Re: Okefenokee Festival to salute Chessers
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In reply to:
Okefenokee Festival to salute Chessers
10/12/00
Chesser
The sounds of the mysterious Okefenokee Swamp - the bird calls, the wind whispering through the cypress trees, the rain falling on lilypads, the deep, low grunting sounds of alligators - all were once mingled with the sounds of the growing families on Chesser Island. Here, beginning in the 1850s the Chesseer family homestead was built on a secluded island on the edge of the Okefenokee in an area far removed from even the fringes of civilization.
William T. Chesser first came to the island in 1858. He was already married when he and his wife began homesteading the land,
bringing their first son, Samuel, to the swamp as a child. Robert, another son, was born on the island in 1859. William had a good reason for choosing an inaccessable island as a place to raise his family. It's seclusion served them as a refuge from a manslaughter charge in Tattnall County, Ga. Although he didn't find out until many years later, the charge had been quickly dropped after he had fled, when witnesses proved that Chesser had acted in self-defense.
The two brothers, Samuel Archie and Robert Allen Chesser were raised in the swamp and after they married remained on the land which had been homesteaded by their father. There they raised their large families on either end of a large cultivated field. Their were no other settlers for miles and miles and the Chesser cousins visited casually back and forth playing, working, and getting into mischief together as one big family of brothers and sisters.
Chesser Island was included in the sale when Charles, C.S., and Daniel Hebard purchased 219,500 acres of the Okefenokee Swamp from the Suwannee Canal Company in 1901. Actually this territory should have been excluded from the transaction because William Chesser had homesteaded the island nearly fifty years before and it rightfully belonged to him. His sons continued to farm the island and claimed it as their own after their fathers death, until John M. Hopkins, Manager of the lands of the Hebards, had a portion of the island that was under cultivation surveyed. In 1914 the Chessers received a deed from the Hebards for the northern part of the island. The document conveyed to the two men the Chesser Plantation containing 109 3/5 acres located on Chesser Island in the Okenfenokee Swamp. Samuel claimed the northern portion of the land and Robert claimed the southern part.
Later, in order to spare their families the trouble of probabting wills after their deaths, the two brothers on the same day deeded to their sons their fifty-five acres. That day was March 26, 1921.
(Excerpt from a book I found in the Waycross, GA Public Library...don't know the name)
Part of my Family is descended from aCHESSER...Priscilla Susan Chesser, b abt 1815 and died bet 1880-1910. She was the 2nd wife of John Altman. They married 8/29/1842.
Robert married Lizzie Eugenia Altman. Together, they had
thirteen children - Vinie Bell, Mary Emma, Georgia Matilda, Benjamin Thomas, Harry, Sallie, Katie, Robert Allen jr., Julia
Elizabeth, Roxie Edna, Moses G., Mattie Tee, and Vannie Vester.
Samuel married Sarah Altman and together they had eight
children - Pet, Kate, Charlie, John, Richard, Tom, Addie, and Mettie.
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Re: Okefenokee Festival to salute Chessers
Kevin Chesser 8/21/03