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.
Lyons has a prominent new landmark in the form of a courthouse. The original Toombs County courthouse was built in 1906, destroyed by fire in 1917, and rebuilt in 1919. The third courthouse, which was arguably one of the most unattractive in the state, was built in 1964. Hence, this will be fourth courthouse to serve the county. And I’m sure its design is being welcomed by most. The $35 million facility, soon to be completed, has already transformed the look of Lyons for the better. And of course, there’s a Vidalia Onion on top of the dome.
In The History of Brooks County, Georgia (1948) Folks Huxford notes that area around Hickory Head was settled long before the Civil War by families from Bulloch, Jones, and Houston Counties. The families were comprised of hard-working farmers who valued their faith and strongly embraced education. They were members of Liberty Baptist Church, which was established in 1841. A. W. Groover donated land for the establishment of a school in 1866, and in either 1867 or 1869, it was built with funds raised through subscription. Mr. Groover, alongside W. H. Stanley and C. A. Davis, served as the first trustees of the Hickory Head Academy. Edwin B. Carroll, who would later serve as pastor at Hickory Head Baptist Church, was the first schoolmaster.
A plaque on the building notes that it was used as a school until 1925. Just a handful of rural academies like Hickory Head survive today, so that alone is an important part of its story, but its association with the Hickory Head Agricultural Club is quite extraordinary, as well. Folks Huxford suggests the club was established circa 1885 and met in the schoolhouse. Member farmers became widely known for shipping ham and bacon at a time when most of the South was importing meat from the Northwest. Brooks County pork, raised largely on peanuts, was in great demand. Hickory Head farmers were also among the first in the region to use ice in the cooling of meat, coming from Maine by way of Savannah. With modern innovations, the club faded over the years, but was revived as the Hickory Head Farm Club in 1946.
The building has also served as a voting precinct and is still used by the community for special events. It’s had a long and productive history.
I made this photograph in 2008 and rediscovered it when I began re-editing my Sumter County images. The historic, largely forgotten New Era community holds a special place for me as a photographer of rural subjects. Its owners have allowed it to stand, long after it was abandoned, and in doing so they preserved a living museum of a certain place and time. They appreciated what it represented. Letting it go back to the elements is just part of that process.
This was a huge building, almost certainly serving an agricultural purpose. The front section at right was probably an office, while the remainder was a gin and/or warehouse. As best I can tell, the structure has since collapsed or was razed.
Near the depot in Boston is a small row of historic shotgun buildings and warehouses. These were related to agribusiness, seed storage, and livery stables. They don’t often get much attention, perhaps because they’re more utilitarian than they are aesthetically interesting, but they are as important to the development, perhaps more so, of our small rural towns as any bank or general store. The railroad was central to Boston’s development and these warehouses were directly tied to its success. In recent years, I believe they’ve been associated with the Boston Seed Company.
Boston Historic District, National Register of Historic Places
As I’ve discussed extensively over the years, the Irwinville Farms Project was one of numerous resettlement communities overseen during the Great Depression by the Farm Security Administration and the Resettlement Administration, as a means of helping rural communities much in need of outside assistance. Even though they are highly endangered, the structures related to this project are still well represented in the Irwinville area and are an invaluable resource that deserve documentation. The barns were all originally painted white but have faded in the nearly 90 years since they were built. They cost less than $200 to build and were considered very efficient. A testament to their quality is the fact that so many are still standing.
According to website of the City of Baconton, the town was named for Major Robert James Bacon, who settled in the area in 1858. A planter and entrepreneur, Bacon gave the Savannah, Florida & Western Railroad the right-of-way through his plantation, ensuring an economic presence for the community, which was named in his honor in 1869. Baconton is best-known today as the birthplace of the paper-shell pecan industry in Georgia. This variety was generally more desirable than others and brought a better profit to its growers, hence the emergence of nearby Albany as the center of the paper-shell market by the 1920s, as land speculators planted thousands of acres of pecans in the area.
According to Maria Clark, the paper-shell variety was invented [grafted] by an enslaved man named Antoine who worked at Oak Alley Plantation in Louisiana circa 1846. The first commercially-viable variety of note was known as the Centennial Pecan, as it had been submitted as a representative product of Louisiana at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia in 1876. In Georgia, for much of the 20th century, the Schley was the go-to paper-shell variety, and in my family’s orchards they have always been a favorite. New varieties are being developed all the time.
These historic postcards illustrate how proud Baconton was of its burgeoning paper-shell pecan industry in the early 1900s.
This old shotgun-style warehouse is located across the street from Denham’s One-Stop. Alva Ray Denham (1922-1983) was the son of Marcus N. Denham (1887-1965), who came to Sycamore from Upson County and married Beulah Ray (1892-1942), a local girl. The Denhams were very active in many aspects of the local economy and social life. This photo dates to 2014.
This was one of the first places I photographed when I began the Vanishing Georgia project in 2007-2008. Nearly every small South Georgia town would have had a business like this at one time but many have been absorbed into more general agribusiness operations in the modern era.
This was originally home to the Tifton Telephone Company. Later, it housed the Georgia Peanut Commission, before their move to a site beside Interstate 75 several years ago. The brickwork is some of the best in Tifton.
Tifton Commercial Historic District, National Register of Historic Places