John Gillam “J.G.” Justice was born on November 1, 1825, to Allen and Susan Justice, their first son. He grew up working on the family farm in Jackson County, Georgia. Bright and ambitious, he was drawn to both education and business. By 1850, at age 25, he was working locally as a teacher.

After his father’s death in 1858 and in the years leading up to the Civil War, John was living in Hartwell, Georgia, where he worked as a merchant and was involved in small-scale manufacturing. Unlike his brother Allen T. Justice and several other relatives, John did not enlist in the Confederate Army. He likely received an exemption—possibly as a teacher, or under agricultural and merchant provisions designed to preserve essential community functions.

Following the war, John returned to Jackson County and assumed responsibility for his family’s farm and household. He cared for his elderly mother, Susan (then 74), as well as his sister Susan Melvina Justice, the widow of John Flanigan (age 36), his sister Mary Ann Kissah Justice (31), and his young nephew, Allen Monso Flanigan (6). Also living in the household were two African American boys, Henry (13) and Joshua Moore (9), born in Virginia, who worked as farm laborers. John Gilliam Justice never married.

Peaches in Georgia

Educated, practical, and enterprising, John Justice had an eye for opportunity. While peaches had grown in Georgia since Spanish colonists first introduced them in the 16th century, before the Civil War they were raised mostly for household use or limited local markets. The expansion of railroads in the 1870s changed this. Fresh fruit could now be shipped north, and new peach varieties better suited to shipping—firmer, later-ripening types—were being developed. By the late 1870s and early 1880s, the first large commercial shipments of Georgia peaches were moving to Atlanta, Augusta, and beyond.

Recognizing this potential, John Gillam Justice established the Jackson County Nursery in the early 1870s. He successfully operated it until his death in 1910. As early as 1878, The Forest News of Jefferson published a customer’s testimonial:

“Mr. J. G. Justice, Marcus, Ga. Dear Sir—The fruit trees I obtained from your nursery four years ago are now bearing, and the fruit comes fully up to your representation. It is the finest I have ever raised…” (Forest News, Jefferson, June 8, 1878).

Nearly three decades later, The Jackson Herald praised his work:

“Peach trees from the Jackson County Nursery made Peach Mountain …$10,000. The trees from this nursery are the best in the world.” (Jackson Herald, Jefferson, April 18, 1907).

John Gillam Justice’s Jackson County Nursery was thus active at the very start of Georgia’s commercial peach boom. He was among the first wave of nurserymen providing improved peach varieties to farmers eager to establish orchards for profit.

He died September 22, 1910. His marker at the Justice Cemetery, between his mother and his sister Martha, reads “With life and name unstained the good man dies”.