This is also probably part of the Hogan estate, seen in the preceding posts. There’s a nearly identical structure next door, but the interesting feature of this one is the old Viking cooler on the right.
In 1806, Charleston merchant William Brailsford purchased the “Broadface” property on the Altamaha River between Darien and Brunswick and developed one of the most prosperous rice plantations in 19th-century Georgia.
He renamed it Broadfield. Upon his death, it passed to his son-in-law Dr. James M. Troup, brother of Governor George Troup. When Dr. Troup died in 1849 Broadfield included 7300 acres and a community of 357 slaves. The marshes are very similar in appearance today to what they were in the early 19th-century.
These tabby ruins are all that remain of the once-thriving Broadfield rice mill.
Around 1851, Troup’s daughter, Ophelia, and her husband George Dent built the plantation house still standing today.
They christened it Hofwyl House, after a school Dent attended in Switzerland.
After the Civil War, mounting taxes led to the selling of most of the original lands and by the 1880s when George & Ophelia’s son James took over management of the plantation, Broadfield’s dominance was over.
Rice was cultivated until 1913, but without slaves to provide an essentially free labor force, it was hardly a profitable venture.
When James died in 1913, his son Gratz established a dairy on the site, which was operated until 1942 by his sisters Miriam and Ophelia Dent.
When Ophelia died in 1973, she left the house and grounds to the state of Georgia, who operate it today as a state historic site.
Unlike most historic homes, Hofwyl House retains the original family antiques and possessions of the Brailsford, Troup and Dent families from five generations.
The bedrooms are on the second floor.
Hofwyl Dependencies
Dependencies are the barns, outbuildings, laborer dwellings, and other structures dependent upon and integral to the operations of farm or plantation. One of the most remarkable aspects of this property is the large number that survive.
Gratz Dent’s dairy was a very modern operation for its time. The open-air dairy barn is where a herd of around 35 Jersey and Guernsey cows were milked daily.
Just next door is the bottling house.
Milk was produced here for customers in Glynn and McIntosh counties.
Central to any plantation operation was the commissary, where laborers were given credit for necessities and staples. Much of their income, however, went to repaying debts incurred here.
Essential laborers were provided a basic tenant house like the one seen above.
Furnishings were spartan and utilitarian.
The presence of the pay shed indicates a well-managed property and is quite a rare thing to find today.
National Register of Historic Places
Cal Avery notes that this old dairy was long obscured by vegetation. I’m told it t operated from at least the 1940s until the late 1960s. The image above shows the front of the building, likely the office. Below is an image of the rear of the structure, where cows were kept and milked. Thanks to Cal for bringing it to my attention. Wade Peebles writes: The property had belonged to the late Mr. Jimmy Morgan, publisher of the Swainsboro Forest Blade, owner of the Ford dealership, and other business interests and owner of a good bit of land in Emanuel County, including McGarrh’s Mill Pond. He owned the land and sold it just before he died, I believe just last year at over 100 years of age. The land on Ga56, where the old dairy sits, was his first wife’s Father’s land. He was old Dr. Franklin, who owned the dairy. It was last operated in the early 1960s, by Lee Roy Smith.
The main building housing the University of Georgia Marine Institute was first a dairy operation overseen by tobacco heir Richard Reynolds during his residence on Sapelo Island.
The building has been used for scientific pursuits since 1954.
This landmark on Bemiss Road remains, but more of the letters have fallen off the sign as of 2016. The property was originally known as the Biles Farm, beginning in the 1880s, and was purchased by the Vallotton family in the 1940s to accommodate their growing dairy operation. The original Biles farmhouse was occupied by the dairy foreman for many years. This barn was built in the 1940s, as I understand it, and the dairy was in operation until 1990. Hugh Vallotton, son of dairy founder Joseph Edward Vallotton, managed the farm until his death in 1979 and his nephew, Robert Vallotton, took over and remained at the helm until retiring in 1990.
The dairy Herman Stafford operated here for many years was a well-known institution in Long County. He delivered milk door-to-door on Friday evenings and Saturdays as late as the late 1960s.