The best finds are often hiding in plain sight. This hay and stock barn, located near the corner of Benjamin Hill Drive and Perry House Road, was recently exposed after trees were cleared. The nearby area was once farmland but has been developed in recent years.
Nettie Crabb was born in Brownstown, Indiana, in 1841, but further details of her early life are elusive. She married Dr. Robert L. Weems, a physician who served as a surgeon during the Civil War. Widowed in 1880, she moved to Bird Island, Minnesota, where she worked as a milliner. In 1882 she homesteaded in Wessington Springs, Dakota Territory (present-day South Dakota), and worked in a pharmacy, which she would eventually own, the only known woman in the territory to do so. In The Selected Papers of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony (2009), Ann D. Gordon noted that Nettie was “well skilled in her profession (pharmacy).”
Nettie married another Civil War veteran, Cleveland T. Hall, in 1884, but was widowed again in 1886. Ever busy, Nettie was elected as a trustee of the Wessington Springs school in 1887 and 1888, and was also served as an election judge. In 1889, she argued for women’s suffrage at a state constitutional convention. Later that year she served as vice-president of the Jerauld County Equal Suffrage Association. In 1890 she was prominent in the Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU).
In 1895, she was one of the first settlers of Fitzgerald. where she established the Fitzgerald Enterprise, the first major newspaper in the community. She also remained active in the WCTU and was known for her support of railroad workers. Her first son, Victor, had died of exposure when his train was caught in a snowstorm in Minnesota. When Nettie C. Hall died at the age of 68 on 14 June 1908, she was a legend of the community and her lifetime of work and advocacy was celebrated. In 1910, railroad workers and the WCTU erected the “Mother Enterprise” drinking fountain in her honor.
Fitzgerald Commercial Historic District, National Register of Historic Places
This is the current post office in Fitzgerald. It opened in 1966.
For much of its history, this was the home of the Lawrence Earl ‘L. E.’ Justice (1908-1986) family. Mr. Justice was an insurance agent. Like many of the houses on West Central Avenue, it was likely built circa 1910-1920. Online property records date it to 1950, which is not correct.
I made this photograph in 2009 and have been looking for it for a few years. This pyramidal cottage was one of my favorite vernacular houses in Fitzgerald, but not long after I made this shot, the house was stripped down in a what appeared to be a renovation. Fast forward to 2025 and the house was returned to this appearance, with some unobtrusive updates. I’ll get a shot of the updated version next time I’m in town.
Westwood Cemetery is perhaps the oldest and largest Black cemetery in Fitzgerald.
Though the earliest burial I could locate was in 1918, the cemetery may have been established earlier, in the heyday of the Westwood community and the AB&A Railroad shops, circa 1900-1910.
The usual variety of memorials is present, ranging from handmade vernacular headstones to stenciled and commercial examples. As always, I’m sharing only a representative sampling of what I found and was able to photograph.
Interestingly, some of the earliest memorials in the cemetery are commercially made marble headstones.
Hattie Allen’s memorial is one of the finest in Westwood Cemetery. It notes that she was born in Houston County, Georgia, and that she was a member of Bethel AME Church, one of Fitzgerald’s oldest Black congregations.
The gravestone of Mr. King illustrates the difficulty in the identification of some burials, especially those using hand writing. Some of the inscription has eroded over time. As a result, the photographic documentation of such memorials is an important step in recording their lives.
The vernacular memorials are always my favorites. Ms. Jones’s was difficult to read.
This simple vernacular memorial was painted white, as were a good number in Westwood Cemetery at one time.
The marker for Mr. Anderson was cracked, a common issue with handmade memorials.
I presume this was the son of Walter Anderson. If so, his father outlived him by a decade. Both of their memorials were likely made by the same person.
This is one of four handmade posts marking the plot of the Mathis Family. This one bears the name K. C. Mathis, who died in 1952.
A broader view of the Mathis Family plot, with the handmade boundary posts visible at the corners.
This headstone is handmade, but of a shape commonly found in commercial memorials of the Victorian era.
I love unusual names and am always happy to find them when rambling around old cemeteries. Rev. Owens may have been associated with one of the local congregations in Westwood, but I have been unable to located anything about him.
The lamb is a common symbol in cemeteries.
The government supplies headstones to all veterans who choose to be remembered for their service. This memorial indicates that Mr. Medler served in the army in World War II.
John Medler was likely the brother of J. C. Medler (previous photograph). Both served the United States in the army in World War II.
This memorial is of a vernacular style common in the last century.
This small cross is one of the finer commercial memorials in Westwood Cemetery.
Though not fully visible in this photograph, the name at the bottom of this memorial is ‘Cummings’. Cummings was one of the two leading Black funeral homes in Fitzgerald for the latter half of the 20th century.
The graves of Mr. and Mrs. Stewart are decorated with flower pots.
This marker has no identification.
The Lyons family plot is interesting for its placement of small Christmas trees near each grave.
The cemetery is not neglected but rather in a more natural state, with native grasses and wildflowers abundant throughout.
Identifying this school in my hometown has been a bit of a challenge. When I worked at the Fitzgerald-Ben Hill County Library in high school in the 1980s, I assisted on the Bookmobile and we regularly stopped beside this building and it was referred to as the Callie Garbutt School, likely due to its proximity to the church of the same name. It was not in use as a school at that time and may have been a neighborhood resource center.
It’s the fourth and final school to have been built in Fitzgerald’s cotton mill village. Two small schools originally served the area and were replaced circa 1910-1915 by a stone veneer building known simply as the Cotton Mill School. This structure, in the Mid-Century Modern or International Style, opened in 1957.
Our friend at the Georgia High School Basketball Project who knows these schools better than anyone I know did some digging and shared the following history:
This was built as Hunter Elementary. It was not an equalization school.
Closing seems to have been in 1965, or within a year or two of that. It was a Ben Hill County School. Fitzgerald still had its own city system then.
The name was previously Cotton Mill, but almost assuredly changed in 1957 when the Macon News confirmed the new building opened.
Looking at the state school directories, the building was possibly named for the Ben Hill County school superintendent, J.C. Hunter. Wouldn’t be the first time I’ve heard of one of the new school buildings named for a superintendent.
I’m shocked it was actually built.
Hunter was four classrooms. The state was normally not into building schools that small. Hunter was close enough to have gone to another county school or for the county to have made arrangements with a city school.
It was grades 1-8 in 1964-65. I can’t find any articles in available online papers on its closure, but the state would have been pressuring Ben Hill to close it at the very least because there were four teachers for eight grades.
The old Hunter building housed a Headstart program in 1980. It had been remodeled in 1972 to educate mentally challenged students.
This church in the Fitzgerald Cotton Mill was named for Callie Belle Phillips Garbutt (1869-1940), who, with her husband Moses Wadley Garbutt (1869-1937), came to Fitzgerald from Emanuel County. The Garbutt family were prominent entrepreneurs involved in many of the businesses that dominated the economic backbone of South Georgia at the turn of the last century, including timber, cotton mills, and real estate. Though I haven’t been able to locate a history of the congregation, the property was likely given to the church by the Garbutt family and therefore named for Mrs. Garbutt.
Callie Garbutt Baptist Church was established in 1907 and the first church building was of typical wood frame construction, as best I can discern. The present structure was built in 1978; it was designed by John Dennis, Jr., who was the third generation of a prominent Macon architecture firm.
This structure takes the concept of the curtain wall, a popular Mid-Century commercial building style, and prefabricates it into a smaller form. Numerous companies, including Fentron and PPG, made colorful panels for use in this type of architecture, but I imagine the company that created this curiosity was just doing ready-made kits. For most of my life, this was a beauty salon and it was located just a few blocks from my grandmother’s house. It always reminded me of the Partridge Family.
It has been here since at least the early 1970s, if not earlier, and looks much as it did 50 years ago, except for the intrusive addition of the roof. The original roof was flat, which gave the building a much more modern appearance. I suspect the roof was added to protect the building. It no longer serves a commercial purpose and is now used for storage, if I understand correctly.
I don’t know what kind of preservation can be done with places like this, but it’s certainly an eye-catching relic, reminiscent of a very progressive era of American architecture.
This Craftsman townhouse was home for nearly 50 years to Foster Goolsby (1922-2016) and Frances Taylor Goolsby (1920-2011) and their family, and I had many pleasurable visits on this porch, in the shade of the two big magnolia trees that dominate the front yard.
Foster Goolsby was a B-17 pilot in World War II who had a penchant for telling amazing stories, and he didn’t mind telling anyone how much he hated Fitzgerald’s wild chickens, for their habit of destroying his wife’s flower beds. A Talbot County native, he came to Fitzgerald while serving as headmaster of Irwin Academy, after being principal of at least seven schools prior to his move. He was also superintendent of the Valdosta City Schools for 10 years. In addition to this work, he served for over 40 years as chairman of the board of the Georgia Accrediting Commission.
Frances was born in Elberton and was a genteel Southern lady of another era. A consummate hostess and homemaker, she was well known for her award winning flower arrangements and her time with the Magnolia Garden Club.
I don’t have information on who built the house at the moment, but will update at some point. I’ve identified it as the Goolsby House for their long association with the property.
I made these photographs in 2016 at the invitation of Al Johnson and the house was staged for sale at the time. The beautiful interior design work was done by Lisa Davis Eldridge. The house now has new owners.
It was amazing to see the house restored. I know the Goolsbys would be proud to see what it has become.
It’s a great example of what can be done with historic properties. The Craftsman style endures as one of the most practical and adaptable forms of American architecure.
