I photographed this abandoned house in 2016. It may well be gone by now. It was located somewhere near the Rock House or the Bowdre-Rees-Knox House. It doesn’t look like a typical hall and parlor design but that was the best I could discern by the placement of the door [barely visible]. It is possible that it is a single-pen. The chimney is in an unusual location, as well, but the layout of these early vernacular house types depended more on the ingenuity of the carpenter than any proscribed standards.
This man-made lake, now officially known as Lake Strom Thurmond, retains its original designation as Clarks Hill Lake in Georgia. Its creation was made possible by the construction of the Clarks Hill Dam near the confluence of the Savannah River and the Little River in 1952. It is the third largest man-made lake east of the Mississippi River and provides abundant recreation and fishing opportunities for residents and tourists alike.
This view was made on a western section of the lake, near the old town of Raysville. The lake is bordered by McCormick County, South Carolina, and Lincoln, Columbia, McDuffie, and Wilkes counties in Georgia.
This is the only publicly visible commercial structure remaining in Boneville and appears to date to the early 20th century. Jeremy Ansley notes that it was the post office. The framework of the historic Boneville/Camelia Mill (1880) survives, but is not accessible. The circa 1840 Clyde Hunt House-Dixie Inn, which was located just down the road, was lost to fire in 2013.
Boneville was a popular recreation spot from the late 19th century until the 1920s, when the Georgia Railroad closed the depot.
Frankye Crawford writes: My twin Aunts Ruby and Ruth Johnson taught school here and piano lessons in the 1920’s. Later it became The Home Demonstration Club and after that it was used for the church children’s Sunday School Classes. I attended this Church for a long time. Boneville will always be home to me.
Houses of this style were once dominant throughout rural Georgia, especially in the countryside. Though still common enough to be overlooked, they’re increasingly endangered.
Known locally as the Half Way House for its central location on the Belle Meade Hunt Club’s fox run, this raised cottage was built for Thomas & Epatha Rees Bowdre. Slight additions and modifications over the years have been necessary for the structure’s use as a clubhouse, but its historic integrity has been generally maintained. A deck, visible on the right side of the house, is perhaps the most obvious of these changes.
Bowdre emigrated from Virginia to Georgia and fathered ten children. A successful farmer, he owned 1540 acres and 44 slaves by 1827. In 1835, Bowdre sold the property to his wife’s cousin, Vincent Rees. Bowdre died in 1846. Rees lived in the house until his death in 1885. The property was sold to T. A. Scott, who subsequently sold it to Peter S. Knox in 1907. It has remained in and been well cared for by the Knox family ever since. It’s one of the best remaining examples, in its original setting, of a raised cottage in Georgia.
On this site in 1754, one of the earliest settlements on the Georgia frontier was founded by Edmund Grey. The Quaker village was named Brandon and the lands were still legally in the hands of Native Americans. After the Treaty of Augusta in 1768, the land was opened to European settlement and 40,000 acres were granted to Joseph Mattock and Jonathan Sell by Royal Governor James Wright. The town of Wrightsboro grew around this area. In 1799, a Wrightsboro Friends Meeting House open to all denominations was built here, and by 1805, the Quakers were gone. The Friends Meeting House was lost to fire in the first decade of the 19th century and this replacement was built in 1810. It became the Wrightsboro Methodist Episcopal Church South in 1837. In 1966, the congregation dwindled to the point that services were no longer practical and McDuffie County became the caretakers of the property.
The adjacent cemetery is among the most historic in this section of Georgia, with burials dating as far back as 1800. Historians posit that this was likely the village cemetery, as well, since the present church was located at the center of the Quaker community.
Wrightsboro Historic District, National Register of Historic Places
Vanishing Georgia: Photographs by Brian Brown 