n the 19th century, when builders wanted to construct with bricks, they typically used locally made bricks. Several examples of those brick buildings still stand today.
When William Davis built his house in Culloden, he used locally made bricks. Those bricks withstood a fire in the early 20th century, and today the residence is still there almost two centuries after its construction.
When James S. Pinckard constructed the residence at what is today 219 Brooklyn Avenue, he had the bricks used in the walls, both interior and exterior, made on the creek behind the house, where both clay and water were available.
In 1878 when W. H. Head and W. J. Dumas needed bricks for buildings they were constructing in downtown Forsyth, they returned to this creek bed and its nearby clay for their bricks instead of buying costly ones from Macon. They did, however, contract with a Macon man to supervise the brick making here.
In the early 1870s, when Benier Pye constructed his two-story opera house, still standing on the south side of the square at 12 West Main Street, he probably used bricks made in his own brick yard in town.
The traditional brick making process involved harvesting the clay and then screening it to remove rocks and clods. Next the brick maker mixed sand and water with the clay until he was confident of its proper consistency. The sand, water, and clay mixture was next poured into molds and left to dry for several weeks before the bricks were baked in a kiln. For good quality bricks, the fire and temperature had to be even throughout the burning process.
When James M. Ponder needed a million bricks for his new textile mill in 1897 though, he did not have them made on a creek in Forsyth. He ordered them from the industrial brick yard of Jelks in Macon.