Ponder, while escorting a coffle of 60 slaves from Virginia to Florida, was evidently killed in his sleep by highwaymen who stole a coat and $50.

[9] Note: It was technically illegal to import slaves into Georgia from 1788 until the law was repealed in 1856,[10] but there was no law prohibiting the sale of slaves just across the border in the lands of the Cherokee Nation in what became the northwest quadrant of the state after Indian Removal, or across the Savannah River in Hamburg, South Carolina, maybe across the Chattahoochee River from Columbus in Alabama, or perhaps in Tallahassee.

William Graham Ponder (October 23, 1803 – December 26, 1867) served as an election inspector for Leon County in the Florida Territory in 1829 and 1831, and was a justice of the peace in 1832 and 1840.

"[14] In 1845 Ponder was present in the sale of the Parkhill estate slaves, Tom Gandy, Harriet, Mary Ann and Wm.

Washington, Sam Cormick, Primus, Sarah, George Edmondson, George Lewis, Daniel, William Eppes, Matilda Ann, Sarah and Maria, Julia, Anthony, Molly, Patsey, Hannah, Israel, Sarah and Harriet Ann, Kealan, Jacob, York, Melinda, Squire, Queen and Eliza Ann, Rhoda, Jack, Billy, Moses, Martha, Lucinda and William, Fenton and Helina, Frank, Francis, Isaac, Richard, Juba, Toney, Becky, Jinny, Cuffy, Phillis, Chloe, Dolly, Sam, Elizabeth, Rachael, Adeline, Jane, Polly, John Robinson, Monachy, Elizabeth, Eddy, Bob, George, Maria Miles, Mary, Frederick, William Pryer, Louisa, William, Christina, Horace, Judy Linsey, Susan, Charley Johnny, Mary Long, Joe, Ephraim, Ellen, Cornelia, Rachael, Jack Morgan, Mary, Toney, Sibby, William, Toney, Scipio, Peggy, Isaac, Lucy, York, Grace, Rose, Abram, James, Jones, George, York Jr., Caroline, Morgianna, Fanny, Phoebe, James, Juba, James, Mary Page, Margaret, Frank, Margaret, Albert, Anderson, Pleasant, Edmund, David, William, Cæsar, Amy, Dick, Phillis, Richard, Israel, Ellick, Esther, Amy, Albert, Old Jack, Margaret, Homady, Pittman, Cary, James, Old Tom, Frederick Clark, Nancy Burney, John, Anna, Susan, Maria, Giles, Fanny, Martha, Ned, Francis, Barbary, Kitty Ann, Wilson, Nancy, Ben, Hercules, Hanly, Eliza, Jacob, Winney, Emily, Tom Hackley, Diana, Ellen, Amelia, Betsy Ann, Dick, Lisbon, Katy, Cyrus, Henry, Taylor, Mary Thomas, Louisa, Clarissa, Elizabeth, Anthony, Ben, Sam, Nancy Pool, Walker, Maria, Amy, Maria, Penny Davidson, George, Phil, Betty, Nelson, Selva, Matilda, Sarah Ann, Amelia, Wakala, Virginia, and Charity, at a sale near Tallahassee, Florida Territory.

"[15] According to the case summary, a witness testified, "Knows Juba and Caroline, two of the slaves named in Ponder's bill of sale but not their present value.

"[15] Ponder was one of the organizers and board members of the Fletcher Institute school established in Thomas County in 1848, which had two brick buildings and served both male and female students.

[17] Ponder was one of a group of civic boosters examining the prospects for building a plank road between Thomasville and New Port, Florida.

[27] Later that year he contributed to a fund supporting the Ochlocknee Light Infantry and Thomasville Guards of the Confederate States Army.

[30] Notice of his death appeared in the New Orleans Times-Picayune in January 1868, with the note that the Thomasville Enterprise described him as "one of the oldest and best" citizens of Thomas County.

First, in 1841 in Leon County, "James Trotti asked that Ephraim Ponder be enjoined from further action against him with regards to his note for the purchase of the slave Clinton.

To avoid paying the debt, the Wyatts arranged for Ephraim Ponder to move a number of slaves to Alabama, where he sold some for cash and some through notes issued in his name.

The plaintiffs sue the Wyatts, Ponder, and lawyers hired to collect on the notes, charging fraud, and winning a judgment in excess of eight thousand dollars.

"[42] Rift floors, a speciality of the Wiregrass, were "tongue and groove floorboard that is milled with the grain as tight and straight as possible...using virgin longleaf pine.

[48] Historian Franklin M. Garrett devoted three pages to Ephraim Ponder's time in Atlanta in his history of the city, originally published in 1954.

Mr. Ponder had established in Atlanta in 1857 a factory where he manufactured buggies, carriages, wagons, carts, stage coaches, plows and boots and shoes, gathering the best Negro mechanics he could from various places in the South, the writer's father being brought from Fredericksburg, Virginia, as carriage trimmer and boot and shoemaker.

He filed for divorce (and left town) in October 1861, charging that "Ellen Ponder had committed adultery as long ago as 1854 with 'divers' men; that she was a continual drunkard; had threatened her husband with a pistol; had used abusive language and treated him with the utmost disrespect."

Ellen Ponder remained in the Atlanta house until 1864 (when she fled the approaching U.S. Army for Macon, then to Fort Valley, leaving Festus Flipper to maintain the estate and the business).

[54] During the intervening time, according to Henry Flipper, "The mistress of this fortunate household, far from discharging the duties and functions of her station, left them unnoticed, and devoted her whole attention to illegitimate pleasures.

The outraged husband appointed a guardian and returned broken-hearted to the bosom of his own family, and devoted himself till death to agricultural pursuits.

"[55] Flipper recounts that the mechanics attached to the Ponder estate hired out their time on their own authority and then paid a portion of the earnings to Mrs.

[55] Mrs. Ponder would frequently threaten to sell south to the especially perilous Red River country slaves with whom she was frustrated, but the pending divorce meant that she could not.

[44] As the U.S. Army began to push into Confederate Georgia, with the expected casualties from the associated battles, in the spring of 1864 the Ponder estate buildings were turned in a 200-bed infirmary for soldiers.

[58] During the Atlanta campaign, the area around the Ponder House was defended by Confederate troops under the command of Edward C. Walthall, who built elaborate trench and wooden spike defenses in order to halt any infantry or cavalry push through the ground and then east to the Marietta road.

"[60] After the war, Ponder's former slave Festus Flipper Sr. "conducted for many years a boot and shoe shop at 42 Decatur Street.

[74] John G. Ponder (May 18, 1824 – October 21, 1849) was a 19th-century American slave trader based on Thomas County, Georgia, along the far southern border of the state, adjacent to Florida.

[75] He was killed at about 3 a.m. on Sunday, October 21, 1849, in Pulaski County, Georgia, at a campsite near Ten Mile Creek about 10–13 mi (16–21 km) below Hawkinsville "on the road to Cedar Hill (Slade's).

[77] Ponder was killed while trafficking about 60 enslaved people from the Richmond, Virginia slave market to Florida where they were to be resold to cotton plantation owners.

"[75] During Sunday night two men were seen by a negro girl; she supposing they were some of their own people, as the fire had burnt down and could not distinctly see them, she paid no attention to them.

They carried his trunk off half a mile and broke it open and got 50 dollars, we believe, and a cloth coat—his paper money was under his head and they did not find it.