Butler Island Plantation, Real Photo Postcard, 1935. Collection of Brian Brown.
After many years of decline, the historic lands and waterways of Butler Island, just south of Darien, were purchased and modernized by Col. Tillinghast L’Hommedieu (T. L.) Huston, in 1926. A dairy was part of the Butler Island Plantation enterprise before it was converted to an iceberg lettuce farm, and some of the dairy structures were maintained throughout Huston’s ownership. This barn and other related buildings have been gone for decades, but may have still been in use when R. J. Reynolds purchased the property after Huston’s death in 1938.
This real photo postcard, dated Tues. Apr. 16, 1935 wasn’t mailed, but features a somewhat exaggerated, tongue-in-cheek message on the reverse: “Near border of Georgia & Florida. Air fresh & fragrant with blossoms. Cattle have free range in this state & receive excellent attention, as card shows. Autos barely escape colliding with hogs, cows, chickens, dogs, turtles, etc. on the highways.” It isn’t signed.
Ambrose is located west of Douglas, not far from the Irwin County line, and has always been an agriculturally focused community. When the Atlanta, Birmingham & Atlantic Railroad reached the area, in 1899, Dennis Vickers and J. J. Phillips gave the land for the town site. I’m not sure as to the origin of the name. Some of the first businesses were H. L. Vickers’s general store and Dr. Moorman’s pharmacy. Dennis Vickers built a gin to service the many cotton farmers in the area. A school was built in the late 1920s and the town was first electrified by Georgia Power in 1930.
I photographed this house in 2009 and it was in bad condition then, as the photograph indicates. It was a winged gable cottage with Victorian details on the front porch, likely built between the 1890s-1920. The only view I was able to get was from the side, unfortunately. I suspect it is long gone by now.
Mora has always been an out-of-the way place, but was once a busy farming community. It had a post office from 1910-1917 but I can’t locate an origin for the name, which is pronounced “more-A” (think Moray Eel). Judging by road names and comments about Vickers Store, the Nugent and Vickers family were early settlers in the area, and the old Vickers store is visible in the foreground. The white building in the distance was also a store with a built-in residence. I used to have more information about it, but have misplaced it in my archives. This photo dates to circa 2009-2010. Satellite views online show many more vehicles parked around the Vickers Store today. I haven’t been through the area in many years.
I photographed this old farmhouse on Herschel Vickers Road in 2009 and again in 2011. It looked about the same both times, but I imagine it’s gone today. Places like this have been sentinels in my dirt road travels for nearly a quarter century but are becoming rarer today. Most are just victims of time and the weather.
This barn is located at the turn-off from the Fitzgerald Highway into Broxton. It’s a commercial barn of some kind but I admit I have no idea what purpose it served. I’ve seen what appeared to be cotton waste on the ground here, so perhaps it was used for composting. I hope to find out more about it. I made this photo around 2012 but it was still standing in 2022.
There aren’t as many canopy roads as there used to be, so they are always a welcome surprise. They are loved for their shade and their beauty. The most famous in Georgia, in Thomas County, are lined with old oaks. It’s rarer to find them in other parts of the state, but if you know where to look, you can encounter them elsewhere. There are some on the coast, of course. This one was unmarked and led to an historic cemetery, which is how I found it when I photographed it in 2009. I hope it still looks like this.
You don’t see many of these old Rexall drug store signs anymore, but the one at Malcolm’s Drugs is a Peterson Avenue landmark and is still in business. There was still an old Rexall sign in Fitzgerald when I was very young, in the early 1970s, but it’s long gone, as it the business it advertised.
This isn’t an advertisement, but rather an appreciation for the fact that this slice of Americana is still visible and serving its original purpose. I’m not sure when Malcolm’s opened, but my father remembers it from his days at South Georgia College, circa 1960-1962.
Downtown Douglas Historic District, National Register of Historic Places
The Georgia State Prison at Reidsville was open from 1937 until 2022. The main building, seen above, was the work of the Atlanta architectural firm of Tucker & Howell in the Stripped Classical style and was completed in late 1936 but not occupied until 1937. It cost $1.5 million and was funded by the Public Works Administration, a New Deal agency. One wall of the structure features an idealistic frieze with sculptures of various men at work by famed sculptor Julian Harris entitled “Rehabilitation”. The prison was built at a time when Southern prisons and chain gangs were coming under serious criticism in the national press and by Congress for their poor conditions. Robert Elliott Burns’s bestselling book I Am a Fugitive from a Georgia Chain Gang!, published in 1932, put a particularly unwelcome focus on Georgia. The reforms that followed were an ongoing process, and were fully embraced by Governor Ellis Arnall in 1942. As the state’s crime rate grew rapidly along with the population, more structures were added. The Rogers State Prison is located near the closed Georgia State Prison, as is the prison cemetery.
According to Tattnall County: “The Georgia General Assembly passed a law on August 16, 1924 that abolished hanging for all capital crimes. From that point forward, instead of being hanged by the sheriff of the county or judicial circuit where their crimes had occurred, the condemned were to be electrocuted at the Georgia State Prison at Milledgeville. During that year an electric chair was installed in the prison, and the first execution in that method occurred on September 13, 1924.“
“On January 1, 1938 the execution chamber was relocated to the new Georgia State Prison at Reidsville. In the 1940s and 1950s, volunteers were offered $25 to flip the switches which would start the flow of electricity and eventually lead to the death of the prisoner. Executions were moved to the Georgia Diagnostic and Classification State Prison near Jackson, in Butts County, in June 1980. The state’s old electric chair can still be found in the museum on the upper floors of the main building, as well as prison documents containing names, authorizations and last statements of the prisoners.“
“Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was transferred from the DeKalb County Jail in Decatur, Georgia, to Georgia State Prison in Reidsville, Georgia. He was released on October 27, 1960 on a $2,000 bond [after intervention by John F. Kennedy]. GSP also housed radical activist H. Rap Brown, now known as Jamil Al-Amin. Al-Amin was the chairman of SNCC in the late 1960s. In 2007, he was transferred to a federal facility where he now resides. The facility also housed notorious Atlanta killer Wayne Williams.”
Georgia State Prison was also the site of the execution of Lena Barker, the only woman to face the death penalty in the state in the modern era. Baker was later exonerated.
The Longest Yard, a popular movie starring Burt Reynolds and Eddie Albert, was filmed at the prison.
This appears to be an early I-House (also known as Plantation Plain, though for lack of a better identification this house is more I-house than Plantation Plain) but the chimney is obviously not original. The small second floor windows along the front facade are not unique, but I’ve only seen a few similar examples.
The height of the house suggests it may have originated as a central hallway cottage with a small second story added later. The shed rooms at the back are also an addition. I hope to learn more.
