This exceptional home was built for Mrs. Beersheba Jones (1790-1850) circa 1826. It is one of the finest of the many architectural gems in Old Clinton. It has long been attributed to Daniel Pratt, though this attribution is now in question. Nonetheless, it is an important landmark of the transition between Federal and Greek Revival architecture.
In her History of Jones County, Georgia, For One Hundred Years, Specifically 1807-1907 (J. W. Burke, Macon, 1957), Caroline White Williams dates the house to 1820, but most modern sources date it to 1826. I’m unsure as to the reason for the discrepancy. Mrs. Jones only lived here a few years before selling the property to John and Mary Pitts. The James Ross family have had the longest association with the house and his descendants have taken excellent care of this important resource.
Old Clinton Historic District, National Register of Historic Places
Holt Chapel was an historic Black congregation located north of Haddock. Its establishment dates to the late 19th century. Though no longer active, a foundation maintains the property to some extent.
The church building, which replaced an earlier wood frame structure, is typical of second generation structures for rural Black congregations.
Of much greater architectural significance is the Holt School building, adjacent to the church. It is of a common style once found throughout this section of Middle Georgia of which few survive. [I have personally documented examples in Hancock, Baldwin, and Jones Counties]. Upon its construction in the 1930s it served a dual purpose. The first floor was an elementary school for children of the church and surrounding community while the second floor was home to the Sunlight Brothers and Sisters Society, a church-based benevolent society.
Thanks to the Holt School Foundation and Jones County History and Heritage, Inc., it was saved about 20 years ago and appears to be well-maintained.
A wooden schoolhouse served the Black community that remained in the Blountsville community, near Haddock, long after the village disappeared in the wake of the Civil War. The school was first known as Stewart Place, and later, Damascus. Damascus was also the name of the church. It is now known as New Damascus Baptist Church and is a large congregation. The large cemetery beside the church is the final resting place of numerous freedmen and their descendants. There are some fieldstone markers scattered about, and otherwise typical gravestones, but the memorials of Isaac R. and Clara Reid Ammons are of particular interest as vernacular landmarks. Isaac and Clara were born in the first generation after slavery at a time when Blountsville had all but disappeared. They lived well into the 20th century.
Clara Reid Ammons (1877-1950)
Clara’s grave was damaged at some point, as can be seen here, but luckily, someone has repaired it as best they could.
Isaac R. Ammons (1872-1961)
Considering their similarity, it’s likely that the two headstones were created by the same maker.
Ellis Chapel Baptist Church was established by freedmen in 1883. It is variously identified as being in both Ethridge and Haddock, so I’ll just say it’s in Jones County for simplicity’s sake. I don’t have a date for the present brick-clad structure, but would guess 1930s-1950s for the building and a bit later for the commercial brick siding.
Front
Of particular interest and concern is the collapsing structure across the road. It has been identified in resource surveys as a lodge and former schoolhouse, and was still in good condition as recently as 1988.
Side
The cornerstone of the church notes a Prince Hall affiliation. While most Prince Hall lodges I’ve documented have been in towns and cities, it’s not unusual to find them in rural locales, as well. It’s also possible that the Prince Hall affiliation is more recent and the lodge was a church benevolent society lodge.
White Chapel AME is an historic congregation near Round Oak. The present building dates to 1957. Though I haven’t been able to locate much history, the church was likely organized by freedmen of the White Plantation in the years following the Civil War. The plantation was established between 1800-1810 by Virginia-born Thomas White, Jr. (1781-1830), and the area, near the Jasper County line, was historically known as White’s District. White’s son, Joseph Clark White (1810-1887) inherited the estate and owned over 3000 acres and 120 enslaved people.
One of those slaves was Caroline “Aunt Ca’line” White (c.1848-1948). My purpose of visiting White Chapel was to document her burial place, but I was unable to locate it. She was well-known by all the people of the Round Oak community and a local newspaper reported at her death: “She was a slave girl on the plantation of Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Clark White at the “old White place,” north of Round Oak before the War Between the States. Her husband, Tillman White, died several years ago. She leaves children, Jackson, 83; Mary, 81; Tom, 80; John, 78; Henry, 72; and also seventy grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Her oldest grandchild is 68.
The day before her death Aunt Ca’line threaded her needle, without the aid of glasses, and quilted; she also helped whitewash the fireplace. She always claimed to be part Indian and certainly had many of the characteristics of the Indian, and so do her children. Henry is known as “Red Man,” and although he is 72, is as agile as most men of 58. Aunt Ca’line was thrifty, and always had a garden, chickens and many quilts pieced up.
She became rather deaf in the last few years and her grandchildren persuaded her to stay off the highway, but before that she came to town every day and was as chipper as could be, liked by all, white and colored.“
Her obituary also noted that “…she was as much a “rebel” as any southerner could ever be. She always spoke of the “good old days” and says that they were well treated, had everything they needed, and they were all happy, before the Yankees came…” Such statements must be viewed with suspicion today, considering their sources in white-owned newspapers which worked overtime to promote the “happy slaves” narrative, to which few Blacks in the Jim Crow era would have ever disputed to any White person at the time.
Vernacular Headstones of White Chapel AME
Though I couldn’t locate Mrs. White’s gravestone, I did document a few vernacular memorials, all of relatively recent vintage.
Annie Hutchings (1908-1986)
A family member or someone in the community made this headstone, with a deeply incised cross.
This is one of several headstones with decorative motifs incised on the back side.
These designs may have been made with metal or plastic strips or even fencing. If I recall correctly they date mostly to the 1980s.
Most of the slabs and headstones feature stenciled names, as seen below.
Lue Ella Odom – Better known as Mrs. Doll
No birth or death dates were given on Mrs. Doll’s memorial.
I have been unable to locate any history related to Saint Paul AME Church but it dates to at least the 1920s, when Lou Ellen Seabrooks (1841-1921) and Henry Seabrooks (1885-1928) were buried in the small adjacent cemetery. Records indicate that at the time of the Seabrooks’s burials, the cemetery was known as the Morton or Martin graveyard. Since there were once many plantations in this area, between Clinton and Wayside, perhaps that was a reference to an early landowner and, possibly, an earlier slave cemetery.
Ruby Ware Graham (1906-1966) was a prominent member of Saint Paul. She served as a teacher at Macon’s Green Street Elementary School for over 40 years and was very active in professional associations throughout this time. She was also a member of the local Phyllis Wheatley Literary Society.
The Cabaniss-Hanberry House, located in the vicinity of Bradley, is one of the most iconic works of domestic architecture in Georgia. The Georgia Trust for Historic Preservation, who stabilized and restored the exterior in 1999, describes it as “…a vernacular example of Jeffersonian Classicism…and possibly the only remaining house of its form in Georgia...”
The builder of the house, George Cabaniss, Sr., (1744-1815), was the Virginia-born son of Mathieu Etienne Cabanis (1710-1789). His grandfather, Henri Hubert Cabanis (1655-1720), was a French Huguenot who fled to Virginia in the late 1600s.
After service in the Revolutionary War, George married Palatea Harrison (1758-1822), in 1781. In the 1790s, he was one of several Cabaniss siblings who “…began a succession of migrations with parts of their families, first to North Carolina and then to Georgia. Some of the family eventually moved on to Alabama.” He first came to Greene County before eventually settling in Jones County.
He built this house circa 1805, undoubtedly with the labor of enslaved men, and sold it to his son Harrison Cabaniss (1782-1819) in 1811, after building another home near present-day Round Oak. After Harrison’s death, his widow, Sarah “Sally” Kirk Cabaniss (1798-1848) remained on the property until her death. She left 1215 acres and 29 slaves to her grandchildren. The house was occupied by descendants of its builder until the late 1950s or early 1960s.
Some notable descendants of George Cabaniss, Sr., include Dr. Palacia “Pallie” Wilson Stewart (1805-1866), one of the first licensed women physicians in Georgia, and Henry Harrison Cabaniss (1848-1934), an early owner of the Atlanta Journal and vice-president of the Cotton States and International Exposition.
A 1988 survey of historic resources in Jones County documented this structure as part of the Lamar Farm, which at the time included a farmhouse and three outbuildings. The survey also noted the Bateman Company had owned the property since circa 1953 and been involved in the peach business.
Though no determination was made in 1988 as to the function of this structure, its location along the rail line, the shed doors, and the loading platform suggest a freight warehouse. This may have been a modification for the Bateman peach business or may have been an original use. The lack of windows in the structure also indicates a warehouse usage.
J. C. Balkcom Store & James Post Office, Jones County
The old store that once anchored James still stands, a sentinel of a different time. It was built in the 1890s, when the trains were still steaming through on a regular basis, and was Kingman’s Store back then. Robert H. Kingman (1876-1957) went on to become a prominent grocer in Macon. As Balkcom’s, it was open until the early mid-1980s. James Cicero Balkcom was an unusual character in small-town Georgia. He once owned a theatre in Gray and allowed African-Americans access. Apparently, not even their resignation to the balcony was acceptable, but Balkcom was unmoved. When he continued the practice, a group of young men drove by and shot into the side of his store, which was also the James post office, as a cowardly act of intimidation,. This was a federal offense, but Aubrey Newby says that no local effort to track down the perpetrators was made, or if so, it wasn’t successful. Just an interesting aside and a profile in courage of Mr. Balkcom, for sure. The post office remained open until 1969.
As to local color, Aubrey Newby writes: …There were two old spinster sisters Miss Alice and Miss Hattie James who lived in the Wood-Robinson house, Miss Alice drove a model T ford and you had better just get out of the way if you saw her coming. People moved away, the store closed and eventually the train stopped running. All that was left were scattered old houses, pieces of a train track and memories of what had once been a bustling town. My children still call it the railroad, we still talk about the store and I believe as long as we do, those people and those stories live. Davis and Dolly, Alice and Hattie, Libbie and T, most of them I barely knew if ever at all and yet I recall them as if they just left yesterday...
In my drive back to Coastal Georgia from Monroe County, a stop in James was at the top of my list. I immediately became enamored of the place, but it was when we took a walk with Aubrey Newby down this abandoned rail bed that I understood the appeal of the place. Sure, I was there to see the houses, but this charming path through the woods drew me in and made James seem like a wonderland to me. Aubrey Newby recalls: When I was a kid the train still ran through the the middle of “town” and I would run down the big side porch on the end of the Duffy-Newby house and wave to the conductor who would blow the engine whistle for me.
I’m not sure which railroad used the long-gone tracks, but I know that L. P. James was involved with the Georgia Railroad. Whatever corporations followed it would have used this route, into the late 1980s or early 1990s, I imagine.
