MOONSHINE AND MURDER IN NORTH GEORGIA
THE FIELD OF JUSTICE
William A. Thomas, Jr., M.D.
Smyrna Church cemetery, Towns County, Georgia
James Bennett Godard and Tilmon Justice. . .
James Bennett Godard was a cantankerous old man who had fled from his past to live far up in the mountains of Towns County, in Northeast Georgia.
Tilmon Justice was a young father working hard to provide for his growing family in the insular Appalachian world, but he had the odds stacked against him.
. . .shared a land boundary, but disagreed on the line. . .
The two men also shared a history with mother corn and the industry that provided so much income to the impoverished rural areas of the deep South.
. . .in January of 1887, it all came to a head.
The events were a national sensation in the newspapers of the day and are now brought to life for us through the handwritten court transcript and the imagination of one of the men's descendants.