This appears to be a tenant house and may have been associated with turpentining.
Board-and-Batten Tenant House, Johnson County
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Rowland’s Store, Moores Chapel
This was once the center of the Moores Chapel community, which gets its name from Moore’s Chapel Methodist Church which stands on a high spot across the highway. Tina Stephens Barrs writes: This was my Great Aunt Idean Webb Rowland and Great Uncle Clifton Rowland’s store. Not sure when it was built but probably in the mid 1900’s. And Mabry Reese McIntyre notes that Mrs. Idean dipped a lot of ice cream cones in that store. Was a good day when the school bus stopped there.
Farmhouse & Barn, Moores Chapel
From the highway, several outbuildings can be seen on this farm. Most, like the winged- gable/central hallway house can be saved. It’s a nice looking old farm.
Powell’s Store, New Home
The community of New Home appears on good maps, but it’s hard to find on the internet. This store was obviously the anchor of this small rural community. I believe the community derives its name from the former site of New Home Baptist Church, which has since moved to Wrightsville. Thanks to Deborah Brantley for identifying this as Leon Powell’s store. Lamar Sanders writes: I love this old store. I went in there once and I got an Ice cold coca cola on a really hot summer day around 1968, when I actually had enough money to buy a coke, when running a stream gauging field trip for the US Geological Survey, about 4 years out of Georgia Tech. I was really hot and sweaty, and the air conditioner of the store was cranked up on high. I believe 2 or 3 old men were in there cooling off, too. I go by the store on my trips between Lexington, SC and my home town Edison on a regular basis, and still think about how good that Coke was.
Queen Anne Folk Victorian Farmhouse, New Home
There’s a good concentration of this style in Johnson County. The dormers essentially elevate a plain vernacular structure to an ornamental Victorian. A structure beside the main house appears to be in use as a barn, though it may have had an earlier use.
Single-Pen Tenant Farmhouse, New Home
In this example, a common style takes on a slightly architectural look.
The gable at the center of the porch is an unusual feature on such a house, lending a Neoclassical feel.
Central Hallway Farmhouse, Johnson County
The shingled gables give this house a slight Folk Victorian feel. It’s one of myriad variations on the central hallway plan. The attached, off-side kitchen is an unusual surviving feature. Most kitchens were located behind the main house and attached via enclosed hallway later in a house’s history. Houses like this usually date from the 1880s-1920s.
Hip Roof Cottage, Stillmore
McLeod Covenant Baptist Church, Emanuel County
This small congregation was founded in 1898. The quaint little church stands on the curve of a winding dirt road, just off Highway 57.
Remains of Sunbury Plantation
The grand two-story plantation home of Mr. & Mrs. Allen Stevens once stood at this site on the Medway River. All that remain are a few outbuildings. I’m not sure when the house was built. I got the impression from the present owner, Allen Fillingame, that the site was never a working plantation in the historic sense and wasn’t even built until the late 1950s.
Meredith Belford writes: This was owned by my grandfather John Porter Stevens’ brother Allen to whom he had given money to purchase the property as a straw buyer. Allen refused to sign the property over and decided to keep it. According to my mother and her best friend who were there, the brothers had a brawl over the deal at the property on December 7, 1941. Obviously, other events that day overshadowed the brothers’ altercation.
My understanding of the property’s history is that it contained the site of the main square in colonial Sunbury at the head of the Sunbury Road. As the town declined in the 19th and early 20th centuries, many of the town lots were consolidated resulting in a larger tract including the home site you are discussing and the area known as The Pointe.
It was separated from the Screven family’s Seabrook Plantation by a few other parcels. Seabrook Plantation included the area around the boat ramp all the way south along Dickinson Creek to Springfield and Palmyra Plantations (owned by the Stevens, Baker, and Maxwell interrelated families since the 1750s). Seabrook was subdivided into 7 parcels in the 1800s by Screven descendants. The northernmost parcel—running from Marshview Drive to around the boat ramp—was sold and subdivided prior to 1930. My grandfather purchased the other 6 contiguous parcels in 1930. These are now under permanent conservation easement.
The entrance was quite elaborate, among the most ornamental on the coast. The two enclosed terraces were once filled with oleander, surely a fantastic site when they were in full bloom. The view of the river hearkens to a time of much grander properties, more akin to those on the Mississippi River than the Georgia coast. The house burned at some point, many years ago, and these outbuildings are all that remain.
I understand (as of 2021) that the site has been completely cleared of the remaining structures.
