Taliaferro List friends, (Please pass this along to anyone you think might be connected to this family -- we need to reach the "off-line" folks!) Springfield Baptist Church data on-line is taking shape! Charles has shared a beautifully written tribute to his father who is buried in the cemetery there along with many members of his Atkinson family. (A very similar article was printed in the Advocate Democrat in 2003) (I'm impressed with how this newspaper supports families in Taliaferro and all of its history) http://ftp.rootsweb.com/pub/usgenweb/ga/taliaferro/bios/atkinson838gbs.txt Atkinson, John Loyd 1901 - 1972 Be sure to visit this site -- it was too long to actually go through the List, but here's the beginning..... Author: Charles Atkinson On Fathers Day (6/18/2000), I took two of my children to my fathers grave, at Springfield Baptist Church ( founded in 1865) in his hometown of Crawfordville, Georgia. (where Alexander H. Stephens State Park, which he was never able to visit during his life, is located.) I was trying to give my children a brief history of who he was from my own limited knowledge. I knew that he was the first black park superintendant in Georgia and had built George Washington Carver state park, opened in 1950, the first negro state park and the only state park ever named for an african- american in georgia. It is now operated by Bartow County as Bartow-Carver park. He had leased the land from the corps of engineers with the intent of running a private resort like american beach in Florida, but could not get a license to operate it as such from Bartow county. the state of Georgia, while Herman E. Talmadge was governor, made an offer to make the facility a state park for negroes, due to mounting protest from black WWII veterans and civic groups, and he remained the park superintendant for 8 years, until he became ill in the fall of 1958.