Mount Carmel Primitive Baptist Church, which no longer exists, was established in the 1840s near present-day McIntyre. It was a large community in its early days. The church, and the old Mount Carmel School, are long gone, but the historic cemetery is an important link to the early history of Wilkinson County.
The Criswell family were pioneer settlers of the area and the grave house of James P. Criswell (1842-1927), his first wife Georgian Shinholster Criswell (1847-1873), and an infant son (1872-1872), is a notable memorial at Mount Carmel. James and Georgian had another son, born in 1870. James P. Criswell enlisted as a private in Co. A, 49th Georgia Infantry, on 4 March 1862. He was soon discharged and on 15 August 1862 furnished James J. Howell as a substitute. Records indicate he re-enlisted in Co. D, 63rd Georgia Infantry on 29 January 1864. After Georgian’s death, Criswell married Celia Jane Billings (1846-1926), with whom he had seven more children.
Jesse Lewis Rustin was born in Alabama on 2 November 1823 and eventually settled in the historic Mount Carmel community of Wilkinson County, where he apparently worked as a beekeeper. The term “bee bread” refers to a fermented mixture of pollen, nectar, and enzymes that serves as a food source for bees. “Bee bread man” is thought to be a historic name for beekeepers in general. According to the foot stone at Mr. Rustin’s gravesite, he died of bee poisoning (21 April 1857). This was likely fairly common in the 19th century, before the advent of modern medicine.
This is the most important surviving house in the historic village of Irwinton. It was built by Dr. William Fisher circa 1835. Interim owners were Fisher descendants and, possibly, Dr. Joshua Wood. Today, the house is most associated with the Carswell family, beginning with George H. Carswell. In Architecture of Middle Georgia: The Oconee Area, John Linley notes: “Though probably antebellum, the inviting porch may have been added, or at least remodeled, after the house was built, while the masonry piers, which form the lower part of the columns are undoubtedly twentieth century.” Linley also made mention of a Civil War occupation of the house by General W. F. Smith, though it is now known that General Smith was not present in Irwinton. This was likely sourced from family lore. The Union army was definitely present in Irwinton during November 1864, so this may have led to the confusion.
I’m grateful to Carl Langston, the present owner of this house, for allowing me to photograph it. Mr. Langston is a descendant of the Carswell family and is presently restoring the house. He confirms much of the history recorded by John Linley and adds that the house was originally the center of a much larger property. He also notes that the porch was added in the 1920s.
I went to Fitzgerald a couple of weekends ago for a birthday party and a memorial service, the kinds of gatherings that pull us back to our hometowns. While I was there, Lands Crossing was on my mind. The old store there had recently been struck by a vehicle and badly damaged, and I had a sinking feeling it wouldn’t be around much longer. In a light rain, I rode with my father out to that familiar landmark, about ten minutes from my childhood home, and carefully made a bunch of photographs. This week, I received a message that it had been demolished. In my line of work, I see these kinds of outcomes all over the state, but when a place is personal, it hits different. Henry Land’s Grocery wasn’t just a store; it was a storehouse of memories for people from all over the area, a place that quietly held pieces of many lives. It meant something not only to those who lived nearby, but also to the many who passed it over the years and folded it into their own stories. There were some painful memories, too, of families who had lost loved ones in a tragic highway accident years earlier, and those sorrows lingered there as well. Yet, for the most part, it stood as a symbol of the good neighbors who supported it and of the everyday kindness that made it the heart of a community. I’m grateful to have been able to document it over the years. Even though the building had changed a bit, it was still important to people in this neck of the woods.
Mount Perry Missionary Baptist Church is a historic Black congregation, likely established by freedmen after the Civil War. I haven’t been able to locate a specific date, but resource surveys indicate the present church was built in the 1890s. The gable front structure is six bays deep and features a single steeple. It is located near the northern apex of Morgan County, just west of the Apalachee River and the Oconee County line. The idyllic churchyard and cemetery are well-maintained.
Mount Perry gained national significance as the site of the 28 July 1946 funeral and memorial services for victims of the infamous Moore’s Ford lynching. On 25 July 1946, a white mob murdered two young Black couples at the Moore’s Ford Bridge on the Apalachee River: George and Mae Murray Dorsey, and Roger and Dorothy Malcom. George Dorsey was a World War II veteran, who had recently returned home from service. His sister, Dorothy Malcom, was seven months pregnant at the time. Predictably, justice was never served in this case and remains officially unsolved.
This home stands south of Nolan’s Crossroads, near what was once the close-knit community of Mallory, and aside from a very small cemetery across the highway, it is one of the last tangible reminders of the place. It seems to have begun as a modest central-hallway dwelling that was gradually expanded over time. A resource survey from 1990 dates it to around 1880. Now largely forgotten, Mallory was once a lively village with a post office, churches, schools, and a busy grist mill.
According to the Morgan County Landmarks Society, this humble vernacular home is thought to have originated, circa 1830, as the office of a tannery. It was purchased in 1851 by watchmaker and silversmith Charles William Richter, Sr., (1807-1884) and eventually expanded to its present appearance, a double-pen central hallway form with an incorporated rear shed room. Richter and his wife, Ann Eliza Potts (1808-1863), both natives of the West Indian island of St. Croix, raised eight children in the house. After Ann’s death in 1863, Charles moved in with his son Martin Luther Richter (1847-1924), a prosperous jeweler and photographer who owned the residence on South Main Street now known as the Dovecote House. Arthur Potter Richter and his family, along with his brother John (1848-1907), lived in the Richter Cottage until at least 1870. Numerous owners and tenants followed before the property was slated for demolition in the 1960s. In 1976, Dr. Josephine Hart Brandon and Carroll Hart, sisters with deep roots in historic Madison, led an effort to restore the Richter Cottage. It was restored in the 1990s as a representative example of 19th century tradesman housing, and is now owned by the Morgan County Landmarks Society.
I was recently invited by Laura Potts-Wirth to photograph an old sharecropper’s house on her property near Glennville.
Though there are no plans to restore the house, it is an important example of vernacular architecture and I’m honored to have been given access.
It is a simple gabled-ell cottage, likely built between the 1910s-1930s.
The owner was Solomon R. Hall, Sr., (1902-1988). He and his wife Mollie Bee E. Hall (1905-1970) raised thirteen children and three grandchildren here, while sharecropping on the Old Anderson Place, to which this property was once attached. Records indicate that ownership passed back and forth between Mr. Hall and the Andersons over the years.
Solomon Hall was also a turpentine laborer and would have known the woods and fields around his home as well as anyone else.
Just across US 301 from the property there was once a community of African-Americans known as Hall Town. The only remaining public landmark of the community is the Old Hall Town Cemetery, which I also documented.
The interior rooms are spare, which was characteristic of this type of housing.
I think it is hard for most people to imagine a dozen or more people living in such spaces, but it was much more common than one might realize.
Gary Mobley, in a March 2020 oral history interview with Laura Potts-Wirth, noted, “Here, Solomon Hall and his wife, Mrs. Bea (sic)…, raised 13 children, and three grandchildren. They did work for part of the harvest. They hunted the land and also got a portion of the hog meat. The small building in the back of their house was either a smokehouse or a summer kitchen. One of the jobs the Sharecroppers had was keeping the farm rows cleared of weeds and clearing volunteer trees for three feet on either side of the fence rows. Up near the pond, there was another sharecropper’s house, where Choice Coley lived...”
Kelly and Fran Folsom spoke very highly of both Solomon Hall and Choice Coley and recalled to Laura Potts-Wirth: “…Mr.Solomon was really responsible for overseeing the farm, especially as Mr. Anderson was getting older, and also when the Dents owned the farm. Solomon Hall really had a lot to do with supervising and managing the farm, overseeing the work being done, and just being a caretaker of the farm.“
The survival of the outbuildings adds importance to the property as a representative example of its type. Even the old privy, re-sided, is a reminder of the times.
Plantings by Mrs. Hall are still blooming, like this hurricane (or spider) lily.
There are clumps of another old favorite, lantana, in several spots around the house.
John Myers recently shared this historic photograph of the old Warwick Consolidated School, also known simply as the Warwick School. It is a modern edit of a photograph he took when he was a boy in the 1970s, and it is great to see it. The school was a consolidation of several smaller area schools and was open from 1923 until its closure in the 1970s. It was demolished some time after that. C. V. Arnold was the architect and W. H. Little was the contractor responsible for its construction. The school’s historic gymnasium, is still standing, as is the lunchroom, which is now home to the local Lion’s Club.
According to the excellent Savannah Agenda, Luis Posada, who owns the Uneeda Biscuit mural at the corner of Price Street and East Perry Street, is hoping to save it with selective restoration. He will appeal to the Historic Sites and Monuments Commission to stabilize it without making it look new. Here’s hoping.
The mural, which adorns the side of a circa 1854 block of row houses, proclaims: “Everybody Knows Uneeda Biscuit”. The other text indicates that they cost 5 cents and were sold “In Packages”, a big improvement over the barrel crackers found in general stores that were apt to quickly go stale.The two faded boxes at bottom right and left displayed the National Biscuit Company logo. They were once red but have now taken a pinkish tone. My best guess for the date of the mural would be circa 1900-1910.
According to the Society for Commercial Archaeology, the National Biscuit Company (now Nabisco) spent $7 million from 1898-1908 to put Uneeda Biscuits on everyone’s mind and these murals became ubiquitous. This was unheard of at the time and was even more wide-ranging than Coca-Cola’s iconic mural campaign. At one point, it’s estimated that 30 million people a day saw one of these murals. Like other icons of their age, they are largely endangered today.
Savannah National Historic Landmark District, National Register of Historic Places
