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lat:32.15238 This town, named for area pioneer Frances Bell Smith, was founded in 1890 on property owned by Pulaski Sikes Smith, John M. Wood, and Benjamin Berrien Brewton in then Tattnall County. Town lots were platted adjacent to the newly laid tracks of the Savannah & Western Railroad. The railroad depot, constructed soon after the tracks were laid, served as the town's center of commerce and social activity. Bellville rapidly gained importance as a regional transportation hub for agricultural and timber products such as cotton, naval stores, and lumber, and as the home of Bellville Academy, established in 1890.
lat:31.843095 This church, the oldest congregation in lower Bryan County, was certified by the Presbytery of Georgia in 1830. Its founders included rice planters on Bryan Neck, among them Thomas Savage Clay, Richard James Arnold and George Washington McAllister. The first meeting house was constructed in 1839 three miles north of this site on the Bryan Neck Road. The current sanctuary, the oldest public building in Bryan County, was built in 1885 after the first building burned. The cemetery, known as Burnt Church Cemetery, remains at the original site and includes the graves of the church's prominent early members.
lat:31.30616667 The construction of this 121-foot bridge at McDonald’s Ford was first authorized by the county in 1883, though construction was delayed until 1891. It was completed in four months by J.W. Baughman and thirty-six workers as a modification of the queen post truss design. The trusses have a horizontal cross piece extending across a center post flanked by two compression timbers slanting down and outwards with a set of iron rods slanting down and inwards. The concrete abutments were added in 1958. This bridge is the southernmost covered bridge remaining in Georgia.
lat:31.154875 Brunswick’s first public school for African Americans opened in 1870 as the Freedmen’s School, later changed to Risley School to honor Captain Douglas Gilbert Risley, who raised funds for the school’s construction. In 1923 the adjacent building, Colored Memorial High School, was built and named to honor African-American veterans in World War I. In 1936 Risley High School was built on the site of the 1870 Freedmen’s School and remained in service until 1955 when a new Risley High School was constructed. Both the Colored Memorial School and Risley High School are landmarks of African-American education in Glynn County.
lat:32.290298 In 1870 a group of Croatan Indians migrated from their homes in Robeson County North Carolina, following the turpentine industry to southeast Georgia. Eventually many of the Croatans became tenant farmers for the Adabelle Trading Company, growing cotton and tobacco. The Croatan community established the Mt. Zion Baptist Church in Adabelle, as well as a school and a nearby cemetery. After the collapse of the Adabelle Trading Company, the Croatans faced both economic hardship and social injustice. As a result, most members of the community returned to North Carolina by 1920. The tribe to which these families belonged became known as the Lumbee in the early 1950s.
lat:31.370695 In 1889 the Darien Shortline Railroad was organized to transport yellow pine timber to the Darien sawmills from Georgia's interior. Originating in Tattnall County and continuing through Liberty County, the Darien & Western line was completed in 1895 to its terminus near this spot where a passenger depot was built, now marked by the gazebo. In 1906 the line was bought by the Georgia Coast & Piedmont Railroad, which extended the line 18 miles south to Brunswick in 1914. The train depot was then moved from Columbus Square to the riverfront near the present U.S. Highway 17 bridge. The depot burned in 1971.
lat:30.813453 Finney General Hospital , named in honor of Brigadier General John M.T. Finney, was authorized September 30, 1942, and dedicated June 16, 1943, on this site. Finney was one of sixty Army hospitals across the country built to care for sick and wounded World War II soldiers. Under Colonel Samuel M. Browne, Finney grew to two hundred buildings including hospital wards, a theater, gymnasium, chapel, bowling alley and barracks for German prisoners of war. Numerous celebrities visited to entertain patients and staff. Citizens of Thomas County provided support through the Grey Ladies Corps, plantation picnics, use of the YMCA, and lodging for soldiers' families in private homes. Finney General closed December 15, 1945, having treated 23,055 WWII veterans.
lat:31.218922 During the American Revolution four heavily-armed row galleys were constructed in Savannah for the Georgia Navy, all underwritten by the Continental Congress. In nearby Frederica River, beginning at dawn on April 19, 1778, Georgia galleys Lee, Washington, and Bulloch, commanded by Colonel Samuel Elbert, attacked HM brigantine Hinchinbrook, the armed sloop Rebecca, and an armed watering brig. The British attempted to retaliate, but were out-gunned and out-maneuvered. As they tried to gain an advantage by moving down river their ships grounded, were abandoned, and captured. This remarkable victory boosted patriot morale and delayed by more than eight months the British invasion of Georgia.
lat:31.037763 Eurith Dickinson Rivers was governor of Georgia from 1937 to 1941. He actively supported President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal Program. Rivers' innovative leadership produced Georgia's first Department of Public Welfare, free school books, the State highway Patrol, and modernization of the state highway system. Born in Arkansas, Rivers married Lucile Lashley in 1914 and moved with his family to Milltown (late Lakeland) in 1920 to practice law. He is buried in Lakeland. Built in 1940 on the shores of Banks Lake, the ranch-style house, designed by Frank Byrd, was relocated to this site in the early 1980's.
lat:31.9623 This church was constituted and its first sanctuary built in 1888 on "Love's Old Field," land donated by G.M. Love. Charter members were the J.J. Kicklighters, the Dennis Lynns, Allen Lynn, and D.B. Smith, the church's first clerk. Elders on the constituting presbytery were H.B. Wilkerson, Bazil Jones, and M.F. Stubbs, the first pastor. In 1896 the church was one of seven organizing members of the Bethel Primitive Baptist Association. J. Walter Hendricks, pastor from 1932-43, became the first president of Birdwood College, now Thomas College, in Thomasville. This c.1930 sanctuary was remodeled in the 1960s.
lat:31.28261667 Needwood Baptist Church was organized in 1866 on nearby Broadfield Plantation as Broadfield Baptist Church of the Zion Baptist Association. This structure, built in the 1870s, was redesigned in 1885 when the church moved its congregation here. Its formation and history are representative of religious development in the context of plantation rice culture. The nearby one-room Needwood School provided elementary education for this community from 1907 until desegregation in the 1960s. Both structures are examples of early African American vernacular architecture.
lat:32.038858 Shiloh Methodist Church, the second oldest Methodist Church in Tattnall County, was organized c. 1810 by Rev. William Eason and remained at this site until the 1850's when it was moved a short distance north. Unlike at other churches in the area at the time, a cemetery was maintained beside the Meeting House. Six generations of area residents are buried here in likely the first public cemetery in Tattnall County. Burials include area pioneer Michael McKenzie Mattox, Methodist ministers, Confederate veterans, and state elected officials and numerous other whites and blacks-both free and slave. The last burial occurred in 1942.
lat:31.759699 Ossabaw Island was home to Native Americans for four thousand years before the arrival of Europeans in the sixteenth century. Planter John Morel began indigo cultivation and timbering in the 1760's. Four separate tracts were owned by various Morel descendants late in the nineteenth century. By reconstruction (1865-1867), the island was occupied by the Freedmen's Bureau. Dr. Henry Torrey and Nell Ford Torrey of Grosse Point, Michigan bought the island in 1924. Their daughter, Eleanor Torrey West, established the Ossabaw Foundation in 1961. In 1978 the Torrey and West families sold and gift-deeded Ossabaw to Georgia, making it Georgia's first Heritage Preserve.
lat:31.368625 Situated ten miles from the Atlantic near the mouth of the Altamaha River, Darien attained prominence as a seaport in the 1820's. Rice and upland cotton from Georgia 's interior were shipped from this waterfront. From 1870 to 1900, Darien served as the leading international timber center on the east coast through the milling and shipment of yellow pine and cypress rafted down the Altamaha River. With the decline of the timber trade, Darien turned to the commercial harvest of seafood and was homeport to a large shrimp fleet by the 1940's.
lat:31.429393 Situated five miles to the east, Sapelo was home to Native Americans four thousand years ago and was the site of a sixteenth-century Franciscan mission. Thomas Spalding was a leading planter of Sea Island cotton and sugar cane during his ownership of Sapelo from 1802 to 1851. Slave descendants still live on the island at Hog Hammock. Sapelo was owned from 1912 to 1934 by automotive pioneer Howard E. Coffin, followed by tobacco heir Richard J. Reynolds from 1934 to 1964. The University of Georgia Marine Institute opened on Sapelo in 1953. The State of Georgia bought the island in separate purchases in 1969 and 1976.
lat:31.144325 After midnight on April 8, 1942, the German submarine U-123 was in position off the St. Simons Island sea buoy. Minutes later it chased and torpedoed two tankers, the Oklahoma and Esso Baton Rouge, killing twenty-two crew members. Survivors were brought here to the U.S. Coast Guard Station for debriefing. Five of those killed were buried in Brunswick's Palmetto Cemetery as "Unknown Seamen," but were positively identified in 1998. The ships were raised, towed to Brunswick for emergency repairs and re-entered into service. Both ships were sunk in the Atlantic Ocean before the end of World War II.
lat:31.142006 St. Simons park was the site of a Mocama Indian village of approximately 100-200 people. The inhabitants used marine resources, agriculture, square wattle and daub houses, stamped and incised Irene Style ceramics, and burial mounds characteristic of this late prehistorical coastal culture. The burial mounds were in use within the chiefdom of Guadalquini from the 1450s-1600s. Artifacts found there include ceramic bowls, pipes, and a rare chevron bead. The refuse midden area revealed that the Indians consumed fish, mollusks, deer, and small animals.
lat:31.37043 On June 11, 1863 the seaport of Darien was vandalized and burned by Federal forces stationed on nearby St. Simons Island. The town was largely deserted, most of its 500 residents having sought refuge inland. Lost were public buildings, churches, businesses and most private residences. Conducting the raid were units comprised of among the first African-American troops to serve the Union cause, the 54th Massachusetts Volunteers under Col. Robert G. Shaw, and the 2nd South Carolina Volunteers under Col. James Montgomery. The burning of Darien, undefended and of little strategic importance, was one of the most controversial events of the Civil War.
lat:32.308382 The Pilgrim Missionary Baptist Normal and Industrial Institute for Colored Students was established here in 1880 by the Pilgrim Missionary Baptist Association. The school was established, organized, funded, and staffed by African Americans. The institute offered vocational classes in subjects such as carpentry and home economics. A donated printing press led to the development of a journalism program, allowing students to produce all printed materials for the Institute and the Association’s newspaper, The Pilgrim Traveler. After serving the black community for over fifty years, the Institute closed in May 1936 when Effingham County built a public school for African Americans. The Institute building was later demolished. |
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