Dr. W. W. Bruce built this home in 1885 and it was later inherited by his daughter, Helen Bruce. Dr. Bruce’s father, Dr. Robert Bruce, was famed for his treatment of Typhoid fever.
Tockwotton-Love Place Historic District, National Register of Historic Places
This home was built by Thomas Jones of Greenwood Plantation as a wedding gift for his daughter Harriet and her husband, Dr. David S. Brandon, a prominent surgeon. [It’s referred to as the Dr. David Brandon House in the National Register of Historic Places]. Dr. Brandon sold the house to Mrs. John R. Hayes in 1862. In the last days of the Civil War, Professor Joseph LeConte of Liberty County was granted refuge here by the Hayes family. LeConte was an important physician, geologist, and early conservationist, but unfortunately, was a racist and supporter of white supremacy. [See link]
Originally a one-story brick house, the second floor and mansard roof were added in the 1870s. The brick was stuccoed at that time. The roof is covered with octagonal slate tiles, featuring a decorative flower design.
National Register of Historic Places
West End, one of the finest Italianate houses in Georgia, was built by Colonel James Hall Nichols (1834-1897) upon his arrival in the Nacoochee Valley from Milledgeville in 1870.
Nichols, who married Kate Latimer of Summerville, South Carolina, in 1856, served in the Confederate Army and was elected captain of the Governor’s Horse Guard in 1862, eventually attaining the rank of colonel.
When he returned to Middle Georgia after the war, weak and in declining health, he learned that his wife Kate S. Latimer Nichols had been raped by two Union soldiers. This would affect her mental state for the rest of her life.
While convalescing at the White Sulphur Springs Resort near Gainesville, Colonel Nichols became enamored of the Nacoochee Valley and began purchasing large tracts of land in the area. He named the property and house West End, for its location in the valley.
Nichols was primarily a gentleman farmer by this time and owned several businesses, including Nora Mill. The mentally incapacitated Kate lived out her days in an upstairs room, unwilling to face the outside world.
Anna Ruby, the only child of the Nichols to live to adulthood and namesake of the nearby Anna Ruby Falls, told friends her mother was dead, as to deny her existence and her mental illness. Colonel Nichols had her committed to the State Lunatic Asylum in the early 1890s and she remained there until her death.
The property was sold to Atlanta entrepreneur Calvin Welborn Hunnicutt (1827-1915) in 1893. Hunnicutt, also a Confederate veteran [organized the Fulton Dragoons] and Fulton County commissioner, was a very successful businessman in postwar Atlanta, owning a plumbing business and stove works.
The family never lived in West End but kept it as a retreat and vacation home. The Atlanta Constitution called him Atlanta’s oldest pioneer citizen upon his death. He had been in the city since 1847, when it was still a small village known as Marthasville.
The final owner of the West End property was Dr. Lamartine Griffin Hardman, (1856-1937) who purchased it in 1903 and renamed it Elizabeth on the Chattahoochee, in honor of his mother.
Hardman was the the son of a physician and a longtime physician himself who was also involved in numerous successful businesses.
He joined his father’s practice in 1890 after study in New York, Pennsylvania, and London. He came to the Nacoochee Valley from Harmony Grove [present-day Commerce] and within a few years married the much younger Emma Griffin of Valdosta, whom he had courted for many years.
He served in the Georgia House for eight years and sponsored a bill that created the State Board of Health.
He also served for a year in the Georgia Senate and then made two unsuccessful runs for governor. He was finally elected to the state’s highest office in 1927 and served two terms.
Nacoochee Valley Historic District, National Register of Historic Places
W. R. Asbury built this home and named it Oak Heights. Later it served as the Clarkesville hospital and was a boarding house known as the Charm House, hence its present designation. It has also been home to a bed and breakfast and a restaurant. It’s a grand Neoclassical house and sits back from Washington Street on a beautifully manicured lot.
Washington-Jefferson Street Historic District, National Register of Historic Places
Dr. Freeman was a medical doctor who also owned a drug store in Lavonia.
Vickery Street Historic District, National Register of Historic Places
Dr. A. G. Jones came to Lavonia in 1887 and built this house soon thereafter. It was the first house built on this section of Jones Street.
Jones Street Residential Historic District, National Register of Historic Places
Doctor’s offices of this style were quite common from the 1950s to the early 1970s. I’m not sure why it was such a popular choice, but they seemed to get the job done. This was named in memory of Dr. Stewart Dixon Brown, Sr. (1881-1952), and operated by his son, also a physician. The senior Dr. Brown was a beloved physician in Royston. A historical marker in front of the clinic notes that Dr. Brown served the people for 40 years, performing 35,000 operations. Since Royston had no hospital, he traveled from house to house in his early practice. He then opened a small hospital. It was the only such facility in the area until Dr. Brown’s childhood friend, Ty Cobb, gave money for the construction of Cobb Memorial in 1950. Dr. Brown was the first superintendent of Cobb Memorial.
This landmark of the Neoclassical style was built by Dr. C. T. Stovall after “Whitehall”, his previous home at this location, burned. Stovall was Vienna’s primary physician for many years, in addition to serving as the city’s first treasurer and eventually alderman and mayor. In 1914, he sold the home to Walter F. George, who was then serving as the Superior Court judge for the Cordele Circuit. George was elected to the United States Senate in 1922 where he would serve as one of its most influential members until shortly before his death in 1957. He sold the house in 1924.
Subsequent owners were the L. L. Woodward family, Georgia Supreme Court Associate Justice Hardy Gregory, Jr., and his nephew, Bert Gregory. Mr. Gregory graciously allowed me to photograph the house, which he was preparing for sale.
It’s been a wonderful showcase for Mr. Gregory’s numerous collections and served as his law office.
National Register of Historic Places
This eclectic Craftsman cottage was built of cypress lumber from the Okefenokee Swamp by Dr. Wilbur Alderman Hafford (1886-1950). Hafford was a country doctor who took care of many of the old-timers who lived in the swamp and was one of the founders of the Okefenokee Swamp Park.
The home was later owned by Dr. Hafford’s daughter, Lois Hafford Groszmann (1917-2010), a well-loved biology teacher at Waycross High School from 1949-1984. According to Sheila Willis of the Okefenokee Bird Club, who brought the house to my attention: Mrs. Groszmann was a leader in the Georgia Garden Club Federation plus a charter member of the Okefenokee Bird Club. Also, add in a world traveler. A wonderful lady!
In the back, by a small greenhouse built onto the house, is a Red Buckeye which was once the largest in the state. [The tree remains but I was unable to get a good photograph]. Sheila continues: In the adjacent area “was” a yard filled with all the old type camellias, azaleas, and other plants. From these she won many ribbons at flower shows. She also had planted a variety of other beautiful plants and trees around her house and in the back. And she had trailing vines over a trellis for the hummingbirds and an old grapevine on its supports shading the driveway.
A few years ago before she died, I contacted LeConte-Woodmanston Plantation near Riceboro & got them to come over to try to help me get some of these legacy plants to places where they might be protected. They took cuttings & after letting them grow in their greenhouse for a while, the plan was to transplant them to their recreated plantation garden.
Update: As of 2021, the house has been demolished.
I was honored to know Dr. Hingson and his wife Gussie, through a family connection, and was truly awed by the man’s genius, even when I was a teenager. Gussie was a lifelong friend of an older cousin, and I have many letters and Christmas cards they exchanged over the years.
The New York Times noted in their obituary of Dr. Hingson in 1996: Robert Andrew Hingson [was] a pioneer in the field of public health who made important contributions to anesthesia for safer, easier childbirth and to mass immunizations with the ”jet” injection…[his] fame was assured well before this relief work. His invention of continuous caudal — posterior — anesthesia and perfection of lumbar epidural anesthesia to prevent pain in childbirth earned him worldwide recognition.
Both techniques are credited with reducing maternal and infant mortality around the world. Dr. Hingson began epidural and jet injections as a fledgling physician when he was the director of anesthesia at the United States Marine Hospital on Staten Island from 1941 to 1943.
His jet injector speeded mass inoculations against many diseases, without needles or syringes. Hundreds of people could be inoculated in an hour, making the injector a vital tool in eradicating small pox.
In 1962 Dr. Hingson led a team that immunized a million people against smallpox in Liberia. In 1967 his foundation vaccinated 846,000 people against smallpox in Costa Rica and immunized people there against epidemics of measles and polio…