Side 1:
Register, Georgia, a small turpentine community with a largely agricultural heritage, grew into fruition at the turn of the twentieth century. Originally settled in 1855, the town was earlier known as Bengal, then Herschal. The settlement was later named for Franklin Pierce Register, who moved to the area in 1894 and became the town's postmaster. With the help of nephew J.L. Johnson, F.P. Register started naval store and mercantile enterprises, encouraging further settlement.
The town's population grew to 400 when the intersecting Register & Glennville Railroad and a Central Georgia Railroad branch were completed in 1901. Four to six passenger trains and three freight trains passed through daily. This brought even more workers and consumers into the community, jumpstarting the local economy. This also allowed the town's high school students to travel to Statesboro to attend school daily. In 1904, the newly established Register School consolidated the rural Atwood, Adabelle, Union, and Sylvester schools. Register High School opened in 1917, allowing older students to attend school locally. Register High's first teachers were Miss Effie Grande and Miss B.E. Lee.
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Side 2:
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Other incoming
entrepreneurs included William Corey, C.C. and J.E. Daughtry, N.W. Groover, A.B. Riggs, Norman Rushing, J.W. Holland, A.T. Williams, W.M. Holloway, J.S. Riggs, and G.W. Bowen. These men established grist mills, a general store, a bank, a drugstore, a cotton warehouse, a ginnery, a potato curing plant, garages and repair shops, and a theater. A.C. Williams was the blacksmith, while John J. Lane and H.H. Oliff were two of its earliest doctors. F.P. Register, by now very wealthy, donated land for the town's first Baptist and Methodist churches in 1906. Deans Hotel housed visitors for approximately a decade until it burned in 1919. By the 1920s, Register's population reached 500 inhabitants as cotton, cotton oil, and cotton seed boosted the economy.
Some buildings that housed these fundamental businesses still stand in Register today. Although the decline of the railroad in the 1950s spelled the end of most commercial growth in Register , local citizens sought and achieved official incorporation as a City in 1982, and in 1992, the town engaged in restoration efforts to preserve vital pieces of local history. Two is the structures currently house City Hall (Historic Mill Creek Schoolhouse) and the Community Center (City Drug Store).
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