Crisp County News
Thursday, October 13, 1938

Pioneer Crisp Settler Lives 54 Years on the 
Same Farm

The Bundricks blazed Trail From Albany Road 
to Present Home

	Fifty-four years ago, a young man and his bride 
left the well defined trail at the point where the 
Albany and Americus roads fork, entered the woods 
and blazed a new trail through the dense forest to 
their new home, a 300 acre tract of land in what 
was then Dooly county. 
	The man walked ahead, marking the path.  The 
woman drove the little Jersey wagon.
	When they reached "home," they found it to be a 
one-room log cabin, ceiled only part way toward the 
top.  Through the cracks between the hewn logs, the 
stars shown at night and the moon could be seen at 
times.
	There they settled, to wrest a living from the 
reluctant soil and to rear a family of five 
children.  Six of the 300 acres were already under 
cultivation; others were cleared of trees to 
provide farmland.  
	That man was Mr. Zack Bundrick and the woman 
his wife, who a few years ago passed to her reward.
	Mr. Bundrick today is 80 years old, straight 
and tall, showing only in his lined countenance and 
gray hair the years of toil that have been his 
since he "started plowing when he was 11 years old 
and plowed all the rest of his life until he was 
able to no more."
	He lives today with his daughter, Miss Mary 
Emma Bundrick, on the same farm where he and his 
wife settled in 1884 - four years before the 
creation of Cordele.  In all those years, there has 
never been a mortgage on the farm, which Mr. 
Bundrick bought from his brother-in-law, James A. 
Perry, for $300.
	When "the railroads came to Cordele," Mr. 
Bundrick recalls the he helped cut the right of way 
from Gum Creek to Ausenberg.  For this work, he 
says, he received the magnificent sum of $1 a 
day - and fed himself.
	"And I thought I was really making money," he 
laughs.
	All trading was done by the pioneer Dooly 
countians at Montezuma or Hawkinsville.  Before the 
railroads came, these trading trips were made in 
wagons, about twice or three times a year.  And 
each trip required at least three days.  The first 
day, they traveled as far as they could by dark, 
camped overnight, and went into town the next 
morning early to do their trading.  Farm products 
were carried in to be sold, and food and clothing 
bought with the money received.  Returning, they 
camped overnight again and completed the trip home 
the third day.
	Then came the railroads.  The freight cars 
could carry many times the load of the wagons.
	His first train ride, Mr. Bundrick can laugh 
about now, but it was a serious proposition then.  
In the fall of the year, he carried several bales 
of cotton to Cordele.  They were loaded on the 
train - and Mr. Bundrick right along with it, going 
to Americus to sell the cotton. 
	That he says, was just about as scared as he 
ever remembers being - the train rocking back and 
forth on the narrow tracks - crossing over the 
river - making turns.
	"When I got there, I was really tired.  All the 
way over, I had braced myself against first one 
side of the car and then the other- trying to hold 
the train up and keep it from turning over," he 
said, demonstrating all the while just how he 
rocked and held on to the cars.
	One of the outstanding things Mr. Bundrick 
remembers is the "Big Blizzard", which he places 
about the year 1885.  For twenty-one days, the 
ground and trees were frozen.  Blue birds, seen in 
large numbers before the blizzard, froze to death.  
Many other birds and animals died in the cold.
	Many other things stand out in the memory of 
this pioneer settler.  The grocery bill of $7 for 
the first year - Wearing brogand shoes and buying 
cloth by the bolt, for the making of dresses, 
shirts, pants?everything needed until the cloth 
was used up - Borrowing $100 the second year to 
operate on; paying $18 interest, on the $100, and 
never borrowing money again - Forest fires, the most 
feared of all things, threatening to destroy all 
that had been done - Trading trips to Albany and 
other points, sometimes as many as one hundred 
wagons making the journey together.	
	And Cordele grew and prospered, becoming a 
thriving city.  Times changed. Automobiles and 
trucks replaced the wagons of the earlier days.  
Roads were built.  Families settled throughout the 
section.
	Mr. Bundrick remains on the farm where he 
settled in 1882.  
	"And I will be here as long as I live," he 
says, -thinking back over more than a half century 
of hard work and thrift, good times and bad times, 
happiness and sorrow, hardships that somehow were 
overcome, to move on to today.

Extracted by Joyce Cason Pheil
October 13, 2002