(NOTE: The following appeared in the 1985 Odum Homecoming program and was written by Hazel Dean Overstreet. It is being reproduced here for the Odum, Georgia website….KH)
Mr. Odum was an able businessman. An old history book in the possession of one of Mr. Godfrey Odum’s grandsons, Mr. Genell Odum, of Odum, states that in 1900, Mr. Odum could command, upon a moment’s notice, $10,000.00 (no little sum in those days) and owned a vast tract of land, consisting of twelve thousand acres (12,000). 1934934, Mr. Odum’s Estate was dissolved, with the decision being made among his heirs and descendants.
Mr. Melton Boyd (81 years old and considered the oldest man in Odum in 1955) says that he and his wife, Bessie Collins, were married when Mr. Godfrey Odum died in 1904. He further stated that Mr. Odum owned 52 lots of land that ranged in scope from Nesbit (known today as Redland) to the Devil’s Woodyard (known today as Brentwood), a tract of about ten miles in length and equivalent to 12,000 acres.
In 1866, when the railroad bed was laid through this town by the East Tennessee, Virginia, and Georgia Railroad (known to old timers as the E T V & G), the city of Odum went by the numerical number of Five.
So, to sum up the names and dates of this place, it would be thus:
1867 – Haslam (For the sawmill owner by this name)
1868 – Satilla (for nearby Satilla Creek)
1870 – Number Five (for the railroad station)
1880 – Odum (for early settler Godfrey Odum)
John Boyd was born on March 23, 1878, and his brothers, Melton Boyd and Somp Boyd, were three of the oldest men I could find to get information on Odum’s history.
By 1888, there were only a very few houses in the town of Odum. The Tyler O’Quinn house stood where Mrs. Connie O’Quinn Thompson’s house stands today. The ‘Old Blue House’ where Eldridge Withrow now lives was built about this time by Mr. Melton Boyd’s father-in-law, Jim Collins, for Mr. John B. Roberson, a merchant. This was about the year 1889.
In about 1892, a house was built on the present site of Gene Tyre’s house (formerly Lewis Tyre’s home) for Bascom Carter, a merchant in Odum. Ryal Reddish, father of One-eyed Jim, Dude, and Georga (deceased), also lived here.
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