and marital status of "married." Ophelia and her boys are still living with her older sister, Alma, who worked as a bookkeeper for Bernstein Brothers Furniture Store and was active in the Y.W.C.A. Extension Club. Though Ophelia lists her marital status as "divorced," she would not officially file for divorce from Pink until August, 1928. 

Neither Ophelia nor Pink would ever remarry. Pink would live out his days in boarding houses and Y.M.C.A. rooms in Augusta, dying in 1958 at the age of 70. Ophelia spent her life in Clarke County, dying in 1965 at the age of 77.


Learn More: 

• Clarke County, Georgia, Ordinary Records. Marriages, Book K, 1901-1906 on Microfilm in the Heritage collection.
• Athens Historic Newspaper Archive collection in the Digital Library of Georgia.
• 1900 - 1940 U.S. Censuses in Ancestry Library Edition in GALILEO.
• Clarke County Marriages 1803-1909 by Faye Poss Stone in the Heritage collection.
• Athens City Directories, 1889 - 1927 on Microfilm in the Heritage collection.
• Georgia Death Certificates, 1919-1998 in Ancestry Library Edition in GALILEO.

31 January 1861: Julia A. Flisch, Author and Women's Education Advocate, Is Born

On this day in 1861, Julia Anna Flisch was born to Pauline and Leonard Flisch in Augusta, Georgia. While Julia was still an infant, her family moved to Athens, where her parents, German immigrants, ran a sweets shop across the street from the University of Georgia, selling cakes and ice cream to college students. Julia grew up in Athens; her family lived above their store, and were active in the community, including the First Presbyterian Church, where her father was an Elder. She later noted that "the history and traditions of my childhood were the history and traditions of the University of Georgia."


After graduating with honors from the Lucy Cobb Institute in in 1877, Julia wanted to attend UGA, but her application was rejected because she was female. Her family returned to Augusta  a few years later (according to Augustus Longstreet Hull, college boys who bought on credit and never paid made the business unprofitable, and the move was "self defense"). 


In 1882, she wrote a letter to the Augusta Chronicle titled "Give the Girls a Chance," calling for more educational and occupational opportunities for women in the South to "work out their own sense of independence" and "to be of some active use in the world." She signed the letter only, "A Young Woman." The subject stirred the Augusta population, and two weeks later, the paper published that Julia Flisch was the author. 


Over the next few years, she wrote frequently on the subject of women's education, and criticized the common education provided to girls at the time--with a focus on sewing, music, and decorative arts--as "defective education" that denied women the ability to properly support themselves.


Julia herself went to Coopers Union in New York to study secretarial skills, such as shorthand and typewriting in 1883 and 1884. She returned to Augusta and worked as a bookkeeper while writing and publishing articles, stories, and her first novel, Ashes of Hope. She also covered 1887 commencement season in Athens for the Augusta Chronicle, bemoaning that the school was for the "sons of Georgia" alone. 


She urged women to pressure the state to provide more opportunities for women's education, and in 1889, after more overwhelming pressure via petitions and letters from the women of Georgia, the legislature passed a bill approving the first women's industrial college. Despite the widespread support of many prominent women in the state, only Julia Flisch was part of the official program for laying the cornerstone for the Georgia Normal and Industrial College (now Georgia College and State University) in Milledgeville in 1890.


Julia joined the school's faculty, teaching the secretarial skills she had learned in New York and later ancient and medieval history. She continued to write for newspapers, and spent her summers studying at the University of Chicago and Harvard. In 1899, 22 years after she had first applied to study there, the University of Georgia granted her an honorary degree, the first degree UGA ever gave to a woman; 19 years later, the first women students were admitted to UGA.


In 1905, Julia left her position to attend the University of Wisconsin. In 1908, she earned her Master's degree in history, and was offered positions at universities around the country. She chose, however, to return to Georgia, and took a position at the Tubman High School for Girls in Augusta. In 1925, she published her second novel, Old Hurricane and took the position of Dean of Women for the newly established Augusta Junior College, the first junior college in Georgia (now Augusta State University). Julia Flisch retired from teaching in 1936 due to her failing vision. She died in 1941, and is buried at Magnolia Cemetery in Augusta.


Georgia Women of Achievement honored Julia Anna Flisch, as well as Margaret Mitchell, Emily Thomas Tubman, Ruth Hartley Mosley, and Carson McCullers, as one of the important women in Georgia's history.




Learn More:

• Annals of Athens, 1801-1901 by Augustus Longstreet Hull in the Heritage collection.
• Higher Education for Women in the South: A History of the Lucy Cobb Institute, 1858-1994 by Phinizy Spalding in the Heritage collection.
• Lucy Cobb Institute Messenger 1876 on Microfilm in the Heritage collection.
• The Georgia Historical Quarterly, Volume LXXX, Number 3, Fall 1996 in the (stored) Heritage collection.
• Confederate Athens by Kenneth Coleman in the Heritage and general collections.
• College Life in the Old South by E. Merton Coulter in the Heritage and general collections.
• Women in the South: An Anthropological Perspective, edited by Holly F. Mathews in the general collection.
• Julia A. Flisch collection at the Georgia College and State University library.
• All-American Girl: The Ideal of Real Womanhood in Nineteenth-Century America by Frances B. Cogan in the general collection.
• Torches of Light: Georgia Teachers and the Coming of the Modern South by Ann Short Chirhart in the Heritage collection.
• America's Women: Four Hundred Years of Dolls, Drudges, Helpmates, and Heroines by Gail Collins in the general collection.
• Smart Choices: A Woman's Guide to Returning to School by Anne Bianchi in the general collection.
• Georgia Women of Achievement Honorees web page.