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Entered according to Act of Congress, in June, 1809, by J. W. Burkk & Cos., in the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of the United States for the So. District of Georgia.
VOL. 111--NO. 22.
Written for Burke’s Weekly.
THE GEORGIA STATE FAIR.
GOOD many of the little
readers of Burke’s Weekly
1 who live in Georgia were pre
sent at the State Fair, which was held
in Macon, beginning on the sixteenth of
this month, but thousands who reside in
other States were not, and for their ben
efit we print in this number of our pa
per a very excellent picture of the build
ing and fair grounds, which the publish
ers of that beautiful magazine, the
Southern Farm and Home, have kindly
allowed us to use.
The building, which is very correctly
represented in the picture, is known as
the Confederate States Laboratory, hav-
MACON, GEORGIA, NOVEMBER 27, 1869.
ing been erected during the war by the
Confederate States government, for the
manufacture of ammunition, chemicals,
etc., for the use of the army. The close
of the war, however, found it unfinish
ed, and it has never been used, except
as barracks for the United States sol
diers who were stationed near Macon
after the war, until it was obtained by
the Georgia State Agricultural Society
for the fair.
The Laboratory is p’obably one of
the handsomest and most admirably
constructed buildings in the South, and
was well adapted for the purposes of
the fair. It is situated a few yards from
the track of the Macon & Western Rail
road, and within two miles of the city
limits. Extra trains were run through
out the day during the fair week, and
thousands of passengers were carried
backwards and forwards between the
city and the fair ground. The little
boys and girls of Macon, and those who
came from a distance with their parents
—and there were a great, many of these
—enjoyed these rides quite as much as
anything else connectea with the fair.
Inside the fair ground, there were
hundreds of things to be seen. Huge
oxen, weighing thousands of pounds,
wonderful milch cows, fine horses, cash
mere goats, sheep with wool nearly as
fine as silk, all sorts of hogs and pigs,
and chickens.
In the upper room of the building—
an immense apartment, forty five feet
wide and three hundred feet long—were
exhibited beautiful paintings, elegant
pianos, blankets and coverlets, ladies
Whole No. 126.
| dresses and scarfs and aprons, piano
j covers, baby clothes, patch-work quilts,
j straw hats and bonnets, and everjhhing
| else in the way of handiwork and man
-1 ufaclures that you can conceive of, be
sides any quantity of fruits and flowers.
In the rooms down stairs were to be
seen every kind of machinery driven by
1 steam, besides wonderful plows and
harrows, and rakes, and corn shellers,
and cotton planters, and harvesting ma
chines, and cotton gins and presses, and
hundreds of other things. But time
would fail us to enumerate one-half of
what was to be found in every direction
on the ground, and we leave each little
reader to imagine-what we have not sup
plied.
J here were thousands of people in
Macon, from ail parts of the country,