According to an historic marker placed by the Basford family in 2008, this vernacular Greek Revival cottage was built circa 1858 by Randolph Avera. At the time of its construction, it was more a country place, on the edge of the city. J. A. Weirig, a Thomasville carpenter, purchased the home in 1895. His daughter, Bessie Weirig, lived here for the next 75 years. It was saved and protected by Thomasville Landmarks in 1971 and was the first property in their revolving fund, which identifies, acquires, and connects historic homes with preservation-minded owners .
Dawson Street Residential Historic District, National Register of Historic Places
Located in the Red Hills southwest of Thomasville, Springhill Methodist is the oldest church in Thomas County. The vernacular Greek Revival structure, built circa 1833, was restored by Charlie Howard Whitney in 2010. The congregation dates to 1822, when a log church was built by pioneers Peter McKinnon, Lockland Morrison, Angus Morrison, and one other man, whose name is lost to the ages.
John Ferrell, who wrote a history of the congregation in 1924, notes that regular services began in 1826. By the 1840s, the congregation numbered nearly 500 members. Over time, it dwindled to point that regular services weren’t feasible, but it still meets on fifth Sundays, a few times a year, and is available for weddings and funerals.
Urn atop Isabella Morrison tomb
The historic cemetery is a fascinating peek into the early history of the area.
Isabella Graham Morrison (1810-9 June 1843)
The tomb of Isabella Graham Morrison is the most notable memorial in the cemetery, not only because Mrs. Morrison was the wife of one of the founders of the congregation, Angus Morrison (1783-1865) but for its unusual appearance. Isabella, a native of North Carolina, and Angus Morrison, Sr., were married on 13 January 1830 in Telfair County and they had seven children. After Isabella’s death, Angus married Mary A. Strange (1818-1919) in 1852 and to that union two more children were born to Angus Morrison. He died at Sopchoppy, Florida, and is buried there. The unsigned but finely executed marble marker on the front reads: This tomb was erected to the memory of Isabella Morrison – consort of Angus Morrison – Who died in the triumphs of a gospel faith June the 9th 1843 aged 30 years – Leaving a husband, children, numerous relatives to mourn the loss of an affectionate companion, a fond dutiful mother, and faithful friend who always made it her motto in life to live the life of the righteous that her latter end might be as his.
Decedent and dates unknown
The most curious grave is a concrete slab featuring an unusual medallion. The identity of the decedent has been obliterated by time, and it appears someone painted the medallion to make it distinguishable. It was obviously made from a mold of some kind; it features a whimsical water bird, wearing glasses and a hat, with a coconut-laden palm in the background. I first though it to be a stork but now I’m not sure. If anyone knows the story of this one, please get in touch.
Jessey Applewhite (1854-1887) – Back side of marker
Zinc headstones (known to taphophiles and cemetery tourists as ‘zinkys’) were very trendy in the late 1800s, and were advertised to last as long as marble and other stone memorials. Many have survived nicely and can be found in cemeteries throughout the country, thanks to the excellent marketing of their primary manufacturer, the Monumental Bronze Company.
Margaret L. McIntosh Ferrell (1829-1891)
Margaret McIntosh was a native of a pioneer family of Brooks County, according to her obituary. She and James Ferrell were married in 1853 and had five children. Two died of tuberculosis, or consumption as it was known at the time. The disease was also noted as the cause of death for Margaret.
James Ferrell (1817-1893)
James Farrell outlived his wife Margaret by about two years. He was the son of Hutchins and Celia Morgan Ferrell.
Pediment of the Singleton House, believed to be the work of itinerant carpenter S. J. Suiter
The construction of the late Greek Revival main house at the plantation of Rebecca Louise Griggs Singleton (1833-1907) and David Terrell Singleton (1831-1913) is credited, through oral tradition, to a very skilled but otherwise unknown carpenter named S. J. Suiter, who came to Putnam County from North Carolina. Suiter was still in Putnam County at the time of the 1860 census, living with the family of William Spivey and perhaps doing work on their property. To my knowledge, nothing else is known of Mr. Suiter. A Parisian plasterer lived on site for two years, creating the cornices and ceiling medallions.
Well house, dating to the ownership of the Singleton family. The Victorian details suggest it likely dates to the late 1800s-early 1900s.
The house was built circa 1854, the year of Rebecca Griggs’s marriage to David Singleton and in the National Register of Historic Places nomination in 1974 was described as “a modest, yet classically sophisticated plantation residence.” That characterization still applies. Structures added to the property by Earl McMillen, Jr., the architect who purchased it in 1968, are featured below with earlier historic structures.
Caretaker’s house, near the entrance to the farm. Likely built in the early-mid 1900s, but may be an expansion of an earlier cottage.
Rebecca Griggs Singleton purchased the property through an inheritance from her father, Robert Griggs, who owned adjoining land across Murder Creek. The Singletons bought several more large tracts in the area, and along with other plantations in the area, formed the basis in 1859 of a community first known as Avalona, and sometime between 1882 and 1895, Willard. The Singletons were members of the Avalona Baptist Church.
Covered bridge over Beaverdam Creek, built by Earl McMillen, Jr.
When Atlanta architect Earl McMillen, Jr., purchased the estate in 1968, the main house and outbuildings were all in a very run down state. As a passionate preservationist, Mr. McMillen set about restoring the house to its historical appearance, while adding modern conveniences to the grounds, He also saved and moved the old Phoenix Academy to the farm.
Covered bridge
Mr. McMillen also built a private covered bridge at a point where Beaverdam Creek crosses the property. Recent flooding caused one of the approaches to shift, but it’s still in good shape.
Tenant home converted into a hunting and fishing cabin by the Odums. Mr. Odum told me that one lady lived here most of her life, died at age 104, and climbed the steep stairs to her loft bedroom even in her old age. They’re some of the steepest stairs I’ve ever seen.
The Odums are the present owners and I am very grateful to their generosity in allowing me to visit and photograph a property that is as vibrant as it ever was. Mr. Odum is passionate about the historic structures but equally important, in keeping the land in good shape for future generations. They are doing a wonderful job.
This is the enigmatic Phoenix Academy, where Joel Chandler Harris attended school as a young man while working as a print devil for famed plantation publisher Joseph Addison Turner (1826-1868). It was saved and relocated to its present location in the mid-1970s by an Atlanta architect who owned the surrounding property, itself an historic antebellum plantation. More about that after a little background.
PLEASE NOTE: This property is not publicly accessible and trespassing is closely monitored by multiple means.
Phoenix Academy was built in the vicinity of Turnwold, northeast of Eatonton, circa 1860. The area is historically identified as Phoenix on maps. The house known as Turnwold today, the Lane-Turner House, was actually one of two on a large working plantation, the other being the older Alexander-Turner House. Joseph Addison Turner, published The Countryman, a weekly newspaper, from his property, the Alexander-Turner House. The Countryman was the only periodical ever published from a plantation during the Civil War and was widely read throughout the confederacy. His brother, William Wilberforce Turner (1830-1879), who lived in the Lane-Turner House, came up with the Turnwold name for the plantation, according to the National Register of Historic Places, and Joseph like it so much he applied to the entire property. (Turnwold means “Turner’s field”).
Union Academy, built circa 1820 by William Turner (1787-1853), the patriarch of the Turner family, originally stood on the site, but it was lost to fire*. Some time later, Phoenix Academy was built in its place. William Howard Seward, who served as Abraham Lincoln’s secretary of state, was an early rector at Union Academy. Joseph Addison Turner taught and served as president of the board of trustees for Phoenix Academy. He saw promise in a young, poorly educated Joel Chandler Harris, and encouraged him to attend school in the mornings while he apprenticed as a print devil for The Countryman in the afternoons. From his experiences among the enslaved people at Turnwold flowed Harris’s inspiration for the Uncle Remus stories. Though the Uncle Remus canon faded from popularity long before justified modern academic and social debates about controversial topics arose, mostly due to their rural subject matter and stereotypical portrayal of African-Americans, Harris remains a foundational figure in the history of Southern literature, if for no other reason than preserving the lost language of the enslaved and for his firsthand accounts of plantation life. A recent study found: Generations of Putnam County’s children, both black and white, have grown up with Harris, Remus, and Br’er Rabbit looming in the background of their lives. Yet in an age when the Harris books have fallen out of favor and Disney has permanently shelved the 1948 film version, nearly 100% of Putnam’s students engaged in this project acknowledge having never previously read a single Uncle Remus story.
*- (The date of the fire, and of the construction of Phoenix academy, is unclear; the National Register dates it to circa 1862 but also describes it as “antebellum”. I believe it may date to earlier in the 1850s and was assigned the 1862 date due to the Joel Chandler Harris association. The National Register also notes: “Over the years as the student body grew, a larger structure was constructed alongside the academy. The original Phoenix Academy became the headmaster’s residence until the academy’s closing, when it became a tenant residence. The second Phoenix School was torn down approximately ten years ago (c. 1965). Like many rural schoolhouses of the period, Phoenix Academy is of the Greek Revival style. It exhibits a pediment, pilasters with Ionic-order scrolls and molding around the door and window frames. The unusually fine application of Greek Revival details to one of the few surviving examples of rural antebellum academies in Georgia makes Phoenix Academy a unique and noteworthy structure.”).
Now, back to the story of how Phoenix Academy wound up clear across Putnam County. It’s all due to the foresight of architect and preservationist Earl McMillen, Jr. (1938-2007), who practiced in Atlanta and purchased the historic Singleton Plantation in 1968. When McMillen learned of the imminent demolition of the schoolhouse circa 1975, he acquired it from Putnam County and brought it to his property, where he painstakingly put it back together, just as it had originally stood. Its connection to Joel Chandler Harris was too important to be lost, McMillen rightfully believed. He did remove a rear wing, which had been added later in its history. It was used a rural schoolhouse well into the 20th century for children who lived in the area of Turnwold. An early 1900s photograph of Phoenix School, which the old academy was known as by then, shows that the school had a small front porch with a shed roof, but that was likely not original and was also removed by Mr. McMillen. I’m honored to be able to share these photographs, and am grateful to Dutch Henderson for the introduction, and to the Odum family for their generosity in allowing me to do so and for their continued stewardship of this important piece of Southern history. I’ll share more of their historic property in the next post.
One of the stated purposes of Emory College was the integration of religion and education and to this end a chapel was built in 1838 to serve the students and by extension the community. It was a simple wooden structure, typical of churches of the time, and was used until the construction of this more formal structure in 1875. When the present chapel was completed, the old prayer chapel was donated to and moved off campus for the use of Rust Chapel, an African-American congregation. When Emory College was founded, nearly everyone in the community was affiliated with the Methodist church, but today, the prayer chapel serves people of all faiths.
Oxford Historic District, National Register of Historic Places
Few Hall, thanks to sensitive design, retains its grand Greek Revival appearance, though it’s now attached to a more modern facility and incorporated into the Tarbutton Performing Arts Center. Completed a year after Phi Gamma Hall, in 1852, it was home to the Few Society, named for Emory College’s first president, Ignatius Few. A literary society which grew out of the original Phi Gamma fraternity, the Few Society spent nearly a century engaged in weekly debates and friendly rivalries with their fellow students.
Few Hall originally housed a library on the ground floor and debate hall on the upper floor. Like Phi Gamma Hall, it also saw service in the Civil War, housing a detachment of nurses and doctors from nearby Hood Hospital in Covington.
Oxford Historic District, National Register of Historic Places
According to Erik Blackburn Oliver’s Cornerstone and Grove, Phi Gamma was the first literary and fraternal society at Emory College. Their meeting and debate hall, which anchors the northwest corner of the quad, was completed in 1851 and is the oldest surviving academic structure on the Oxford campus. It has been beautifully restored in recent years and is a textbook example of Greek Revival architecture, to my mind a landmark of the form. It also served as a temporary hospital during the Civil War.
Oxford Historic District, National Register of Historic Places
Oxford was established by the Methodists and at the center of the community was the Oxford Methodist Episcopal (M.E.) Church. The cornerstone was laid in 1841 and from 1843 until the construction of the Young J. Allen Memorial Methodist Church in 1910, served as Commencement Hall for Emory College. In 1864, it served as a temporary hospital for casualties of the Battle of Atlanta. It’s the oldest extant non-residential building in Oxford. [A similar church, architecturally, is the Dorchester Presbyterian Church in Liberty County].
The wings visible at both sides were added in 1878 and give the church its cruciform shape. After the New Church opened in 1910, the Old Church was allowed to deteriorate, so much so that in 1948, the town of Oxford took bids for its demolition. Luckily, it was saved and stands today a symbol of both school and community. No longer a church, it is occasionally used for events and private gatherings.
Oxford Historic District, National Register of Historic Places
In Cornerstone and Grove: A Portrait in Architecture and Landscape of Emory’s Birthplace in Oxford, Georgia, Erik Blackburn Oliver notes: The original part of this plain-style Greek Revival house is thought to have been built in the mid- to late 1840s; however, “there are records of a dwelling on these grounds in 1850 owned by the widow of Professor George W. Lane.” Lane, a clergyman, had been the classics teacher of the Manual Labor School, served as secretary to the board of trustees, and became the first professor of ancient languages of Emory College, so if indeed this was his first home in Oxford, it might date to the late 1830s.
It was later the home of Isaac Stiles Hopkins, hence the name. Hopkins was a professor and later the ninth president of Oxford (1884-1889).
Oxford Historic District, National Register of Historic Places
This was built as a plain-style Greek Revival cottage by the first president of Emory College, Ignatius Few, and has been home to most of the school’s chief executives. The two projecting front wings were added during the presidency of Augustus Baldwin Longstreet, and the Victorian details during the late 1800s. Longstreet’s daughter Virginia married Emory graduate Lucius Quintus Cincinnatus Lamar in the home. Lamar would go on to serve as a congressman, senator, Secretary of the Interior in the first Cleveland administration, and Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court. He was also the namesake of Lamar County, in central Georgia.
Young L. G. Harris [namesake of Young Harris College] purchased the home in 1899 and presented it to the Emory trustees for use as a home for the school’s presidents, which it remains today.
Oxford Historic District, National Register of Historic Places
Vanishing Georgia: Photographs by Brian Brown 