The Andrew Avery Home Movie Collection is a unique treasure documenting the people and events of Bainbridge, Georgia and Decatur County from 1934 to the early 1950s in over 8000 feet of film that lasts for over 200 minutes. Mr. Avery, a UGA graduate, focused his camera on crops such as cotton, peanuts, sugar cane, and many others and the traditional farming practices of the time. This compilation of footage is silent and runs about 32 minutes.

Avery Compilation Footage (silent) streaming video

Highlights from the footage:

Mr. Avery produced a short film called “Footsteps of Progress in the Flint River Valley” that is a compilation of silent footage he shot in black & white and color. The film features agriculture, education, business, and religion in Decatur County and Southwest Georgia. Mr. Avery pushed hard for the peanut business in Decatur County. Avery gave away bags of peanuts constantly until his death.

Another of Avery’s passions was cane grinding which there are examples of in his footage. This was an annual event for his friends and neighbors. Sugarcane would be ground – the cane would be put into a grinder – and a horse going in a circle around the grinder would grind the cane. The sugar cane was then boiled to evaporate the cane juice and concentrate the sugar content. This required continuous boiling for 3 to 4 hours the juice must then be skimmed and clarified throughout the cooking process to create cane syrup. It would be bottled for use later on pancakes, biscuits, or used in cooking.

There is the concentration of teaching work or survival skills in the footage such as the National Youth Administration camp that shows a program for young white woman teaching them farming, canning, sewing, washing etc. The NYA operated from 1935 to 1943 as part of the Works Progress Administration which was the largest and most comprehensive New Deal agency. The NYA operated numerous programs for out-of-school youth. By 1938, it served 327,000 high school and college youth, who were paid from $6 to $40 a month for "work study" projects at their schools

Mr. Avery was a Baptist his entire life and he was a longtime member of Mt. Pleasant Baptist Church which appears in his footage along with every other church in the county and the Temple located in Bainbridge. He was also an active member of the Gideons and according to his obituary gave out almost as many bibles as he did peanuts.

Also included in this amateur footage is a hospital built in Bainbridge by African American physician Dr. Joseph Howard Griffin. There is a book about Dr. Griffin called Under the Knife written by his great-nephew Hugh Pearson who was curious as to how a black physician managed to wield so much power in pre-Civil Rights movement in the south. Dr. Griffin built a small hospital for blacks in the 1930s and in the early 1950s built a larger hospital for $250,000 of his own money.

For more information about Bainbridge, Georgia check this web site:
http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/nge/Article.jsp?id=h-2213