Georgia Natural Wonder #151 - Grady County (Part 2). 1,444

[Top Row Dawg]

Georgia Natural Wonder #151 - Grady County (Part 2)

Tangent On Grady County

We came down to this part of Georgia on a search for the top ten caves of Georgia. We found the Glory Hole Cavern and since we may not be back to Grady County for a while, we do a tangent on this great county standing on the wall guarding us from Florida.



Grady County, on the southwest border of Georgia, is the state's 139th county. Created in 1905 from 458 square miles of Decatur and Thomas counties, it was named after Henry W. Grady, prominent editor of the Atlanta Constitution and national spokesman for the "New South." He was a charter member of the Eta Chapter of Chi Phi at the University of Georgia. He was a journalist and orator who helped reintegrate the states of the Confederacy into the Union after the American Civil War. Grady encouraged the industrialization of the South.



Grady County in Georgia and Oklahoma were named in his honor. Places in Atlanta named for him include Grady Memorial Hospital, Henry W. Grady High School, the now-demolished Henry Grady Hotel, and the Henry W. Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Georgia. The city erected a statue in his honor in 1891, which still stands today on Marietta Street in the heart of downtown Atlanta.



Located along Georgia's border with Florida, Grady County is part of the "Plantation Trace Travel Region," which includes several southwest Georgia counties.



Seminole Indians originally held the land now encompassed by Grady County. The first white settlers traveled from the Carolinas along Indian trails from the South Carolina line near Augusta, across the state to Macon, and down to the southwest. Among the settlers was William Hawthorne, a Baptist minister and explorer who arrived in the 1820s and settled his family about three miles south of present-day Cairo, on Tired Creek. Some of his friends in North Carolina followed him and settled farther south, around the present-day town of Calvary. Additionally a number of white Florida settlers moved to Georgia seeking safety when the Seminole Wars began.


Hawthorne and Grave.



The county seat, Cairo, was previously called Miller's Station for a stagecoach stop named after a nearby settler, Henry Miller. In 1859 the Atlantic and Gulf Railroad began running through the settlement on its route from Screven to Thomasville, and in 1867 it established Railroad Station Number 20, called the Cairo Station after a nearby post office.


People gather outside the Atlantic Coast Line Depot in Cairo, the seat of Grady County, circa 1916. With the arrival of the railroads in the county, area residents were able to market their agricultural products, including timber.


Forest of lumber Grady County. .

Lots were sold to prospective townspeople beginning in 1866, and the town was incorporated in 1870. When Grady County was created, Cairo was designated the county seat. The police department currently occupies the old depot, built in 1905.


The first courthouse, built in 1908, burned down in 1980; a new courthouse was soon built on the same spot.


The Grady County Courthouse in Cairo was built in the early 1980s after an earlier courthouse, constructed in 1908, burned.

Cairo and Whigham are the two incorporated cities in Grady County. Whigham, originally called Harrell's Station, took its current name in 1880 for Robert Whigham, the owner of a large local mercantile store. Other communities in Grady County are Beachton, Calvary, Pine Park, and Reno. Before the Civil War (1861-65), settlers made their living in agriculture.


Sugar cane cultivation and slaughtering beef.

The sandy loam of the area supported a variety of food crops, and land was cleared of pine forests to allow for farming.


Echo's of past in Grady County.

Until railroad transportation allowed them to market their goods, most inhabitants lived by subsistence farming.



This started changing with Reconstruction, when sawmills were established, rail transportation became routine, and the county broadened its economic base to include forest products as well as market crops.



A satellite campus of Southwest Georgia Technical College (later Southern Regional Technical College) opened in Cairo in 2006.



Some points of interest in the county include the Birdsong Nature Center, a nonprofit nature preserve and education center created in 1986 from the former Birdsong Plantation, which was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1995.



A birding trail winds through the Birdsong Nature Center, located partially in Grady County.



Birdsong was founded in 1986 as a nonprofit educational center to offer programs in biodiversity, land management, and the longleaf-pine ecosystem.


Grady County 1911 and today.

According to the 2010 U.S. census, the population of Grady County is 25,011, an increase from the 2000 population of 23,659.

Cities

    Cairo
    Whigham

Census-designated place

    Calvary

Unincorporated communities

    Beachton
    Pine Park
    Reno
    Roddenberry
    Spence

Cairo, incorporated in 1870, is located in Grady County in southwest Georgia, thirty miles north of Tallahassee, Florida. Named either for the city in Egypt or for Cairo, Illinois, but pronounced "Cayroe," the city has been the county seat since 1906. For decades it was known as the heart of Georgia's syrup industry.


Cairo was sheltering in place way before the pandemic.

According to the 2010 U.S. census, Cairo has 9,607 residents. The town covers 9.37 square miles and is governed by a five-member city council, mayor, and an appointed city manager. Manufacturing and the retail and wholesale trades are the top industries.

Early Years

In the early 1800s William Hawthorne (or Hawthorn), a Baptist preacher and explorer, became the first settler in the area and cut a forty-mile trail through it. Building a home for his family at Tired Creek three miles south of the current city of Cairo, Hawthorne encouraged other friends from North Carolina to come to Georgia and begin the settlement at Miller's Station. The threat of attack from the Seminoles who lived in the north Florida swamps meant that all men between the ages of sixteen and sixty served in the local militia.


Only thing attacking Cairo today is tornadoes.

Early settlers include Henry Miller, who moved to what was then Thomas County in 1842, when Miller's Station was a stagecoach stop between Thomasville and Bainbridge. By 1860 the Atlantic and Gulf Railroad had bought land for a depot from residents Nancy and Malachi Collins as well as from Phoebe and Washington Baggett. In 1866 H. H. Tooke and James H. Hayes sold their land in the area so that the town of Cairo could be founded.


Cairo today.

In 1862 Henry Miller sold his land to Seaborn Anderson Roddenbery. That same year, Roddenbery began his medicine practice in a horse-drawn buggy, from which he sold his open-kettle sugarcane syrup. By 1867 Roddenbery had an office and a general store that sold syrup from large cypress barrels, and people brought their own jars to be filled with his molasses.



In 1889 Roddenbery marketed the first pure Georgia cane syrup as "Roddenbery's Old Plantation Molasses."


Monument to Seaborn in Cairo.

By 1920 the business was known as the W. B. Roddenbery Company. W. R. Roddenbery improved upon his father’s cane syrup recipe and in 1890 began commercial production. Beginning in 1936, the company expanded its product lines to include pickles, peanut butter, and boiled peanuts.



In 1993 Dallas-based Dean Foods purchased W. R. Roddenbery and about ten years later closed the Cairo plant. The former plant has been renovated and is now the regional community center with meeting and banqueting facilities.



The Roddenbery name isn’t just synonymous with Cairo; it’s known throughout the nation for its products, from syrups to pickles.


By 1920, when this building was constructed, Roddenbery’s was already a major food production industry. The second floor originally served as the Cairoga Club headquarters, with several business leasing storefronts downstairs. From 1932 to 1970, the business offices for the W. R. Roddenbery Company occupied the second floor. Sadly, Roddenbery’s was sold to Dean Foods in 1993, the local factory was sold ten years later, and no Roddenbery pickles or peanut butter are to be found today. Cane Patch Syrup is still around, though,  and the Cairo football team is still known as the Syrupmakers.

Twentieth-Century Development

Having escaped most of the ravages of the Civil War (1861-65), the Cairo area grew rapidly at the turn of the twentieth century. Located on the Lower Coastal Plain of southwest Georgia, the area is known for its many streams, long growing season, and sandy loam soil that produces many diverse crops.

The Cairo Commercial Historic District is a 12-acre historic district that was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1994.


Postcard of Women's Clubhouse of Cairo


Postcard of Entrance to Pope Museum, Cairo


Muggridge Store, Cairo, Ga.

It had 31 contributing buildings, mostly on North and South Broad Street, but also on Railroad Avenue and on Second Avenue and one on First Street. It includes:

Citizens Bank (c. 1908), 128 South Broad Street, a Neoclassical Revival building with a vault design
115 South Broad Street, a three-story building with paired stone pilasters
Zebulon Theater (1936), 207 North Broad Street, a two-story, brick building with Art Deco influence


Mrs. Ethel Blanton opened the Zebulon on 15 April 1936 . She named it Zebulon in honor of her husband, Zebulon Blanton. It was sold to the Dunn Family Theatres in 1950 and again to Larry Bearden in 1973. Mr. Bearden operated it until 2000, at which time it was purchased by the Community Foundation of South West Georgia. It’s still open and shows recent movies.

United States Post Office (1935), 203 North Broad Street, a Stripped Classical building built with funds from the Federal Emergency Administration of Public Works (FEAPW, a Public Works Administration forerunner). It has a New Deal mural, "Products of Grady County", by Paul Ludwig Gill.



Three, one-story brick warehouses (1909) on Railroad Avenue
Cairo Depot (c.1880), formerly the Atlantic Coastline Depot, which in 1994 was the Cairo Police Station, a stucco-over-masonry building with overhanging eaves, brackets, and a large hipped roof.



The Sasser Farm in Grady County, Georgia, near Cairo, Georgia, was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1983. It included nine contributing buildings. Jackie Robinson's parents worked here when he was born.



According to its NRHP nomination, it was deemed significant in part as "a good example of the type of small, family-owned farmstead that once abounded in southwest Georgia. From the simple log house and later the "new" house, a farm was maintained where cotton, corn, and livestock were raised. Several county innovations are said to have occurred here including the first dipping vats for cattle, one of the first large, raised concrete silos, and construction of an ice house before ice came into general use. The Sasser Farm truly represents the American frontier dream."


The "new" house was built in 1887. It is a one-story double pen, central hall plan house with a metal roof. An overhanging portion of the roof is supported by four columns.The old was a log house built in c.1839.Besides the houses buildings on the site include a wash house, a smokehouse, a cold storage (ice) building, a garage, a corn crib, a mule barn, and a silo.


The former county courthouse, which was destroyed by fire in 1980, and jail were built in 1908.


The current courthouse was built in the 1980s.

The city's newspaper, the Cairo Messenger, was founded in 1904 and has been owned and operated by five generations of the Wind family ever since. In 2004 the Georgia legislature commemorated the newspaper's centenary.





The Roddenbery Memorial Library in Cairo, housed in a building of nearly 19,000 square feet, contains one of the best children's libraries in the area, as well as a "story garden" and genealogy collection. The library was founded in 1939, under a Works Progress Administration program, by Wessie Connell, a local librarian.



In 1964 Connell persuaded the family of Walter Blair Roddenbery to donate $185,000 to build a new facility. Connell, who is credited with such innovations as story time, branch libraries, and other outreach programs, was also active in the civil rights movement. She won numerous awards, and many of her ideas have become standard practices in libraries across the United States.

Recreation and entertainment

Cairo is close to great hunting, fishing, and points of historical interest. The local industrial base continues to grow with manufacturing, service, and healthcare companies anchoring a strong economy.


Hunt close in there. Come back Quails.

The most famous Cairo festival is the Great Southern Antique Car Rally, for which Cairo earned its nickname as Georgia's Hospitality City. Along with matchbox cars and antique bicycles, the Cairo Antique Auto Museum boasts examples of the world's most expensive cars from every decade of the 1900s.



It features a wide range of cars, and includes many activities: a poker run, a parade, and even a street dance. It usually takes place on the second weekend of May. Sponsored by Mr. Chick, it is an annual event that attracts many people to the southwest corner of Georgia.

Notable Residents of Cairo

Vereen Bell; author


Bell, book, highway.



Jake Bundrick, drummer for the pop/rock band Mayday Parade.



Teresa Edwards, former professional basketball player and an Olympic gold medalist.



Emerson Hancock, pitcher for University of Georgia and top prospect for 2020 MLB Draft.


Ain't even graduated yet, got a Wikipedia page.

Willie Harris, outfielder and second baseman in Major League Baseball from 2001 through 2012, member 2005 World Champion White Sox.


Kennesaw State man.

Bryan Johnson, former professional motocross racer.


His daughter must have stepped on a crack, because he broke his back in 2008. .

John Monds, 2010 Libertarian gubernatorial candidate for the state of Georgia.



David Ponder, former defensive tackle for the Dallas Cowboys.


Florida Sate man.

Ernest Riles, shortstop and third baseman in Major League Baseball.



Jackie Robinson, Baseball Hall of Famer; first person to break the color barrier in Major League Baseball; born in Cairo.


Jackie with his mom and siblings.


Jackie did it all at UCLA.


With the Kansas City Monarchs and local Marker.

Matthew "Mack" Robinson, Olympic silver medalist, older brother of Jackie Robinson.


At Pasadena College and at Olympics. 2nd place only to Jesse Owens. 4/10ths of a second from being first person of color to win Gold medal in Olympics.


Statue to Jack and Mack in Pasadena.

Daryle Singletary, country music singer.



George Thornewell Smith, Georgia politician state lieutenant governor in 1967-70 and a justice in the Supreme Court of Georgia.



Bill Stanfill, former All-Pro National Football League defensive end.


Dawg!


Our only Outland Trophy winner, two time Super Bowl champion.

Mickey Thomas, lead singer of Jefferson Starship.


Grace and Mickey.

Bobby Walden, former punter for the Pittsburgh Steelers and Minnesota Vikings. Legend for Georgia Bulldogs as the "Big Toe From Cairo"


Dawg!

J. J. Wilcox, safety for the New York Jets.


Georgia Southern man.

Arthur L. Williams Jr., founder of Primerica Financial Services.



Curley Williams, country music singer and songwriter; born near Cairo in Grady County.



Whigham is a city in Grady County, Georgia, United States. The population was 471 at the 2010 census, down from 631 in 2000.


Downtown Whigham.

History

The community was named after Robert Whigham, a local merchant.The Georgia General Assembly incorporated Whigham as a town in 1896. It was incorporated again as a city in 1970.


City Hall.


This Queen Anne-style depot was built before 1895. It’s been a feed store for years, and the owners have done a great job preserving most of the architectural features.


Whigham Baptist Church.


Harrison-Gibbs House, Circa 1874, Whigham.

The Ebenezer African Methodist Episcopal Church and School, in Whigham, Georgia, in Grady County, United States, was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2008.



The Ebenezer African Methodist Episcopal Church was founded in the 1860s. It obtained the Martin Avenue property in 1878. The first church built there, a log building, was destroyed by fire in 1920, and the present church was then built that same year.



The schoolhouse on the property was built around 1930, and was the only school for black children of Whigham and the area until segregation was ended in the 1970s.



Regular worship at the church ceased in the 1980s; in 2008 the church was being rehabilitated.

Whigham's Rattlesnake Roundup

The thing Whigham is most famous for is the annual Rattlesnake Roundup.





I had not given it much thought, but after posting this on the Lounge, a few posters took issue with the Round up. I dug a little and found a few thoughts worthy of an addendum to this post.

Rattlesnakes play a key role in the food web, especially in terms of rodent control.

To catch snakes for the event, hunters spray gasoline into tortoise burrows, destroying the burrows and often killing the animals inside. More than 350 species depend on tortoise burrows for food and shelter.

There are many more annual fatalities in the United States from dog bites, lightning strikes and bee stings than from venomous snake bites.

Claxton, Ga., transformed its roundup into a Rattlesnake and Wildlife Festival, which includes no collection contest or snake killings. And the town of Fitzgerald, Ga., replaced its roundup with a Wild Chicken Festival, which organizers say has been an enormous success.(Don't the Chickens run wild in Fitzgerald like they do in Key West?)

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced that the eastern diamondback rattlesnake may warrant protection under the Endangered Species Act.

So endangered rat eater and destruction of Gopher Tortoise burrows, I'm agin that.

Notable People of Whigham

The electric blues guitarist, songwriter, and singer Johnnie Marshall was born in Whigham in 1961.



The Plath Family, who have a strange show on TLC in its first (and probably only) season.



Calvary is a census-designated place and unincorporated community in Grady County, Georgia, United States. As of the 2010 census its population was 161. It is located along Georgia State Route 111, 15 miles southwest of Cairo, the Grady County seat. Tallahassee, Florida, is 23 miles to the south. Calvary is home to an annual "Mule Day," which swells the population of the town from less than 200 to 60,000 or more.



Agriculture is an important part of the local economy. The top crops in the county are cotton, corn and peanuts, while chickens are overwhelmingly the most important livestock. Hurricane Michael struck the region on Wednesday, October 10, 2018, causing catastrophic damage to agriculture.

History

The area where Calvary is located was settled circa 1835-1836 by emigrants from Sampson County, North Carolina. Settlers claimed they chose the area after hearing claims that the soil was similar to their home county, and so would support similar crops. The community was referred to by some as the North Carolina settlement after these Carolina settlers.


Calvary all about Mule Day now.

Historical Census statistics offer a picture of a healthy agricultural community in the century after the Carolina settlement began in the mid-1830s. A.J. Johnson's 1863 "Map of Georgia and Alabama" does not identify Calvary by name, but an 1883 Map of Georgia by Georgia Franklin Cram does identify Calvary in Decatur County. In 1910 the community is labeled Calvary on the "Rand McNally Map of Georgia."

Mule Day

The Calvary Lions Club organizes Mule Day, an annual festival to celebrate the important historical role of the mule in the region's agriculture.



A parade, mule contests, demonstrations of sugar cane syrup-making, arts and crafts, and a smorgasbord of traditional Southern food can be found on the first Saturday in November. As many as 100,000 people visit the small town each year for Mule Day festivities.



Beachton is an unincorporated community in Grady County, Georgia, United States. It is the location of Susina Plantation, which is listed on the U.S. National Register of Historic Places.


Mount Olive Primitive Baptist Church in Beachton.

Susina Plantation

Susina Plantation is an antebellum Greek Revival house and several dependencies on 140 acres near Beachton, Georgia, approximately 15 miles southwest of the city of Thomasville, Georgia. It was originally called Cedar Grove. The house is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, and is currently a private residence.



History

Antebellum

Edward Blackshear moved to the area circa 1822 from what was then Pulaski County, Georgia. Edward was the brother of General David Blackshear, the namesake of Lake Blackshear and the town of Blackshear, Georgia.



Edward died September 3, 1829 and his land passed to his wife and five children. The largest block was bequeathed jointly to his sons James Joseph and Thomas Edward. These two continued to acquire land and ultimately amassed approximately 4,815 acres.


Cedar Grove, circa 1880, from the archives of the Thomas County Museum of History

Circa 1841, James Joseph commissioned the architect John Wind to design a plantation house. This photograph, although probably taken after the American Civil War, depicts the structure as originally built. John Wind was born in Bristol, England, in 1819. He was also the architect for the Greenwood, Fair Oaks, Oak Lawn, Pebble Hill and Eudora Plantations, and the Thomas County Courthouse. William Warren Rogers writes "Some of Wind's work still exists and reveals him as one of the South's most talented but, unfortunately, least known architects."



James Joseph Blackshear was killed in a cotton press accident on November 3, 1843 before the house was completed. His wife, Harriet Blackshear, completed the house and continued to acquire land. His will was not probated until 1857 and her new acquisitions were recorded in his name. Harriet became a prominent planter in her own right. In 1860, thirteen Thomas County plantations produced over 100 bales of cotton. Harriet Blackshear had the record with 235 bales produced by slave workers. She was also one of the county's larger rice producers and she raised 5000 bushels of sweet potatoes. Food crops were also required to feed not only her family, but the slaves who worked the land. The 1840 census recorded 43 male and 59 female slaves. When James Joseph's will was probated in 1857, it listed 161 slaves by name. Harriet Blackshear died in 1863. After the American Civil War, Cedar Grove fell onto hard times, but it remained in Blackshear hands until 1887.

Postbellum

In the 1880s and 1890s, Thomasville was a popular wintering area for wealthy Northern industrialists who came by scheduled rail and private rail cars to hunt and enjoy the pine-scented air. The old and then unproductive plantations were soon discovered and by 1890, all of the 70 plantations in the Thomasville area had been acquired for use primarily as private hunting preserves and retreats. In 1887, Cedar Grove was acquired by Dr. John Metcalfe of New York who used it as a hunting lodge. He renamed Cedar Grove to Susina. Dr. Metcalfe had a wife named Susan and wild plum grew on the property. Susina is Italian for plum. In 1891, A. Heywood Mason of Philadelphia purchased Susina Plantation and approximately 6400 acres. He had inherited a fortune made by his father James S. Mason who developed and sold shoe polish, called shoe blackening at the time. He added side porches to the house and probably the rear kitchen wing. He later expanded the dining room by enclosing a portion of the south porch.



The community around Susina was initially called Duncanville. Maps dated from 1887 until 1906 show the town as Susina. After 1906, the area become known as Beachton. A. Heywood Mason died in 1911 and the plantation was managed by his wife, Anna. Susina Plantation was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on August 12, 1970.

Modern

In 1980, Susina Plantation was acquired by Anne Marie Walker and was operated as a bed and breakfast. Notable guests were Paul Newman and his wife Joanne Woodward, a Thomasville native. In 2000, Randall and Marilynn Rhea of Atlanta acquired the property for use as their private residence, and they hired general contractor Terrell Singletary of Thomasville to repair and renovate the main house and four of the dependencies.



More recently, Susina Plantation has hosted events for the Grady County Historical Society, the Daughters of the American Revolution and the Thomas County Museum of History. The main house at Susina Plantation is considered by some to be one of the finest examples of the Greek Revival style. It was selected for the cover image of two books covering antebellum houses.

Architecture

The main house sits on a knoll surrounded by large and mature live oak and magnolia lawns. John Wind's early work, such as Greenwood and Susina, were in traditional Greek Revival style. Later at Eudora and Fair Oaks, he skillfully added his own style which tended toward a later romantic or Oriental period. Susina's Ionic portico is supported by four two-story, fluted and tapered round columns. The portico extends across approximately three-fourths of the facade. The house was constructed from heart-pine cut on the property. The siding is clapboard except under the portico where the siding is set flush to resemble stone. The entablature runs completely around the house. The frieze of the portico is plain with large dentils under the cornice. The dentils are continued around the projecting cornice of the pediment. A sunflower rosette, perhaps hand carved by Wind, is in the center of the pediment. A cantilever balcony is under the portico, over the front door.



The front double door is eight by seven feet and has sidelights and a fixed transom with lattice work created by strips of wood. The molding around the door has a fret design at the upper and lower corners with fluting running the length of the posts. The door to the balcony is a seven by seven foot version of the main door. The first and second level windows have nine over nine lights and triangular pediments. The windows are six feet six inches high by two feet ten inches wide.



The plan is a basic four over four room layout with a central enclosed breezeway. In the original 1841 house, the rooms on the north (right) side of the house were not as deep as on the south, so the rear included a covered porch. A symmetric, circular staircase ascended from the north side of the breezeway to the left side of the top hallway. A room was formed on the second level behind the circular stairwell. The stairwell includes a small, decorative niche. Each room includes a fireplace that extends into the room approximately three feet. Mantels are supported by pilasters of varying design. The interior uses wainscoting throughout with top projecting molding serving as a dado. Door and window moldings are fluted with lintel sections. Simple crown molding completes a relatively simple but elegant woodwork style.



Circa 1891, A. Heywood Mason added porches that extend the full length of the house on both the north and south sides. The architect is unknown. Mason also probably added the rear kitchen wing. No photographs prior to 1895 of the rear of the house are known, so dates of renovations at the rear are in question. Between 1891 and 1930, the 1841 rear porch was enclosed to form new rooms on both levels. A south rear screened sleeping room above the side porch was added circa 1925. This sleeping porch and a rear race for air conditioning were removed by the Rhea's in 2000 to return the exterior to an earlier period.

Dickey - Birdsong Plantation

The Dickey-Birdsong Plantation is a 565-acre historic district that was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1995. It includes four contributing buildings, five contributing structures, and a contributing site. It is a wildlife preserve.


The Listening Place at Birdsong Nature Center, overlooks the Big Bay Swamp and provides an isolated place for the public to observe wood ducks, alligators, snakes, and other wildlife.

It has a 1912 dwelling, the "Dickey-Komarek House", which includes Classical Revival architectural details, and is a frame one-and-a-half-story building built in 1912 by expanding upon a mid-1800s dogtrot house. It has an 1858 barn and outbuildings built in the 1900s.



The property was purchased from the Dickey family in 1938. It became a site of ecological research and fire experimentation.


Ed Komarek, a cofounder of Tall Timbers Research Station in Tallahassee, Florida, began developing practices for prescribed burning in the 1930s on his Birdsong Plantation in southwest Georgia. Komarek's research laid the foundation for the science of fire ecology.

The property is now the Birdsong Nature Center and is located on what is now known as Birdsong Rd. Its mission is "to foster awareness, understanding, and appreciation of nature and its interrelationships."


The bird window, situated in the former dining room of the Komarek home at the Birdsong Nature Center near Thomasville, overlooks Betty Komarek's Japanese garden, where as many as 130 different bird species may be observed throughout the year. Komarek founded the center in 1986.

Evergreen Congregational Church and School

The Evergreen Congregational Church and School is a historic church and school at 497 Meridian Road in Beachton, Georgia. It is notable for its architecture, for its association with social history of the area, and for its association with civil rights leader Andrew Young, who served as its pastor from 1957 to 1959. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2002.


The Evergreen Congregational Church was founded in 1903.


The present church on the property was built in 1928. The school was built in 1911 and was the first school for black children in the area.


James E. Wright (1887-1972), who had an architecture degree from Tuskegee University, designed the school.

The Evergreen church is a gable-front church with an entrance porch and cupola. Constructed in 1928, the church is built of concrete block and wood lath with a stucco finish. The gable-roofed portico is supported by four posts. Two posts rest on the concrete steps, the outer posts are set directly in the ground. The front gables of the both the portico and the roof are clad in beveled weatherboard. The roof is covered with sheet metal and surmounted by a pyramidal-roofed cupola. Four pilasters are located between the sash windows on each side of the church. Between 1989 and 1991, the congregation built a 30-foot long annex to the rear of the church. The annex is constructed of concrete block with steel lath and stuccoed to match the original church. Entrances are located on each side of the annex.


The sanctuary.

The school, built in 1911, is a one- and one-half-story cruciform-plan building with classrooms on the first floor and quarters for teachers above (photos 8-9). The school was designed by James E. Wright, a member of the Evergreen congregation. The school was constructed with poured-concrete reinforced with steel wire. The wood forms, sometimes even the wood grain, are visible in the horizontal bands across the exterior of the school. The window sills and lintels are also poured concrete. The exterior is distinguished by an enclosed entrance porch topped by a gable-roofed balcony. The steeply pitched side-gable roof features exposed rafter ends, interior end chimneys, and dormers across the front and rear (photos 5 and 11). The roof is covered with metal shingles and the gable ends are clad in weatherboard. The cornerstone is located on the northwest corner and reads: Grady County/Training School/A.M.A 1911.


The school remains largely unchanged since it was built.

The Evergreen church is typical of African-American churches with the simple massing of its gable roofed rectangular-shaped sanctuary and in its use of inexpensive materials, such as concrete block and stucco. The school was designed by James E. Wright, a member of the Evergreen congregation. It is a rare and especially important resource because its craftsmanship is evident in the rough finish on the poured-concrete walls, which indicates the work of congregation members and not skilled laborers. The interior with its classroom, blackboards, folding doors, kitchen, and upstairs teachers quarters conveys the building's function as a school. The Evergreen Congregational Church and School is significant at the state level because of its association with Andrew Young, a leader of the American Civil Rights Movement, Ambassador to the United Nations, and two-term mayor of Atlanta. Born on March 12, 1932 in New Orleans, Young earned a bachelor of arts degree from Howard University in 1951. He later earned a bachelor of divinity degree from Hartford Theological Seminary as a minister in the United Church of Christ. Young first served as pastor at Evergreen Congregational Church in Beachton from 1957 to 1959. In his autobiography, An Easy Burden (1996), Young noted that the lessons he learned at Evergreen served him during the struggle for civil rights. During his pastorate at Evergreen, Young first became involved in the civil right movement. During the 1960s, he joined the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), and served as an administrative assistant and later as Executive Director under Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. In 1972, he was elected to Congress. In 1976, President Jimmy Carter appointed him United States Ambassador to the United Nations. Young served as mayor of Atlanta from 1981 to 1989. He was co-chairman of the Atlanta Committee for the Olympic Games and currently serves as President of the National Council of Churches.



In 1903, a group Beachton residents organized the Evergreen Congregational Church. That same year, Jerry Walden, Jr., led a group of community men in erecting a one-room frame school building on a one-acre site that was donated by Please Hawthorne. This was the first school for black children in the area. In 1904, a frame church was built adjacent to the school. The programs and activities of the church and school were intermingled under the supervision of the pastors. Reverend William H. Holloway served as the first pastor from 1904 until 1910. He was followed by Reverend Henry S. Barnwell, who served until 1916. In 1924, after an eight-year vacancy, Reverend George W. Hannar served as pastor and as principal of the school. Reverend Hannar resigned in 1930 and was replaced that same year by Reverend W. J. Hill. Andrew Young served as pastor from 1957 to 1959. In 1974, Reverend Artis Johnson arrived and remains the current pastor. From the beginning, the American Missionary Association assumed responsibility for the church and school because of negligence by the public schools in the education of African-American children. In 1910, an adjacent acre of land was acquired and a new school building was constructed the next year. The new school building featured classrooms on the first floor and living quarters on the floor above. In 1916, the school was renamed Grady County Training School when the county assumed partial responsibility for the school. In 1925, the original frame church was demolished. The new concrete-block church was completed.



in 1928. In 1942, electric lights were installed and indoor bathrooms were brought inside. In 1938, the educational programs at Evergreen were moved by the county to another location. The Evergreen school was then used as a community hall for such activities as voter registration drives, meetings with county commissioners, farm agents, home demonstration agents, 4-H Boys and Girls Clubs, and Boy Scouts. The school is currently known as Evergreen Recreation Center and serves as the fellowship hall for Evergreen church. A number of church members played important roles in the history and development of Evergreen Congregational Church. Jerry Walden, Jr., was born in Grady County in 1869. He went to the public school in Thomas County and later attended Morehouse College in Atlanta. In 1903, Walden led a group of community men in erecting a one-room wood school building on a one-acre site that was donated by Please Hawthorne. This was the first school for black children in the area. Walden was the first African-American teacher in Beachton. He taught in Beachton until his death in 1935. Please Hawthorne was born in 1854 in rural Grady County. He spent much of his life operating a general merchandise store in the Beachton area until his death in 1927. In 1903, he donated a one acre.

Ochlocknee Missionary Baptist Church and Cemetery

The Ochlocknee Missionary Baptist Church and Cemetery is a historic church and school at 521 U.S. Route 319 S. in Beachton, Georgia. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2010. It was built in 1918. The church was founded in 1848 by slaves and was originally located "on the outskirts" of Pebble Hill Plantation. The congregation moved to the current location in 1918 after a fire destroyed the previous church.


Now this is an image of the New Ochlocknee Baptist Church.

The property has "dates of significance" of 1918 and 1947 recorded in the National Park Service database; such dates are often dates of original construction and later expansion of buildings. It is listed as significant in the areas of architecture and of black history.


1st Baptist Church in Cairo.

It is located about 3.8 miles east northeast of the hamlet of Beachton. There is a church named "Little Ochlocknee Baptist Church" which is different; that church is located four miles east of Ochlocknee, Georgia, about 20 miles north.


Think of all the gas I saved not driving down there for personal photos.


Another Baptist Church in Cairo. If Grady County is like Cobb County, there are a lot of Baptist Churches, I counted more than 30 in Cobb.

Time to move over a county for another cave. Now I got over 100 images of that cave and over 100 images of that county in a second post. I am really enjoying exploring South Georgia. You probably want another Glory Hole theme on the GNW Gals. I am not going to put that to a vote. Our favorite UGA Basketball star is the inspiration for today's GNW Gal, Women that play Basketball.