Thomas Landing, on the South Newport River, has been occupied since the early days of Colonial Georgia and its history is indelibly linked to the hundreds of African-Americans who resided here. They first landed here against their will but after Emancipation chose to remain, only to have their land taken from them by the United States government in the 1930s.
Harris Neck National Wildlife Refuge
The following history of the site is taken from the interpretive panel at Harris Neck National Wildlife Refuge: “Various plantations occupied this site from the 1740s through the 1870s. One of the earliest Harris Neck landowners was a man named Dickinson, and his property was known as Dickinson’s Neck. John Rutledge owned fifty acres on neighboring Bethany Plantation. He sold the tract to Ann Harris, who married Daniel Demetre in 1752. Her son, William Thomas Harris (Demetre’s stepson), acquired 350 acres on Dickinson’s Neck in 1758, and in 1759 he inherited an additional 750 acres on the “Neck” from his stepfather. Demetre’s will identified Williams’s residence as Bethany. This reference is the first documentation of a white landowner’s dwelling on the “Neck”.
“Early in the 1830s, another family gained prominence on Harris Neck. Jonathan Thomas acquired most of the Demetre-Harris holdings. Thomas’s 3000-acre Peru Plantation covered the eastern half of the present Harris Neck National Wildlife Refuge. The plantation produced sizeable cotton crops.
“The Civil War ended the plantation era on Harris Neck. The Thomas family subdivided Peru Plantation. Many small tracts were sold to former slaves or their descendants. From the 1870s through the 1930s, a community of primarily African-American developed on and near the current refuge land. By the 1940s, 171 tracts existed in the area now managed by the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
“During the 1880s, several large tracts bordering the South Newport River (the site of one Peru Plantation home) were acquired by Pierre Lorillard, the tobacco magnate, Eleanor Van Brunt Clapp, and Lily Livingston. Lorillard’s estate featured a lavish lodge, an indoor swimming pool filled from an artesian well, and formal gardens with reflecting pools and fountains.
“The lodge was used during World War II as the officers’ club for Harris Neck Army Airfield. The deteriorated building was sold at auction, when Harris Neck National Wildlife Refuge was established in 1962.“
Harris Neck National Wildlife Refuge
James Averette Bryan (1801-1847) and his wife Catherine Holloway Rix Bryan (1803-1861) were pioneer settlers of the long forgotten Wilna community. James A. Bryan migrated to Georgia from North Carolina, settling first in Twiggs County, and later in Houston. He was instrumental in the establishment of Houston County and in the layout of Perry [originally Wattsville]. Bryan originally built a log dogtrot house [pictured above] from timbers cut and milled on a site a few miles from Mulberry Grove. The original homestead was later occupied by Bryan’s oldest son, Dr. Robert Campbell Bryan, and his wife Eliza. [It survives but is not accessible to the public]. As his fortunes improved, Bryan constructed a more formal dwelling, known as Mulberry Grove, circa 1832* [pictured below, and in all subsequent photographs]. *-Some sources date the house to 1850, but discussions with two architectural historians and preservationists support the earlier date.
Mulberry Grove later became the home of Bryan’s third son, Abner Council Bryan and his wife, Harriet Taylor Bryan. Their son, John Averette Bryan and his wife, Linda Lee Bryan, eventually inherited it. Many members of the Bryan family are buried in an adjacent private cemetery, alongside the slaves who built and worked the plantation.
The most notable feature of the house is the rain porch [also referred to as a Carolina rain porch]. Originally, there were only four stucco-covered posts but at some point two more were added for stability. Rain porches are a very rare architectural element in Georgia.
The original kitchen is attached to the house by an enclosed breezeway. The addition of modern steps are one of the few overall modifications visible at the rear of the house.
Rear elevation, from the southeast. Note the double chimney
PLEASE NOTE: Mulberry Grove is private property and is monitored closely by physical and digital means. I am grateful to have been invited by the new owner to photograph the property. He is very interested in making accurate historical renovations to the house and I believe he will be a good steward.
The Greek Revival plantation home of Thomas Reid Lumsden is truly exceptional, featuring carved columns and 12-over-12 windows. It has remained in the same family throughout its history.
In his monumental history A Rockaway in Talbot: Travels in an Old Georgia County [Hester Printing, 1985], William H. Davidson notes that Lumsden made his way to Talbot County when he married his second wife, Virginia Pierce Leonard in 1853. They lived for a time in Floyd County but were back in Talbot, building this house circa 1853-1854.
Davidson also points out the influence of Andrew Jackson Downing’s 1850 pattern book The Architecture of Country Houses. He notes The verandah of the Lumsden house was very likely adapted therefrom by Urban Cooper Tigner, contractor and builder of the house, his own nearby plantation house, and the Collinsworth United Methodist Church. Thanks to Jim Bruce for sharing scans from Davidson’s book.
Thanks to Trae Ingram for the identification.
Archaeologists believe this plantation was built on the site of a 17th century Yuchi Indian trading village known as Ogeechee Old Town. European ownership of the property dates to 1767 (platted in 1769), when an Irish trader named George Galphin was granted the land by the Colony of Georgia. Galphin took advantage of the property’s frontage on the Ogeechee River, building an extremely successful mill and trading post. The original Crown grant of 1400 acres is one of the few remaining in Georgia that has never been subdivided.
After a succession of various owners, the Fitzsimmons family held the property from 1809-1860. In 1862, it was purchased by William Wingfield Simpson and Linton Stephens, brother of Confederate vice-president Alexander H. Stephens. Though General Sherman did not visit Old Town, Stephens’s descendants believe many of the structures were looted or destroyed by marauding Union soldiers. Restarting the plantation after the war proved too challenging to Simpson and Stephens and it was sold to William D. Grant in 1878.
Grant, who lived in Atlanta, leased convicts from the state in an effort to revitalize the property. It essentially became a convict labor camp, known as Penitentiary Number 3. Captain Thomas Jefferson James, who oversaw the convict labor at Old Town, purchased it from Grant in 1888. He sold it in 1891 to James L. Dickey, also an Atlanta businessman. Dickey replaced the convict labor with tenants, but lacking the success of his predecessors, sold the plantation to Central of Georgia Railroad president Hugh Moss Comer of Savannah in 1896.
Hugh Comer, Jr., was soon given title to the property but with little interest in farming or country life, sold it to his brother John Drewry Comer and cousin Fletcher Comer in 1908. It was during their ownership that the present tenant structures were constructed. Fletcher bought out John D.’s part in 1910 but was unable to meet the debt. His father, Alabama governor Braxton Bragg Comer, took over the property. Fletcher remained on the property but all decisions were made by Governor Comer. Fred and his wife eventually moved away from the plantation, and upon Governor Comer’s death in 1927, the property was sold to Lewis Dye.
The Depression saw the farm shift to subsistence farming, with plots being rented to tenants. The George Crouch family purchased Old Town in 1953 and subsequently made extensive updates to the property. Their stewardship has been integral to the preservation of this amazing place.
[Source: Gillispie, Elizabeth A., “An Examination of an Ice House at Old Town Plantation” (2012). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 624. Georgia Southern University]
There are three surviving saddlebag tenant houses on the highway near Old Town Plantation. One is attached to a more modern house, so I didn’t get a photograph. All are typical examples of a style of tenant house once commonly found throughout South Georgia. There’s also a hip roof house which may have been home to an overseer. It was too obscured by vegetation to photograph.
This example features a shed room.
Remnants of magazine pages and detergent boxes can still be seen on the walls, an indication of the harsh reality of life in these spaces. They were used for insulation.
It amazes me that such utilitarian structures have survived for over a century.
This sandstone enclosure is the de facto memorial to one of early Georgia’s best known politicians, Governor George Michael* Troup (8 September 1780-26 April 1856). The obelisk was placed in 1848 upon the death of Troup’s brother, Robert Lachlan Troup (1784-1848). The enclosure was built by slaves from sandstone quarried nearby at Berry Hill Bluff of the Oconee River.
*- Some sources assert that Troup’s middle name was actually McIntosh. This is due to the fact that Troup’s mother was a McIntosh and he was born at McIntosh’s Bluff on Alabama’s Tombigbee River, which was part of Georgia at the time of the governor’s birth.
Detail of engraving of George Troup from The Life of George M. Troup by Edward Jenkins Harden, 1859. Public domain.
Governor Troup spent most of his time after his 1833 retirement at Val d’ Osta, his home in Dublin. He died while visiting Rosemont Plantation, one of numerous properties he owned in Laurens and Montgomery counties. A man of his time, Troup was a fierce supporter of slavery, owning around 400 human beings during his lifetime. It is also suggested that, like many slave owners, he fathered children with some of his female slaves.
Troup served as a state representative, member of the House of Representatives, United States senator, and two-term governor of Georgia (1823-1827). Georgia’s best-known politician of the era, William Harris Crawford, encouraged Troup to run for governor. His first run was unsuccessful, due largely to the deep divide between the aristocratic planter class (by now known as Troupites) and the common farmers and frontier settlers (known as Clarkites, for John Clark) that had dominated state politics since the late 18th century. The state largely favored the Clarkites, but when Clark chose not to run in 1823, Troup was elected as an alternative. As a Democratic-Republican governor he ensured the removal of the Creek peoples from Georgia, a dubious achievement from a modern perspective. His endorsement of the Treaty of Indian Springs was met with an amended version from President John Quincy Adams, who favored allowing the Creeks slightly more land, but Troup ordered the militia to enforce his version. President Adams capitulated, not wanting to go to “war” with Troup over the Indian issue. He eventually became a strong Jacksonian Democrat and was nationally recognized for being a champion of states’ rights.
The ornamental iron gate was designed by Savannah blacksmiths D. & W. Rose.
Governor Troup was the namesake of Troup County, and Troupville, the first permanent county seat of Lowndes County. The present county seat of Lowndes County, Valdosta, is named for his plantation, Val d’ Osta.
This well-maintained Sears-Roebuck kit house was built around the time R. J. Reynolds, Jr., acquired the island. The area around the Chocolate Plantation ruins was still being farmed at the time.
It’s presently owned by the Department of Natural Resources.
This house was likely used by tenants of Shoulderbone Plantation. I believe it may actually be two houses that were joined together at some point.
This is part of the Shoulderbone Plantation property, to my understanding, and was owned by the Lanier family for many years. I’m unsure who the original owners were.
This imposing Greek Revival plantation home, situated on a high point overlooking acres of gently rolling hills and pristine farmland, was built by William Jackson for his son, John Swinney Jackson and his first wife, Artemesia Hall. The elder Jackson acquired the property from William Knowles in 1832. John Jackson, who had lived all of his life in Hancock and Greene Counties developed the property, through slave labor, into a thriving agricultural operation. At the outset of the Civil War, Jackson owned over 1000 acres and 38 enslaved Africans. Like most Georgians, Jackson served the Confederate cause and the futile effort ended in his loss of the plantation. It was purchased by Robert M. Grimes in 1870 who sold it to James M. Harris in 1874. Grimes reacquired it in 1880, but after a lawsuit over debts sold it back to Harris in 1881. Harris sold it to Henry Thomas Lewis in 1900. Lewis was an Associate Justice of the Georgia Supreme Court who lived in Greensboro and Siloam, keeping the plantation as a country retreat. After Lewis’s death, his widow sold the plantation to Jeff W. N. Lanier, whose family owned neighboring lands. Subsequent owners were D. B. Taylor and Dorsey L. Campbell. Campbell’s daughter, Alice Hartley, deeded the house back to the Lanier family in 1982.
The property is known today as Shoulderbone Plantation, for the historical Shoulderbone Creek which runs nearby.
National Register of Historic Places