The Ochlocknee River Camp
In a world where dating takes place virtually more often than it does in person, you might wonder what the people of yester-year had to go through to mingle as singles. You’ve probably heard stories about watchful chaperones and strict curfews: one wrong move could sour your reputation and ruin your chances of finding a partner. Knowing these difficulties but still wanting to meet people, a group of Thomas County boys met in 1914 and made a plan. They found older chaperones, procured a camping site along the Ochlocknee River, and sent out invitations to other young men and women throughout the Southeast to come to their riverside camping club for a week in the summer. From this plan, the Ochlocknee Riverside Camp was born.
We have a book in our collection that documents this camp during its three-year operation. Each day the camp was open, the guests signed in, leaving us long lists of attendees. Over the past year, we have been working to research these attendees to see where they came from, who they knew, what happened to them after the camp, and – most importantly – how successful they were in their search for love!
Want to see all the juicy details? Use this link to see the spreadsheet with every attendee’s information and a few pictures too: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/k9qbwhbux5w1abnwzt6ej/Ochlocknee-Riverside-Camp-Attendees.xlsx?rlkey=jko7vmactqmgqeljum8ut2ijv&st=7rlbor40&dl=0
With 78 campers attending over three years, only ten of those campers married one another. That’s a very rough 12.5% success rate for this camp as far as setting couples up goes. You drop a few points when you consider that the first chaperone was divorced shortly after the first camp year took place. But maybe marriage wasn’t the only goal. Afterall, many of the attendees were young teenagers – this camp was not only a good way to meet people but also a safe environment to practice socializing with people outside of their inner family.
At least, it was mostly safe. As happens with most groups of young people, there were times where campers didn’t get along – even if their camp rhyme stated that “Q is for quarrels, of which we have none.” Evidence of these heightened emotions pop up in a set of poems written in the 1916 section of the book. Judging from the way the poems are compiled, the book must have been passed around a lot, giving the campers the opportunity to profess their feelings about one another, show off their sense of humor, or make snide remarks back and forth (sometimes anonymously and other times more openly). You can read these poems through the above spreadsheet linked to the appropriate camper’s name.
At the end of the day, any event’s success is better measured not by a product (like marriages) or the length of time in which it ran, but by the feelings of the attendees. In this case, the Ochlocknee Riverside Camp could be considered a success. Many of the camper poetry calls out the success of the camp, complimenting the chaperones, the food, and the fun they had along the beaches of the Ochlocknee.
In fact, it’s possible this camp would have continued for many years following had it not been for the United States’ involvement in World War I. We know at least seventeen of the thirty-eight men who attended the camp served in World War I in some capacity, two of whom died as a result of the war. And while they weren’t in the military, we know at least a few of the women served in auxiliary groups and with the Red Cross. If anything, the Ochlocknee Riverside Camp was the last hurrah for many of these young people before a harsh reality forced many of them to grow up quickly.
This little time capsule of a book captures a certain youthful innocence of the 1910s in Thomas County. A time when all that mattered to the campers was how good of a swimmer you were and whether or not the right person liked you back. So while they may not have had the longest running camp nor been able to point out several happy couples resulting from those summers along the Ochlocknee, the camp was able to bring together a score of young people from across the Southeast for some G-rated fun. It probably beat staying at home!
