I have come to feel that William Joseph Little or Joseph Little must have come from an educated and fairly well off family. In his younger years he served as a Sheriff and Justice of the Peace in Jackson County Georgia, while there he was enlisted as a spy in the War of 1812. Joseph continued these occupational habits in Carroll “now Haralson” County Georgia throughout the rest of his life as Justice of the Peace, and Judge of the Inferior Court. Because of these facts I must think that he was inclined to follow the same occupational directions where his first children were born in Wilkes County Georgia, but I have found no proof.
He must have been quite an influential person and a community leader wherever he lived. It has been said that he was also appointed to oversee the Land Lottery of Carroll County.
I his will he wills his cotton gin to his current wife. I have found in my research that cotton was not a primary crop where he lived, and that he had his cotton gin before there was rail service was in the area. In order for him to have the cotton gin he had to have grown vast amounts of cotton and surely processed crops of his family and neighbors as well. In his will he did have slaves and or indentured servants.
It has also been said that Josiah his eldest son was the overseer of his land but Josiah has never been found in any Census or Tax Digest in Carroll County. So I suggest that Josiah might have been his overseer but only for a short time, or on the land that his father owned in Alabama.
Josiah’s grave has never been found but I truly believe that he is buried in the Mt. Zion West Baptist Church Cemetery, along with his father and the majority of his siblings, primarily because of it’s close proximity to where he was living which was about five miles.
In the history of Carroll county I have seen statements that the rolling countryside of Carroll County wasn't as well suited to the production of cotton as other, flatter, parts of the state, the large plantations never developed, and only a small percentage of the county's farmers owned any slaves. Largely for that reason, Carroll Countians were mostly indifferent to the issue of slavery and, when Georgia voted to secede from the Union, the Carroll delegates voted against secession. When war did come, however, the men of Carroll fought as gallantly for the Confederacy as any other Southerner.
Because Carroll County entered the war with a subsistence economy, the area was less affected by the Reconstruction era than some other parts of Georgia. The coming of the first railroad lines, starting in 1874, brought easier access to markets for the county's crops, notably cotton, and also made it cheaper and easier for farmers to obtain vital supplies, such as fertilizer.
I know that William Joseph Little had about 2000 acres that he willed out at the time of his death, this may not be a large plantation but it was large enough. I have also heard that one of his sons Theophilus I think argued with him about slavery and this is why Theophilus left Georgia. Also during the reconstruction era cotton is listed as a primary crop. I must ask why now? No other evidence of the gin has ever been found and I must wonder if it may have been destroyed during the Civil War.