I made these photos around Halloween 2017 in Monticello’s historic district. The whole street was well decorated, but this was my favorite.
Yoder’s Dead & Breakfast Inn, Monticello
Leave a reply
Category Archives: –JASPER COUNTY GA–
General Store, Jasper County
I’m not positive that this old shotgun store was in Jasper County. I photographed driving between Monticello and Eatonton, and can’t relocate it on maps. I’ll gladly update if someone knows its exact whereabouts. It’s a great example and still displays an old Coca-Cola sign, dating to no later than the 1940s. The rusted tin always gets my attention and my mind wanders, imagining the hard-working people who gathered here to buy Co-Colas and swap tales. The store was probably closed by the 1950s or early 1960s.
Gable Front Farmhouse, Jasper County
I’m not sure if this was a primary residence or a tenant house but it’s located on what appears to be an historic farm, just outside the Monticello city limit. There’s also an abandoned general store or restaurant across the highway, though it may not be related to this property.
Hall-and-Parlor Cottage, Eudora
This house has caught my eye for many years when passing through the forgotten village once known as Eudora, and I finally stopped and made a photograph a few days ago. As long as I can remember, it’s been overgrown. Eudora means “generous gifts” in Greek, and Ken Krakow’s Georgia Place-Names suggests that was the origin of the name. The community is certainly situated among some of the most beautiful and productive countryside in Jasper County. While it had a post office from 1874-1902, Eudora nearly vanished from memory, but according to a 31 October 2013 article in the Monticello News, residents were proud of its history and wanted signs placed along the highway to signal its presence. [It is also sometimes referred to as Prospect, for the old Prospect Methodist Church.] A planned railroad, known as the Monticello, Eudora, and Social Circle, was set to come through the area in 1884, but was routed toward Madison instead. Perhaps this was a slight at the time, but 140 years later, the people of this community are still proud of their history and have made sure the name is remembered.
Phillips-Turner-Kelly House, Circa 1810s, Jasper County
With the recent loss of the old Liberty Methodist Church, this early I-House [Plantation Plain] is the last significant landmark that I know of in the long lost settlement of Calvin, in Jasper County. The two-over-two central hallway dwelling also features shed rooms across the rear and, barely visible on the left side of this image, a formerly detached kitchen which was later attached by a breezeway.
Wiley Phillips (1791 or 1792-4 August 1875) is believed to have been the first owner of the house but Sarah Yarborough from Warren County was the first owner of the property and the house may have been built around the time of her marriage to Jesse Tollerson [also recorded as Tollison] in 1813. Wiley Phillips’s nephew, Calvin Fish, is considered the first white child born in Jasper County and was the namesake of the Calvin community. Thomas Smith purchased it in 1833 but sold it to Richard Turner in 1835. Turner never actually lived in the house, though he, and later his estate, owned it until 1863, at which time his son-in-law, Benjamin B. Freeman, sold it to Shelly P. Downs. Downs was a physician and served as surgeon with the 38th Regiment of the Georgia Militia during the Civil War. It was next owned by Seaborn C. Kelly (1836-1872) sometime between 1866 and 1872. Kelly sold the house to James Benton on 15 January 1872. Scarcely three weeks after Kelly sold the house, on 7 February 1872, he and his brother John C. Kelly were murdered in Monticello by Clinton Digby, a cousin of Seaborn Kelly’s wife, in a disputer over a Black laborer. James Benton sold the house to Seaborn Kelly’s son, Burton Clark Kelly, in 1885 and it remained in the family until 1997, though it was unoccupied from circa 1958 until being sold to Philip A. Jones in 1998. Mr. Jones’s extensive research is the source of most of the ownership history.
National Register of Historic Places
Kelly House, Circa 1885, Monticello
Built as a gabled-ell cottage between 1883 and 1888, this house was greatly enlarged and remodeled to its present appearance in the 1920’s for Mrs. E. C. Kelly, Sr. It’s located near the other Kelly House, also a local landmark, and the old Monticello High School. I think Mrs. Kelly was going for a Neoclassical-inspired Colonial Revival look. The 6 over 6 dormer windows are an unusual feature, as is the extra-wide transom.
Queen Anne Cottage, 1888, Monticello
Simplicity and functionality, highlighted by just a touch of fancy machine-made decorative elements, are one reason these houses were so popular in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Pattern books served as the basis for many of the designs but this version is likely just a local interpretation. The presence of railroads in almost every small town in Georgia during this era insured the availability of materials necessary for the changing architectural tastes of the emerging middle class.
Gabled-Ell Farmhouse, Jasper County
This home was the center of a small historic farm, on which a couple of outbuildings survived when I photographed it in 2017. It’s similar to the farmhouse my father and his siblings grew up in, though theirs was a bit larger and was later sided with brick and somewhat modernized. I mention this only because it was such a common house type on small farms throughout Georgia and many examples survive in various states of renovation and neglect.
Allen Grave House, Eudora
One of the best surviving grave houses I’ve found in Georgia is the final resting place of two pioneers of the nearly forgotten Eudora community, John Ashbury Allen (11 January 1815 – 5 October 1891), and Nancy Goodman Crawford Allen (6 September 1816 – 30 May 1882). The Allen family were involved in farming and also owned a store and ran the post office in Eudora at one time, I believe.
NOTE: The Allen Family Cemetery is private and can only be seen from the roadside.
General Store, Jasper County
This was either a general/grocery store, or a commissary. “Shotgun stores” like this were once very common in the Georgia landscape.
