This fine Queen Anne cottage has been used as an insurance office for many years but retains its beautiful fretwork and overall appearance. Some would call it a “gingerbread” house. It’s one of the nicest surviving Victorian houses in Lumber City. It was possibly designed or built by the Scottish immigrant John Renwick, who was actively building in Lumber City at the time of its construction.
This was originally a saddlebag house, as the two front doors and remnant central chimney would suggest, but at some point a wing, or ell, was added.
Lumber City has had two advantages in its history that have kept it “on the map”. This small town (pop. 967) had easy access to the Ocmulgee River, and that fact drove its growth in the early years. Long before 1889, when it was incorporated and officially named Lumber City to recognize a busy sawmill’s impact on the community, the area saw the constant traffic of timber rafts running down to the coastal town of Darien, as well as cotton and grocery boats. Author Brainard Cheney (1900-1990), who was born in Fitzgerald and moved with his family to Lumber City in 1906, may be the town’s most famous citizen, though he’s largely forgotten today. An author who was associated with the Southern Agrarians, he wrote several books set on the Ocmulgee River, where he had been a raft hand as a young man in 1917, including River Rogue and Lightwood. Lumber City was the town nearest the confluence of the Ocmulgee and Oconee rivers, where the great Altamaha is formed and flows uninterrupted to the coast. Of course the railroad was a presence whose impact can’t be understated and it was inextricably linked to the sawmill.
In the modern era, Lumber City is located along one of Southeast Georgia’s busiest highways, US 341, and milling and timber-related industries continue to operate here. In the days before interstate highways, hotels and restaurants like the Ivy Lodge and the Red River Tea Room were popular with locals and travelers alike.
An interesting historical anecdote concerns John Renwick, namesake of Renwick Street in Lumber City. One of his descendants, Rosemary Morrison, has written to inform me of this connection: “John Renwick, from Peebles, Scotland, lived in Lumber City between 1890 and 1914, and his sister, Janet (Jenny) lived with him from 1902 until his death, afterwards returning alone to live in Lumber City until the late 1920s. A cousin, Robert Murray, came with him to Lumber City, and also lived there. He (or his brother) was a trainee architect.” She also notes that a Miss Knox from Lumber City sent her late Aunt Jenny a scrapbook in the 1950s, containing numerous photographs from the Renwicks’ time in Lumber City, focused primarily on structures around the town. Some of the houses designed and built by “Mr. Jock”, as Renwick was known locally, included those of the McGregor, McLeod, Martin, Murray, Knox, Vaughan, Thormhalen, Walter T. McArthur, and Capt. E. K. Willcox families.
In 2024, Lumber City was devastated, as was the entire region, by Hurricane Helene. Much cleanup has been done, but it will take a long time for everything to be normal again.
I just discovered this photograph, made in 2009, of an unidentified structure in Jacksonville. Because of its proximity to the Thomas Hardy Jackson house, visible in the background, I’m identifying it as a dependency of that property until I learn otherwise. Sadly, both structures are long gone, replaced by a Dollar General. It’s common to find barns and sheds alongside old houses, as space was at a premium, and these dependencies are usually easy to identify. I’m a bit stumped by this one, however. It’s very small and, unusually, has a window. Barns don’t generally have windows. I wonder if it could have been unrelated to the house and perhaps served some other purpose. It has a similar appearance to precinct houses I’ve documented in the past, but this example seems a bit small for that. If anyone from Jacksonville knows, please share.
This Folk Victorian cottage was built in a T-form, with a projecting wing at the front. It’s an excellent example of this “dressed-up” house style, likely built between 1890-1910. The last time I checked, it was still standing. Hopefully, someone cares about it and it will be restored. It’s certainly worthy of being someone’s home again.
Milan is located in Dodge and Telfair Counties, one of many Georgia towns with such a distinction. It was settled in the 1880s due to the arrival of the railroad in the area. It was named for Milan, Italy, and of course, has a Georgia pronunciation. It’s “My-lun”, not “Muh-lan”. Many people have asked me over the years why Georgia has such unusual place names, and it’s not just Georgia. The reason is because common names, especially surnames, were already in use and the post office department wouldn’t allow towns with the same, or even similar, names.
Milan became the focus of unwelcome national attention during the summer of 1919, known as Red Summer. The story is graphic, but as Black history is being officially censored in Georgia and many other states, it should be told. And to be certain, Milan was not alone in regards to such atrocities.
On 24 May 1919, two white men, John Baptiste Dowdy, Sr. (1894-1919) and Levi Evans, attempted to break into the home of a Black woman, Emma McCollers, with the intent of raping her two young daughters. Dowdy’s father, Rev. William Dowdy, was the mayor of Milan. When the family refused to allow them in the house, Dowdy fired his gun.
The girls fled to the nearby home of Emma Tishler and were followed by Dowdy and Evans. During the chaos, Ms. Tishler hid in a well. Berry Washington, a 72-year-old Black sharecropper, heard the commotion and attempted to defend the girls. Dowdy fired at Washington, and after a struggle, Washington killed Dowdy. Washington turned himself soon after the shooting and was transferred to the jail in McRae.
The next day, Deputy Sheriff Dave McRanie handed Washington over to a lynch mob who removed him from the jail and in the early hours of 26 May 1919, hanged him from a post at the site of the shooting and riddled his body with gunshot. His mutilated corpse was left in public view for at least a day, no doubt as an ominous warning to the local Black community.
This house has always beckoned me to stop and make photographs, and I made these in 2011. It’s a classic single-pen tenant house, complete with “tar paper” to keep cold out of the cracks in winter. The last time I checked, it was still standing, albeit in worse condition. I’ve often encountered a wake of buzzards perched on the roof, and once even scared a bunch from inside the house. In my notes, I call it the Buzzard House.
The Zebra Swallowtail (Eurytides marcellus) is one of Georgia’s most beautiful butterflies, easily distinguished from other swallowtails by its long greenish-white and black pattern, said to be reminiscent of a zebra. It also has notably longer tails than other swallowtails in Georgia. They can be found in numerous environments, and are occasionally even spotted in yards, but most commonly gather in overgrazed pastures and roadsides. This individual was photographed in August 2009 on Dickson Mill Pond Road, not far from the Ocmulgee River. Someone who knows plants better than I do may be able to confirm, but I believe it’s feeding on a Green Milkweed (Asclepias viridis). Swallowtails are known to have an affinity for a variety of milkweeds.
Fewer than 500 people live in the little town of Pineview, on the Wilcox-Pulaski County line, so there aren’t many places to eat. When I made this photograph a few years ago, the trailer beside this store was the only place selling food, and was going by the name “Smoke House Grill”. The store was the M & M Convenient Store, and appears to have been a service station and garage before that. I think they built a Dollar General across the road after they tore down the most important landmark building in town, the old Clements Drugstore.
Shell’s Bonded Warehouse is one of at least two such facilities in Pitts, which isn’t surprising considering the importance of farming in the area. I’m fascinated by these old buildings; they’re not architecturally interesting, I suppose, but they represent the lifeblood of many small towns whose economies were and are based on agriculture. The old ones are getting harder to find, but many are still in use. I wouldn’t be surprised if this one is still busy in season.