1896 - Take Care of the Land

Davis Lee Stokes’ father taught him what every farmer’s son needed to know in order to survive in the Post-Civil War South. You have to take care of the land. And if you take care of the land, “DL” learned, the land will take care of you. But the dirt farm in South Georgia where DL grew up didn’t offer up this life lesson without a fight. DL’s father provided for a household of ten people in a time when most farmers in the Deep South were as poor as he was—or worse—and the land they farmed was tired from years of abuse. Poor and tired. Perhaps these were the reasons DL decided to leave farming when he came of age and head North to earn a living. Until then, DL’s universe consisted of the family’s 200-acre farm. He was born in 1886 to James Edwin Stokes and his wife, the former Mary Margaret Fowler, during an era when 70% of the population farmed for a living in the South.