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Stock Barn, Baconton
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Category Archives: Baconton GA
George W. Jackson House, 1898, Baconton
George Washington Jackson came with his family to Dougherty County from Wilkinson County as a young boy. At the age of ten he moved with his widowed mother and brother and sister to the Mount Enon community, several miles from Baconton. He served as a lieutenant in the Confederate army and later as a county commissioner. He had farming operations all over what is today northern Mitchell County; he built this home in 1898 to replace a log farmhouse at this location. He and his wife, Eulelia Peacock Jackson, had nine children. Numerous other families lived here throughout the 20th century.
The city of Baconton saving such an important historic home and re-purposing it as their city hall is a great example of thinking outside the box. Perhaps it will serve as inspiration for other communities to pursue non-traditional avenues of preservation.
National Register of Historic Places
Cross Gable House, Baconton
South Railroad Historic District, National Register of Historic Places
Eclectic Victorian House, Baconton
Walton Street-Church Street Historic District, National Register of Historic Places
Baconton United Methodist Church, 1902
The South Georgia Conference of the United Methodist Church notes: Organized at Raiford, now Lester, in 1870, this church was earlier known as Shiloh. Its first wooden building, lighted by beef tallow candles placed on wooden strips around the walls, also served as a school. In 1875, the site was moved and a large log church and school building was built. “Preacher Russell” was the first pastor. In 1882, the site was moved four miles west of the 1875 site and a wooden building was erected and furnished with long benches with solid backs and lighted by oil chandeliers. In 1902, the present gothic structure was erected. A fellowship hall was added in 1967.
This church is nearly identical in design to the Lumber City United Methodist Church.
Walton Street-Church Street Historic District, National Register of Historic Places
Freight Warehouse, Baconton
Though its proximity to the railroad tracks would suggest a railroad connection, this structure was actually a commercial freight warehouse.
Baconton Commercial Historic District, National Register of Historic Places
Railroad Street Storefronts, Baconton
Baconton Commercial Historic District, National Register of Historic Places
Historic Storefront, Baconton
Baconton Commercial Historic District, National Register of Historic Places
Jackson Supply Company, 1902, Baconton
This was the first major commercial structure built on East Walton Street and is in need of immediate preservation, if it’s even salvageable at this point.
Baconton Commercial Historic District, National Register of Historic Places
Mt. Enon Baptist Church, 1888, Mitchell County
Mt. Enon was constituted in 1856, to serve the spiritual needs of the now-forgotten Gum Pond community, and the present structure dates to 1888 (according to the National Register of Historic Places Nomination Form). General Joseph Wheeler’s troops stopped at this location while returning federal prisoners to Andersonville, and the first Academy in Mitchell County, Ravenwood, was also located here.
On 29 December 1883, Mt. Enon was also the site of the organizational meeting of the Mallary Baptist Association, named for the prominent Georgia statesman Charles Dutton Mallary. Members of this association today can be found in Mitchell, Colquitt, Tift, and Worth counties.
Today, Mount Enon is the last surviving structure associated with the dead town of Gum Pond. At the outset of the Civil War in 1860, Gum Pond had a population of about 400, with a general store, an inn, and a blacksmith shop. After the settlement of Baconton in 1869, Gum Pond’s population decreased and the community all but disappeared. The church disbanded in 1928.
National Register of Historic Places
Vanishing Georgia: Photographs by Brian Brown 