Formerly known as the Agrirama, the Georgia Museum of Agriculture has been given a renewed sense of purpose by the folks at Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College (ABAC). If you’ve never been, or if you just haven’t been in a while, please stop by when you’re in Tifton. It’s definitely time well spent.
This was the lodge room of Abba Lodge No. 550, F. & A. M.
The Tift-Willingham House, originally located in Tifton proper, was the home of the city’s founder and namesake, Connecticut native Henry Harding Tift (1841-1922).
This was the dining room of the Tift House.
This old Atlanta Birmingham & Atlantic depot was moved from Montezuma and rebuilt here.
This is the only regularly operated steam engine in Georgia, though it usually only runs on weekends.
The Sandhill School is a bit larger than many rural schoolhouses but still a good representative example.
As you’ve likely observed if you’re a regular follower of this website, this is a very typical form for rural churches in late-19th-century South Georgia.
If you love the story of life in the rural South as much as I do, you’ll love the Georgia Museum of Agriculture. Professionals and volunteers at this venerable living history museum do a wonderful job of interpreting the era so fundamental to the development of South Georgia as we know it today. Just make sure you visit their website for rates and schedules. The train generally runs on weekends and is always a favorite with young visitors, and the young at heart.
Vanishing Georgia: Photographs by Brian Brown 
Sandhill school sat just south of where I live now. In the ’50s and ’60’s it was used as a corn crib and my cousins and I used to play in this building. On the wall you could see the area painted black for the “blackboard “.
Tifton was actually named for Nelson Tift, Capt. Tift’s uncle, who founded Albany. At the time, you couldn’t name a town after a living person, and H.H. was still alive. So while the intention was to name it for H.H., legalities made it impossible to do so.
I used to live right across the road from the dam of the lake at the Agrirama. My sweet grandma worked out there for years. She worked in the kitchen making tea cakes! (Jessie (Sue) Anderson)
I love the children’s bedroom shot. The warm glow of those unpainted southern pine board walls and the locally crafted sitting chair bring back many memories of my Walker grandparents’ home near Denton, Georgia. I am lucky to have one such chair almost like the one pictured. It was given my mother and then given to me. As I write, the chair is behind me in a honored place with a doll sitting on its original deer hide seat. When a kid we would visit my PaPa and Granny on Sundays, and in the winter the men folk would sit around an open fireplace on chairs like this one and discussed happening in the community. They often told stories from long ago about when they were little boys. As they chatted, they poked the fire with an iron poker, sending red and yellow sparks into the brick chimney. If on a cold and dark night you have ever gazed into a red hot bed of fire, you know the primeval feeling that one gets from such experience. It is something that man has done since he first mastered fire. Just think, today we sit around with an electronic device in our hands manipulating it to communicate with each other. We actually text someone in another room or a thousand miles away. Something is missing—where is that fireplace, where is that camp fire?
I remember visiting The Agrirama, Glad to see it is a museum.
Thank you for a history lesson and time for another visit.
I went here when I was about 10 on a trip to visit family in Tifton. It was fun to see it again. Thanks for sharing pics of such a special place.
This is something so interesting to know. I am going to tell one of the teachers at the hi-school in Fitzgerald about this museum. It would be a great class outing for a history class. It’s so amazing that this museum is right there in Tifton and I have never heard of it. Thanks so very much Brian for another history lesson.
Wonderful, as usual. Thanks for sharing these great photographs. They made my day.