John Gordon FIELDS

                   Family history states that John Gordon Fields, his family and about 20 different families that were living at Blairsville, Ga., purchased land at auctions at Arnoldsville, Ga., Oglethorpe County and migrated as a wagon trail about 1906. He did some farming, opened a grocery store and later enlarged the store to a large general merchandise store.
During this time he was in lumber, operated a dairy, made bricks, bought and sold cotton, made caskets, operated a corn mill and was a wheat thrasher.  He made shingles and bought and sold cattle, horses and mules. His store was deliberately set on fire (the family knew who did this but could not prove it) New Years Eve about 1921. With the fall of cotton prices, he bought at around 38 cents per pound and sold at a 5 to 13 cents per pound mark up.
But three banks went broke and this wiped out a small fortune of about $400,000 which  was a lot of money in those days.
As one of his last projects, he built a mobile home on a one ton ford truck frame about 1925. This may have been the first. He said that some day it would be a general thing.
Many people around (and some now deceased) in Arnoldsville, still owe him a lot of money, which the family have the records of.
His wife, Lena Hamby, was the daughter of Milford G. and Elenor (Hughs) Hamby. Her brothers, Will Hamby and Love Hamby were ministers and her brother John Hamby was a school professor.
This is part of a James G. Fields family update and was written about 1987. The name of the author is unknown.
Note: Contributed by Michelle Pitts (Mchele1989@cs.com  and Tonda Thomas (gregthomas@bluebonnet.net)