Tag Archives: Georgia Turpentine Industry

Solomon Hall House, Tattnall County

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An old, dilapidated wooden house with a rusty metal roof, surrounded by tall grass and trees.

I was recently invited by Laura Potts-Wirth to photograph an old sharecropper’s house on her property near Glennville.

An abandoned wooden house with a red metal roof, showing signs of decay and overgrowth, surrounded by tall grass and trees in the background.

Though there are no plans to restore the house, it is an important example of vernacular architecture and I’m honored to have been given access.

An abandoned, dilapidated wooden house with a rusted metal roof, showing signs of wear and neglect, surrounded by overgrown grass and trees.

It is a simple gabled-ell cottage, likely built between the 1910s-1930s.

Abandoned wooden house wall with a dirty window frame, showing cobwebs and peeling paint.

The owner was Solomon R. Hall, Sr., (1902-1988). He and his wife Mollie Bee E. Hall (1905-1970) raised thirteen children and three grandchildren here, while sharecropping on the Old Anderson Place, to which this property was once attached. Records indicate that ownership passed back and forth between Mr. Hall and the Andersons over the years.

An old blue cabinet with a wooden door, standing next to a rustic table in an abandoned building, with overgrown grass visible outside.

Solomon Hall was also a turpentine laborer and would have known the woods and fields around his home as well as anyone else.

Interior view of a weathered wooden door frame with a partially open door and a wooden wall, showcasing rustic materials and textures.

Just across US 301 from the property there was once a community of African-Americans known as Hall Town. The only remaining public landmark of the community is the Old Hall Town Cemetery, which I also documented.

An abandoned interior of a room with wooden walls, a partially open door, a window showing greenery outside, and debris scattered on the floor.

The interior rooms are spare, which was characteristic of this type of housing.

Interior of an abandoned room with wooden floors, a round table, and a window showing trees outside. The walls are brown with peeling paint, and there are dust and leaves scattered on the floor.

I think it is hard for most people to imagine a dozen or more people living in such spaces, but it was much more common than one might realize.

An empty, weathered room with blue wooden walls featuring an old rocking chair and a partially open door, showcasing rustic and worn textures.

Gary Mobley, in a March 2020 oral history interview with Laura Potts-Wirth, noted, “Here, Solomon Hall and his wife, Mrs. Bea (sic)…, raised 13 children, and three grandchildren. They did work for part of the harvest. They hunted the land and also got a portion of the hog meat. The small building in the back of their house was either a smokehouse or a summer kitchen. One of the jobs the Sharecroppers had was keeping the farm rows cleared of weeds and clearing volunteer trees for three feet on either side of the fence rows. Up near the pond, there was another sharecropper’s house, where Choice Coley lived...”

An old, weathered wooden shed with missing planks and a rusted metal roof, surrounded by tall grass and trees under a cloudy sky.

Kelly and Fran Folsom spoke very highly of both Solomon Hall and Choice Coley and recalled to Laura Potts-Wirth: “…Mr.Solomon was really responsible for overseeing the farm, especially as Mr. Anderson was getting older, and also when the Dents owned the farm. Solomon Hall really had a lot to do with supervising and managing the farm, overseeing the work being done, and just being a caretaker of the farm.“

An outdoor rustic privy, or outhouse, with a corrugated metal roof, situated among trees and grass, showing signs of weathering and age.

The survival of the outbuildings adds importance to the property as a representative example of its type. Even the old privy, re-sided, is a reminder of the times.

Close-up of a vibrant red flower with long, slender petals and multiple stamens, surrounded by green grass.

Plantings by Mrs. Hall are still blooming, like this hurricane (or spider) lily.

A vibrant field of lush green plants with pink and yellow flowers under a partly cloudy sky.

There are clumps of another old favorite, lantana, in several spots around the house.

A dilapidated wooden house with a rusted metal roof, surrounded by tall grass and trees in a rural landscape.

Parker Turpentine Camp, 1920s, Wefanie

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Jim and Lemma Parker House, 1920s, restored circa 2000.

This home at Wefanie was the center of a bustling turpentine camp owned by the James Edgar “Jim” Parker, Jr., (1900-1973) family. Mr. Parker’s son, Jimmy Parker, told Mike McCall and me in 2018 that he spent more money restoring this house than all the other buildings on the former turpentine camp were worth combined. He noted that he and his two sisters were born and raised here until the family built something more substantial. These photos were made between 2010-2018

As to Wefanie, I have talked to several locals, including Mr. Parker, and no one seems to know the origins of the name. It’s located within the larger boundaries of the Jones Creek community. And it’s pronounced “WE-fanny”.

Parker Turpentine Camp Tenant Cabin No. 1 – Front View

An article by Clinton Oliver in the 2 May 2002 issue of The Glennville Sentinel saluting the 100th birthday of Mrs. Lemma Wells Parker (1902-2002) details life at the turpentine camp.

Parker Turpentine Camp Tenant Cabin No. 1 – Rear View

“The [Parker] girls had fond memories of visiting and playing with the girls of the tenant families living in shanties Mr. Parker [Jim, Jr.] had erected to house the families of his turpentine workers. They ate many meals of “soul food” prepared by the gentle and hardworking black mothers of the “turpentine quarters”. “

Parker Turpentine Camp Tenant Cabin No. 2 – Front View

Mary Ida and Jo Anna [Parker] told of the spotlessly clean floors in the tenant houses. “The women scrubbed the floors with water and lye until the boards were white. Then the mothers would spread croaker [sic] sacks (burlap bags) on the floor for us to sit on and play.”

Parker Turpentine Camp Tenant Cabin No. 2 – Rear View. The shed room was an essential addition to many of these structures, usually to accommodate a growing family.

Jimmy recalled that the shanties were completely covered with Kudzu vines to keep the houses cool inside. “They had to keep the runners clipped to keep them from blocking the doors.”

Parker Turpentine Camp Tenant Cabin No. 2 – Interior

As the use of drink cartons as insulation in this photo suggests, these structures were often used as rental properties much later their use in the turpentine industry.

Parker Turpentine Camp Privy

Though most of these structures won’t be around too much longer, they represent an important intact example of a vanished way of life.

Parker Turpentine Camp Barn

It’s notable that Jimmy Parker left these buildings standing, as many such places have long been demolished or fallen to ruin.

Parker Turpentine Camp Commissary

This well-preserved building served as a commissary for turpentine workers.

Note: This is a consolidation of several older posts related to this property. As of 2025, the Parker House and commissary are in good condition, but the woods have grown back up around the worker housing and they are highly endangered, at best.

Catfaces: Silent Witnesses of a Lost Industry

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As they heal, it’s harder to see the emblematic “whiskers” that led to them being called catfaces, but these scarred pines gave life to a labor-intensive industry that was integral to American shipping and employed thousands in Southern Georgia until the early 1960s.

“Catface” describes the scars on the trees that remained after they were notched for the collection of resin, aka sap. The main reason for the demand for resin was its use for waterproofing ships, hence the term “naval stores”. Turpentine had myriad uses beyond the naval stores industry.

In the 1800s, trees were “boxed”, a process in which the collection receptacle was cut into the tree itself, and eventually killed it after all the resin was extracted.

UGA professor Charles Herty developed the “Herty Method” in 1901, which produced a better product and allowed the trees to live after they were sapped out.

In this process, a section of bark was removed and an angled notch, or streak, was cut into the wood. Below the notch, metal strips were placed to direct the resin into a collection vessel, sometimes a terra cotta “Herty cup” or a tin cup.

When the first notch stopped producing, a new one would be cut directly above it. This process could be repeated several times, and since the streaks, looked like cat whiskers, the remnant scars were known as catfaces.

Trees involved in the naval stores industry can still be found, if you know where to look.

Most of the characteristic scars have “healed” over time, a testament to the ability of the pines to survive, and have left behind interesting variations. As these trees age and die, there won’t be any new catfaces, so if you see one, you’re seeing something special.

Since most turpentine stands are on private property, the red-blazed trail at Laura S. Walker State Park near Waycross, where I photographed these examples, is one of the best places to see these fascinating landmarks.

Pine Needle Bathing Suits Helped Promote Georgia Turpentine

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Eliza Peeples*, Spirit of Turpentine, Circa 1936, from an Atlanta newspaper

Eliza Peeples must not have been too bothered by the sharp pine needles that made up the bulk of her bathing suit, but she was wearing the outfit to help promote turpentine. As part of its promotional push, the American Turpentine Farmers Association (ATFA) began holding an annual Miss Spirits of Turpentine beauty pageant in 1940, where this costume, as well as a pine needle tiara, were part of the show. This photograph is scanned from a newspaper article published in one of the Atlanta papers soon after the association was formed, so I think Eliza was more of a mascot than an official “queen”. I can’t locate the paper in my archives at the moment, so I don’t have an exact date. I don’t know when the pageant was phased out, but the last “turpentine queen” was crowned in 1995, long after the disbanding of the group.

Harley Langdale of Valdosta formed ATFA as a cooperative of naval stores producers in 1936. They came from the “Turpentine Belt” states of Georgia, Alabama, Florida, South Carolina, North Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky, Virginia, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas. And Georgia was usually the leading producer. Judge Langdale led the organization for 29 years, but the industry, which boomed during World War II, reached its peak by the late 1940s. Innovations such as fire breaks and controlled burns were adopted early by ATFA members, and their benefits are still integral to forestry today. For a time, turpentine was one of the biggest employers in the rural South. Numerous factors, primarily modernization and competition from the chemicals industry, as well as the loss of labor due to the Great Migration, spelled the end of ATFA, and broad scale production, by 1975. Memories of the industry are fading from the collective consciousness but a few of the old turpentine shacks, commissaries, and stills can be found scattered throughout Georgia.

*- I was able to learn that Eliza Peeples McLemore (1920-2011) lived in Griffin, Georgia, for most of her adult life, and that she had a twin sister, Louie Peeples White (1920-2009). They were the daughters of Russell Alexander Peeples and Ethel Orr Peeples.

Shingler Commissary, 1910, Miller County

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From what little information I can locate on Miller County’s historic places, I’ve preliminarily identified this as a commissary built circa 1910 by Joe Shingler to serve his timber and turpentine business. This building looks a little later than 1910, but it was possibly “modernized” at some time during its history and served as a general store. It likely originally featured lapboard siding similar to the adjacent barns, which date to the same time.

Saddlebag Tenant House, Treutlen County

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This was may have been part of the Soperton Naval Stores operations.

Commissary, Laurens County

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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.

Captain C. C. Grace House, Circa 1864, Screven

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Nine years ago, Lindsay Thomas, Jr., whose family owns and maintains this wonderful Georgia Centennial Farm, reached out to me about photographing the old home place near Screven. Lindsay’s father served in the United States House of Representatives from 1983-1993. Lindsay was very interested in documenting the large number of catface pines and Herty cups on the property. I still haven’t gotten around to making those photographs, but hope to someday soon. [For those not in the know, catfaces are the scars left behind by the collection of pine sap for the manufacture of turpentine. The naval stores business was dominant in this region until at least the 1950s.]

The farm, known as Grace Acres today, was established by Captain C. C. Grace, circa 1864, and the house was likely built around that time. The family has maintained a presence in the area ever since and they’re not only good stewards of the land, but they do a fine job of maintaining this historic home.

Red Taylor House, Sandy Bottom

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I suspected this house had connections to the turpentine industry and Vernon Taylor wrote to confirm: I was raised in Sandybottom and left when I was 17 years old…it brings back great memories.  I lived with my Mom and Dad I that house that you took in Sandybottom of which you referenced “working in turpentine”.  You were right my Dad did and sometimes I would help him….thanks for the memories!

Vernon also said that though the Lang family owned the land, each home was owned by the individuals who lived in them. He noted that his father, known as “Red” because of his Native American heritage,  and his uncle, Hance Pope, both worked in turpentine..

Turpentine Cabin, Emanuel County

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