William Guilford

William A. Guilford (5 February 1844 – c. October 1909) was a businessman and state legislator from Upson County, Georgia.[1] Guilford was a representative to Georgia's constitutional congress in 1868 and was an elected representative in Georgia's assembly during the 1868–1870 term. He was a Republican. William Guilford's father, Guilford Speer, had operated a harness and shoe shop in Thomaston, Upson County, since at least the 1840s, and was a founding organizer of St. Mary's A.M.E. Church. William Guilford opened a barber shop in Thomaston, and was involved in organizing the county's annual Emancipation Day celebration, still observed on or about 19 May each year.

Guilford married a woman named Lourinda. Their known children included William (died before 1870), Guilford, Duffield, Lincoln, Douglass, Richard, Ludie, Benjamin, and Lidie (Lydia).[1] He owned 12 acres of land in Thomaston, Georgia.[1] Guilford was one of several witnesses on behalf of political activist William Fincher of Pike County, who was accused of vagrancy in 1868. The case was submitted to the U.S. Congress as an example of a violation of Civil Rights. The jury sentenced the man to a year of hard labor on the public roads.[2]

Rufus B. Bullock, the provisional governor of Georgia filed documents in support of Guilford serving in the Georgia House of Representatives after the 1868 election when top vote getter J.C. Drake was disqualified.[3]

References
  1. McGill, James (21 December 2017). "The First One Hundred Years of Upson County Negro History". AuthorHouse – via Google Books.; Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham and Henry Louis Gates, Jr., eds., African American National Biography (Harvard University Press, 2008), Vol. 3, entry for Guilford, William.
  2. Senate Documents, Otherwise Publ. as Public Documents and Executive Documents: 14th Congress, 1st Session-48th Congress, 2nd Session and Special Session, Volume 9 Front Cover United States. Congress. Senate 1867
  3. United States. Government Printing Office (1870). Congressional Serial Set. U.S. Government Printing Office. pp. 1–24. ISSN 1931-2822. Retrieved 2018-03-18.
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