Category Archives: Ashton GA

Williams-McMillan House, Ben Hill County

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This nearly forgotten Folk Victorian house was recently exposed when land was cleared across from the old Ashton School. I expect it will soon be razed, as the back section has already begun to collapse. It likely dates to circa 1900-1910.

Farise Taylor writes: I played on the porch of this old house when Mr. J. T. McMillan and wife Ruby lived there with their children, John Earl, Ronald, and their sister. Before the McMillans lived there Mr. Artis O. Williams (1893-1973) and his wife Nellie Lowman Williams (1892-1967), along with their five sons lived there. The boys were D., Artis, George, Frank, and Boyette, all of whom served in combat in World War II. In 1951, Mrs. Williams, an English teacher at Ashton School, wrote a book of poetry, Songs in the Night. In her book was a poem entitled “One Five Star Mother to Another”. This poem was a tribute to another mother, Mrs. Sullivan, who lost all five of her sons in World War II. The text follows, below.

I saw your picture in the news one day,
So full of courage, Mrs. Sullivan;
Upon your desk there stood five portraits gay;
From each frame smiled a stalwart sailor-son.
Two sisters underneath the skin we are,
Five stalwart service-sons, also, had I;
They, too, went boldly forth to global war,
And crossed the deep to conquer or to die.

Alike, we say, and yet–so different!
The ship, your sons, your very heart, went down.
My sons came back, as hale as when they went;
They changed my cross into a glorious crown!
Still, I keep thinking, Oh, and could it be,
Your precious five sent five back to me!

I have a signed copy of this book somewhere, and as soon as I can locate, will scan a photo of Mrs. Williams. I don’t know if Mrs. Williams ever shared the poem with Mrs. Sullivan, but I imagine she did. It’s hard to conceive the loss suffered by many families in the wake of the war.


Joshua Troupe House, 1890s, Ben Hill County

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Jimmy Troupe tells me that his great-grandfather, Joshua Troupe, built this house in the 1890s, and it was subsequently home to his grandfather, H. A. Troupe, Sr., and his father, H. A. “Sonny Boy” Troupe, Jr. Jimmy grew up in the house and still owns it today. It’s likely the house was expanded at some point to its present layout. He also told me his grandmother said the family name was originally Troup but the “e” was added later, and that just up the road, toward Fitzgerald, there was a Troupe Schoolhouse in the early 1900s. The family was well-represented in the area.

Reuben Walker House, 1890s, Ben Hill County

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The earliest known owner of this Ashton landmark was Reuben Walker, and like the Troupe House, it’s believed to date to the 1890s. I’m not sure it was built the way it presently appears, or it was a central hallway cottage with the gabled second floor added soon thereafter. It’s a vernacular interpretation of the Queen Anne style. The Aycock family are more recent owners.

Old Ashton School, Circa 1910, Ben Hill County

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Old Ashton School Ben Hill County GA Photograph Courtesy of Karen Luke Vanishing South Georgia USA 2014

The Ashton community is well-known in Ben Hill County, but nearly forgotten otherwise. It’s the neighborhood where my father grew up, a community characterized by farms and farm families who have been in the area for generations. Most people are familiar with the present Ashton School building, a WPA structure now privately owned and used as apartments, but until Karen Luke shared this photograph with my father recently, I never knew there was another school at the location. It appears to have been built with blocks from the Fitzgerald Granitoid Works and I’d estimate that this image dates to about 1910. Unfortunately, I don’t know the names of anyone in the group, but it appears that the entire community turned out for the photograph.