Just down the road from the house pictured in the previous post, this hall and parlor cottage near Egypt is also believed to have been associated with the E. E. Foy Manufacturing Company. Several other such structures once stood along this road but are no longer extant.
This example, which features a shed room at the rear, was expanded at the front at some point. It is of board-and-batten construction, a very common siding for utilitarian dwellings. It’s possible that it was a rental property after serving its original purpose. Many of these buildings have also been used as hunting cabins, though I’m not suggesting that this one was.
J. C. Balkcom Store & James Post Office, Jones County
The old store that once anchored James still stands, a sentinel of a different time. It was built in the 1890s, when the trains were still steaming through on a regular basis, and was Kingman’s Store back then. Robert H. Kingman (1876-1957) went on to become a prominent grocer in Macon. As Balkcom’s, it was open until the early mid-1980s. James Cicero Balkcom was an unusual character in small-town Georgia. He once owned a theatre in Gray and allowed African-Americans access. Apparently, not even their resignation to the balcony was acceptable, but Balkcom was unmoved. When he continued the practice, a group of young men drove by and shot into the side of his store, which was also the James post office, as a cowardly act of intimidation,. This was a federal offense, but Aubrey Newby says that no local effort to track down the perpetrators was made, or if so, it wasn’t successful. Just an interesting aside and a profile in courage of Mr. Balkcom, for sure. The post office remained open until 1969.
As to local color, Aubrey Newby writes: …There were two old spinster sisters Miss Alice and Miss Hattie James who lived in the Wood-Robinson house, Miss Alice drove a model T ford and you had better just get out of the way if you saw her coming. People moved away, the store closed and eventually the train stopped running. All that was left were scattered old houses, pieces of a train track and memories of what had once been a bustling town. My children still call it the railroad, we still talk about the store and I believe as long as we do, those people and those stories live. Davis and Dolly, Alice and Hattie, Libbie and T, most of them I barely knew if ever at all and yet I recall them as if they just left yesterday...
Many old farmhouses are used for storage and as hay barns, but this one has been outfitted to be a very fine chicken coop. This rooster looks happy about his living quarters.
My preliminary inclination is to identify this as a shotgun house even though the facade has more of a storefront appearance. The photograph dates to 2013.
If you’ve followed this website over the years, you’re likely familiar with the “gabled-ell” form, so named for its overall “L” shape, and an expansion of the central hallway house type. They are among the most common types of old farmhouses remaining in rural Georgia, though they are often found abandoned. They remain because they were built so well and are a testament to the skills of their builders.
These photos was made in 2013 somewhere near the crossroads settlement of McGregor. I’m unsure if the house is still standing.
This commissary near the Lowery community was likely related to the turpentine industry and according to a Laurens County Historic Resources survey dates to circa 1910-1920.
