Gean Nipper recently suggested I make some photographs at Coney. Having driven between Cordele and Americus countless times over the years, I must admit I had never even heard of the place. A couple of old warehouses and commissaries were still standing in the crossroads community near Lake Blackshear until they were destroyed by a tornado a few years ago. This store, the lone survivor, was owned by Mr. Nipper’s grandparents, Lonnie and Dicy Calhoun. It was closed by the late 1960s and briefly reopened in the early 1970s.
Coney was once a busy rail siding and was also the location of a ferry that crossed the nearby Flint River (long before Lake Blackshear was formed).
Vanishing Georgia: Photographs by Brian Brown 
My grandparents, Pope and Nell Williams, raised my mother and uncle in that house. Coney Grove was my childhood playground and where my fondest memories come from. Riding horses in the orchard and hunting squirrels with a .22 riffle. I used to play in the old barn and drive an old tractor with my grandfather. That was all long before that house was restored.
M. Faircloth
My great grandfather was Sam Whisett Coney. He built the old homeplace there in a large pecan orchard. The house was restored to its finest abt 2004 by a Savannah gentleman, father in law of the new owner. The old Coney store was a thriving mercantile store and a stop for the SAM trains. My grandfather was Perry Clegg Coney who died when my mother was a baby so I have little knowledge of Coney, GA since my grandmother and she moved to Cordele. I do remember my mother telling me that the foundation of the house was made of old tabby. Wish I knew more since we have a place at the lake, right off Coney Road!
Thanks for the info you shared ☺☮
Oh, if these walls could talk … Thanks for sharing, Brian! My Father grew up in Leslie and he sometimes would mention going to the Coney community when he was a young’un.
Coney is definitely a historic location.
Nature does take over and reclaims the land.