Boston

By Ephraim Rotter

The origin story of the Thomas County city of Boston, the second oldest city in the county, has been well honed since America’s Bicentennial in 1976. The telling goes something like this: A man named Thomas Boston was a frequent visitor to early Thomas County, by way of stagecoach. He (in some tellings) purchased significant land holding in the vicinity of what has been known as “Old Boston” since the late 1800s or became friends with a man who did own significant land in the vicinity of “Old Boston,” John Parramore. As settlers arrived through the 1820s and 1830s, possibly as early as 1831 or maybe as late as 1839,the settlement located off of Sally Road today at the Russell Farm was named Boston, either in honor of Thomas Boston as a local landowner, or in celebration of his frequent visits to his good friend John Parramore, who the story tells us had a stagecoach stop in the vicinity of Old Boston. But is this version of events accurate?

Several months ago, the History Center received a request from researchers in that other Boston – the Massachusetts one. A recently retired couple, determined to find the origin story of each place named “Boston” in America, called to ask about Thomas County’s iteration. The History Center benefits from and appreciates the research that came before it, but from time-to-time we will revisit the stories and then the source documents to try to find out more, especially as new research tools have made materials both more available and more searchable.

The first step was to gather all the origin stories for Boston we could: the earliest is from 1890 and the most recent from 1989. The most influential was Irwin MacIntyre’s History of Thomas County written in 1923. It is cited by Dr. William Warren Rogers in his books about Thomas County history and numerous other places. This is where we first find the claim that Boston was founded by a man named “Major Thomas M. Boston” around 1831, and that he purchased significant land holdings there, presumably including the site of Old Boston. All other origin stories, including the stagecoach stop theory, are variations of this, excepting the first history of Boston, written in the April 14, 1890 edition of the Times-Enterprise.

That history was part of a series titled “Highways and By-Ways of Thomas County” written by an anonymous County elder identifying himself as “W.” According to him, Boston was founded in the mid-1830s by two men with the last names of Graves and Watson who came to Thomas County from Boston, Massachusetts. With these stories to work with, identifying exactly who is this “Major Thomas M. Boston” was my first priority. At times referenced as “Captain” Thomas M. Boston, he was quickly profiled to be Thomas Mickleberry Boston, born 1815 in Screven County, Georgia. On the 1830 census, he is listed as living with his parents in Screven County. Even with shorter lifespans, the thought of a sixteen-year-old dependent getting a town named in honor of him in 1831 seems unlikely.

A visit to the Thomas County Deed Room confirmed this. He did not show up on any Georgia property tax rolls until the late 1830s. He did eventually buy property in Thomas County and was a hotelier in Thomasville. The very first land Tom Boston purchased in Thomas County was in Thomasville in 1851. While his Uncle John purchased lots in the 8^th district (Colquitt County today) and a lot in today’s Brooks County between 1839-1841, none of the family’s properties were in the vicinity of “Old” or “New” Boston. Tom Boston himself never owned any property near Boston.

The variation of this theory, that he was friends with John Parramore and visited by way of stagecoach at a stagecoach stop Parramore hosted on his property, is also without evidence. The stagecoach routes of Georgia – particularly the one Thomas Boston would have had to take to get to south Thomas County – were extremely well documented. These were commercial operations that required reliable stops every 40-50 miles where horses could be changed and people get something to eat or even a place to stay overnight.

While John Parramore was a large landowner in the vicinity of “Old” Boston, and certainly popular and well known in the area, his property is simply not listed as a stagecoach stop nor changing station in any newspaper or gazetteer, particularly the Gazetteer of the State of Georgia for 1837. Thomasville is listed, as is Troupeville, Albany, and other places on either the route through Albany or the route from the east. The primary logic problem being that for a state-wide stage operator, the Parramore property was too close to Thomasville for there to be an additional stop.

The next key data point for us to discover was to find the very earliest use of the name “Boston” for a place in Thomas County. The United States Postmaster Book lists Aaron Daniel as the postmaster of a Boston in Thomas County in 1847. This is the first verifiable use of the name we can find thus far. By 1850, it appears with some frequency. Which brings us back to the original history written by “W” in 1890 who claimed, “Watson and Graves” moved from the “Old Bay State.”  

So who is W? And who are Watson and Graves? Those are questions we’ll have to save for next time!