Designed in 1907 by Alexander Blair & P. E. Dennis…it remains one of my favorite courthouses in Georgia. The Italianate clock tower is an eclectic but forceful addition.
National Register of Historic Places
This bog near Ashburn is one of the most abundant in the area and has had good stewards.
Yellow pitcher plant (Sarracenia flava) is the dominant species.
This photo was taken May, when the Yellow pitcher plants were blooming. The first two images were made in July.
Hooded pitcher plants (Sarracenia minor) are also present in the bog.
Rebecca was probably established in the late 1890s. The post office opened in 1902 and the town was incorporated in 1904. At the time, it was in Wilcox County. One source states it was named for Rebecca Clark but David Hobby says it was named for Rebecca Douglas Smith, his great-great grandmother. A couple of convenience stores and churches are still open. Agriculture and agribusiness have always been the primary pursuits in the community.
Sammy Young remembers: A few comments about Rebecca, Ga., the town where I grew up. I remember many of the places mentioned in the comments already made. Rebecca Cafe, operated by Mrs. Bessie Sellars was the place to be on Friday nights, eating fried catfish and mullet. The fish, hush puppies and the burgers were the very best. (Mrs Thrower Jones, I remember your family).
The Rebecca swimming pool owned by Mr James T. King was operated by my daddy and mother for many summers. The pool water was used to cool the Diesel engine that ran the cotton gin. And yes it smelled like Clorox because we drained and cleaned it every week (Swim Wed-Sun and closed for cleaning and refilling Mon-Wed).
Remember the Stanford family well. Mr. Julius and Mrs Mamie Davis were an important part of our community since Mr. Julius was the only one around who could fix a television. He was also a beekeeper. I grew up in Youngs Chapel And Rebecca Methodist Church.
I delivered the Albany Herald on my bicycle for many years so I knew almost all the folks living in Rebecca in the 60s.
No better place to grow up!
And Betty Courson remembers the “Clorox pool”: I lived about 5 miles from there until I was 18 and I can remember when each building was occupied, that was in 1963, before then it had started to fade away but my younger days were full of visiting the grocery store getting a coke with peanuts and an Ice Cream Cone, those were the days! There also was a pool there. Each Sunday my Mom and Dad would take us kids over for a swim in this pool that smelt like bleach. One thing for sure when we left we were very clean. The pool and its surrounding building has been gone and buried for many, many years. In fact it was directly behind the cotton Gin building on the left as you are going out of the town. I wish you could find pictures of its bustling day. Thanks for the memories and yes it is a ghost town now, but ghosts still hang around don’t they...
Bill Adams writes: Good Memories! I visited my Aunt and Uncle (Jim and Emma (Adams) King many summers in the 1940’s. Jim had a sawmill, cotton gin and warehouse, and , after he visited us in Florida, worried about his boys not being able to swim, he built a swimming pool. One local boy would sit at the pool entrance with a cigar box to collect the dime admission-if the kids didn’t have a dime, they went in anyway. During the middle 40’s the government furnished German POW’s to work in the sawmill due to the shortage of local labor, and the need for war effort lumber. They also sold fertilizer, seeds, etc to the local farmers on the honor system in an open warehouse. The farmer picked up what he needed-put a note on a sharp spindle on the desk, and my Aunt( a school teacher) would collect the notes and do the bookwork in the evenings. It was a time when your word was your bond, and business was done on a handshake. I long for those days! I spent almost every summer with relatives in Sycamore, Cordele, and Rebecca. My Dad’s family(Adams) in Sycamore had 12 children, so I never ran out of relatives to visit.
Walter Burgess: We lived in Rebecca in the late 60s and my father was the Pastor of Rebecca Baptist Church during that time. It was a perfect place to call home and I still consider it my home town, mainly because I felt like I knew everyone there, which is probably close to the truth. I remember very well Mr. John and Ms. Lee Purswell and they were indeed wonderful people. So many of those folks are vivid parts of my childhood memories and people caring for one another and genuinely being a community was a great thing to be a part of. Small towns where people know all about you and love you anyway should never vanish. Would love to get back there sometime and visit, thanks to all who shared on this site.
Rebecca is more diverse than one might think, for such a rural community. Bernice “Jean” Aplin Lee wrote: I grew up in Rebecca. in a house west of main street on Highway 90. The house is still there but no one lives there now. My mother, Bernice Aplin, still lives in Rebecca just behind Piney Grove Baptist Church on Double Run Street. My father, Henry “Bay” Aplin was the first black city councilman and also the first and only black mayor of Rebecca. He died in April 2002.
This is the typical style of pavilion used for gospel music “singing conventions” throughout the Wiregrass Region in the early part of the 20th century. Typically, these conventions were day-long or weekend-long gatherings. The structure was built by R. V. Ayers in 1902 when J. S. Shingler leased the site to the South Georgia Conference of the Wesleyan Methodist Church. In the nomination form for the National Register of Historic places, it’s noted that its urban setting makes it unusual for a Georgia campground. Most are located in rural areas. The form also notes, “The campground is also significant in religion as a product of the Wesleyan-Methodist faith, which began in 1843 and is a rare faith for Georgia but one that still exists today, as the Wesleyan Church. The Wesleyan Methodist Church, a different Methodist faith than the Methodist-Episcopal Church (now the United Methodist Church), had a small following in Georgia, with the Ashburn-Tifton circuit being the largest in the state. This campground is said to be one of six associated with that faith that survive in Georgia. At the height of this faith’s activities is when the tabernacle was constructed about 1902, which was before Ashburn became the county seat of Turner County in 1905. The Wesleyan Church itself stood nearby but is now gone. The religious campground/camp meeting movement was widespread in the 19th early 20th centuries and continues to this day.”
National Register of Historic Places
The double-pen form is quite rare and was almost always used as housing for sharecroppers. It’s very similar in layout to the saddlebag form, but the double-pen house doesn’t have a chimney in the center.
In 1862, Richard Tucker (1831-1908) enlisted with Company F, 49th Georgia Infantry as Second Lieutenant and resigned later that year. Soon thereafter, he was appointed Sergeant of Company H, 4th Georgia Cavalry. He surrendered on 10 May 1865.
Pleasant Hill Baptist Church Cemetery
Board-and-batten was one of the simplest forms of construction, mostly used for tenant housing, but a good number of structures built using this method are still standing.
The origins of Methodism in Ashburn date to 1888, when a Mission Sunday School was formed. By 1895, five separate mission churches came together as one congregation and worshiped in a wood frame sanctuary (built circa 1891 and now in commercial use). Though the National Register of Historic Places Nomination form gives a contradictory date (1917) for the present structure’s construction, I’m using the more recently cited date of 1911, from the South Georgia Conference of the United Methodist Church. Land was given by James Simon Shingler (1859-1943), Ashburn’s leading citizen of the era and a devout Methodist, who brought in dirt to build up the hill so the church could be seen throughout Ashburn. Macon architect Peter E. Dennis, of the firm Dennis & Dennis, was a close personal friend of J. S. Shingler and was responsible for the design of this church, as well as the most prominent homes in the Shingler Heights neighborhood.
Shingler Heights Historic District, National Register of Historic Places
This is located west of Rebecca, near the Double Run community.
Ira Tredwell built this house for Joe Fletcher, according to one of Mr. Fletcher’s great-grandsons. Grant Snow notes: My dad lived in this house in 1948 with his mother,father, brothers and sisters. My grandfather Waymond Herbert Snow sharecropped this land. I visited this house in 1996 with my father and I have pictures of him in front of this house. My dad was 10 years old then.