Thursday, March 15, 2018

Old Farmhouse, Taliaferro County, GA c. unknown

Photographer facing south
Located on the west side of Hwy 22, between Hwy 44 and Philomath, GA, this old home has recently been exposed to the highway due to extensive logging around the house.

Photographer facing NW
This location is about as rural a location that you'll come across.  In fact, Taliaferro County is the second least populous county east of the Mississippi River. The 2010 census listed a population of 1,717, for a density of 8.8 people per square mile.

Just to the south and east of this location is Crawfordville, GA, a quaint classic small town in the south, so much so that there have been several movies shot there. These include Coward of the County, Paris Trout, Sweet Home Alabama, and Get Low.

Crawfordville was also known by anyone within 50 miles, as the home of Christmas in Dixie which operated from 1982 - 1997. My family would make the 55 mile trek out I-20 from Augusta to enjoy the decorations, fires with toasted marshmallows, hot dogs, and the Christmas Spirit. You can read more about Christmas in Dixie here.

Photographer facing NE

Taliaferro County is also home to Alexander H. Stephens, Vice President of the Confederacy. He was born in Crawfordville in 1812. He also served as a U.S. Congressman, and Governor of Georgia until his death in office in 1883. His home, Liberty Hall is now part of the A.H. Stephens State Park in Crawfordville.



Photographer facing east
This house has lasted much longer than the Confederacy did, but traveling through this part of the state, with its bucolic views, allows you to time travel back to the same landscapes that would have existed 160 years ago. Open fields, sandwiched in between piney forests with some hardwoods mixed in.

There really isn't much in the way of modern buildings on Hwy 22 between I-20 and Hwy 78 near Lexington, GA. If you've never driven that stretch, it's worth the trip just to step back in time.

The classic old home with a tin roof, double chimneys on the NW side of the house, a covered porch on the back, evidence of a former covered porch on the front, and an old rock-lined hand-dug well certainly dates back to the early 1900's, if not the late 1800's. I know nothing of the history, or the former owners of this place.

Open, rock-lined, hand-dug well on the NW side of the house
Standing alone surrounded by the scrub trees that were left behind, while the underbrush and briers creep into the open sunny space that was formerly too shady for them to thrive; I try to imagine the sights and sounds that would have been present while it was somebody's home.

Even now, with hardly anyone around for miles, the home speaks to me, as the front screen door is pushed occasionally by the wind, and flaps and creaks on the one hinge that is still attached. She won't go easy.

Front door, photographer facing SW
  

4 comments:

  1. Wow I'm falling in love with the area the old graveyards need some attention before they're unreadable though the owner is probably near by

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  2. Very cool. My family has a farm off Hwy 78 in Wilkes county. The old farm house fell in back in the 80's but my grandfather 5 times removed had built the farmhouse there in the years after the Civil War. You can really step back in time in Wilkes, Talifero, and Oglethorpe county. These places really have not changed all that much in the last 60 years.

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  3. This is so difficult to read.

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  4. Great and that i have a nifty offer you: What Renovations Increase The Value Of A Home split level renovations

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