Standing Proudly

Historic barns not just relics of a rural past

Story by Gail Ellen Daly
Photography by Joshua T. Barnett

Barns, which arrived in America with the earliest European settlers, remain a fixture of the country landscape, a lasting attraction for those driving down rural roads.

According to Thomas C. Hubka, a professor of architecture at the University of Wisconsin, the early barns, or farm buildings, were fashioned to suit the specific needs of the early settlers. Differences in construction and style depended upon both the building’s use and a regional differential: southern and western barns did not need extensive structures to house animals and crops throughout a harsh winter.

Jackson County’s historic barns follow Hubka’s observations. Their prime purpose was—and in many cases still is—for animal shelter, plus storing hay and crops.

Today a tractor sits underneath the side extensions where not that long ago a buggy or wagon was kept dry.

Years ago the county was all in cotton, said veteran farmer Emory Merk, who lives in Dry Pond. He recalls the hundreds of barns that dotted the countryside. He remembers the old dirt roads and when they were paved.

“Most of the barns have fallen in on themselves or been torn down,” he said sadly.

His prime example of neglect is the old Braselton barn, owned by the town’s former mayor, which collapsed a few months ago. Its remains next to the town’s spanking new library. People call it “a beautiful barn” and express sorrow at its demise.

Despite the new subdivisions and widened roads, numerous Jackson County barns still stand proudly. There are likely others, but these are especially memorable survivors.

Drive down Old Pendergrass Road toward Hoschton and Lewis Sailors Road is a couple of miles from the bypass on the right. In addition to awesome views, the road boasts the old Lewis Sailors farm and its unusual stone-faced barn.

Using granite quarried from a rocky ridge behind Academy Church, stonemason W. C. Roberts built the barn in 1893 for property owner J. L. Lanier, a young farmer. The granite walls are 24 inches thick.

According to Blackstock barn owner Joel Davis, the stone barn was built for the mule teams, which were used for farming. “They had five or six teams of mules,” he said.

Sailors bought the farm in 1942, a large cotton farm that went on to be the last cotton farm in the county. Over the years, the barn has been used for horses. Today, it stands unused.

“Never in my life have I lived in a place more beautiful than Apple Valley,” wrote Lydia Nix Massey in her 1978 memoir, This Is My Story, This Is My Song. “I can close my eyes and see our farm just like it was when I was a little girl.”

Massey described the farm; its buildings and fruit trees, barns and house, noting that “Papa’s main cash crops were corn, cotton and wheat.” She recalled the blackberry bushes and strawberry patch and all the vegetables they grew.

The old Nix farm, on Jefferson Road (State Road 15-A) slightly west of the Oconee River, still boasts the original house and barn. Originally part of C.W. Hood’s large cotton plantation in Apple Valley, Morgan Nix bought 125 acres in 1885.

According to Anne Shirley, the 120-year-old barn has been in continuous use since it was built in 1887.

Jack Shirley, Anne’s father-in-law, bought the farm in the mid 1960s and most family members still live on the property. Although the elder Shirleys own the barn and most of the land, Anne and Stone Shirley own the old homeplace.

Over the years, they modernized, renovated and added on to the original farmhouse. What has not changed over the years is Nix’s barn. The roof has been stabilized, of course, but the original wide boards remain; some original, many replacements.

Originally, the barn had a large second-story loft for hay storage. The ground floor had stalls for mules that worked the fields. Nix also built a dairy for his 10 or 12 milk cows, thrashed grain for other farmers and for a short time operated a cotton gin.

In 1998, the Shirleys removed the stalls and hayloft. They added a lean-to along one side for tractor storage.

Just beyond Apple Valley, heading toward Jefferson on the Jefferson-Commerce Road (Hwy. 15), sits a Jackson County landmark. Most everyone has at least seen the Round Barn and marveled at its unusual shape and bright red color.

Although the circular structure has been called Round Barn Mattresses since 1964, it did not begin life as a commercial venture. However, it still looks much as it did in the early 1900s.

A silo occupies the center of the two-story structure. On the upper floor, the center section of the old silo is in use as the store’s office. A set of old wooden stairs leads to the lower level. Mattresses surround the circular silo. Looking up, customers can see the rafters and the original wooden shingle roof.

George Williamson built the round barn in 1913 for his dairy operation. He built his house, which is across the street, at the same time.

“He traveled away from here, saw a round barn somewhere and thought it was cool,” said Imogene Roncadori. She and her husband Mark currently own and operate the mattress shop.

In the late 1930s, Hugh and Jessie Maley, Roncadori’s grandparents, bought the farm, including the barn.

“Sometime in the mid-1950s, my grandfather almost tore it down,” she said. “It desperately needed a roof.”

Luckily, he found a company in Athens that was able to cover the old shakes with asphalt shingles. Six years ago, those shingles were replaced.

When Roncadori’s parents, Dories and Louis Turner, first opened their furniture store in the round structure, cows still roamed the ground floor and the furniture was upstairs. Eventually, the cows were booted out.

The store sold both furniture and mattresses; as Roncadori’s father grew older he could only manage mattresses. After Turner retired, his daughter and son-in-law kept the business going.

On July 7, 1996, the Williamson/Maley/Turner Farm, which includes the round barn, was listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

According to Professor Hubka, when compared with the number of common barns in any region, “round barns are undeniably memorable.” He explained that for the most part they were built by wealthy farmers and reached a “high point of popularity” during the second half of the 19th Century.

Fleming Barn

(Above) The large old barn that sits behind Betty Fleming’s beautifully renovated home on County Farm Road at one time served a large cotton farm that went all the way down to the North Oconee river. The story Fleming heard is that a Confederate soldier, returning home after the war, either bought or was given the land. The soldier’s name possibly was Sims. Fleming is not sure who originally built the old homeplace and barns. What she was told, however, is that no children ever grew up in the old house.

“We bought the house, barn and acreage from Charles and Barbara Dawson in 1996,” Fleming explained. “They had bought the place from Hoke Arthur.”

It’s possible there was a small office behind the lean-to section as the room features windows and a tin roof. A ladder on the outside of the building leads to the hayloft. Emory Merk recalls the 1,000 bales of hay that used to fill the loft.

Despite its seeming permanence, Fleming said the barn was built on the east side of the road, and moved at some point.
Merk, adding that at one time it was Charlie Bennett’s dairy farm, noted that “when the old dirt road was paved sometime in the 1960s, the county moved the barn across the street behind the house.”

The old stalls that once held the dairy cows are still inside. But instead of cows, tires headed for a second life or recycling fill the space.

Heading out of downtown Jefferson toward the bypass, at the corner of Blackstock Road, the old Blackstock barn sits close to the road. Cattle often meander in the fields adjacent to the circa 1905 structure waiting to eat.

It is one of the few barns in the county still in use as a true cattle barn, owner Joel Davis said. Currently Davis runs 100 head of cattle on his 62-acre spread. He also harvests and sells hay for both cows and horses.

“Originally it was built for hay storage,” he said. Pointing to two other small, older outbuildings filled with hay, he said he decided to build an apartment at the far end of the 50 ft. by 100 ft. building rather than storing hay.

“Albert Newt Hanson built the barn for W.A.A.L. Blackstock,” he said. “But the first structure was the corn crib built by Tommy Leckie in 1903.” Then came the horse barn and eventually a milk barn.

Inside are stalls and scales to weigh the cows.

“Wagons were stored in the side sections,” Davis said. Walking through we spotted wagon parts and old mule collars still hanging on the walls.

“They were all here when we bought the farm (from Blackstock) in the 1960s,” he explained.

A few steps up is a room that appears to have been an office. A staircase leads to a loft. Although hard to read, carved into one plank is the date the barn was built. Davis noted that the wood on all the barns is original.

“When the main road (U.S. 129 Business) was paved, the barn was moved a few feet,” he said. The old homeplace, owned by Jane Blackstock Davis and her sister, now sits across the road.

Like the majority of Jackson County farmers of the era, the Blackstocks grew cotton. Davis believes the original farm covered 100-125 acres.

Far from Blackstock Road and the busy Hwy. 129 bypass, near the Hall County line, is quiet Holly Springs. Large farms and few subdivisions are attractions of this rural community. And although the old Minish barn on Holly Springs Road is no longer used for farming, it is used for storage.

According to Emory Merk, Spear Gilmore owned the farm and his daughter, an only child, married a Minish and inherited the farm. Julia Minish currently owns the former farm, now known as the Minish Place.

As in most Jackson County barns, cattle were housed in the bottom, with hay storage on top in the loft. But in addition to the main barn, another barn sits nearby. It’s believed that one was used for a small dairy operation.

There is also a wash house and a cookhouse, which are still standing near the old homeplace. And even more interesting, way at the rear of the property is an old one-room slave school.

At the extreme other end of the county from Holly Springs, a stone’s throw from the Barrow County line, the 500-acre McDonald farm on W.H. Hayes Road is a step back in time. Still a working farm of 300 cows, virtually all the barns and outbuildings, plus the antebellum house, are far more than 100 years old.

It is one of the largest farms in Jackson County and will soon be designated a Centennial Farm.

Although the McDonalds built a modern addition to the old homeplace, the original circa 1820 house, complete with narrow-tread stairs, antique furniture and authentic decorative touches, evokes an 1880s lifestyle. McDonald’s barns lie across the street from the large house—built when W.H. Hayes Road was nothing but a dirt track.

“Actually,” McDonald explained, “there are two barns and a third building over there.”

The Eley family, who originally grew cotton on 500 of their 1,000 acres, built the large main barn in 1880.

“In those days land cost $10 an acre,” McDonald said. “The barn housed mules on the bottom, while fodder was stored in the loft.”
Upstairs, the loft still features the old wide boards. However, in 1925 cedar posts replaced the original posts that support the overhang, and 20 years ago the McDonalds braced up the entire structure.

“There’s always something to do in an old building,” he said.

Not far from the main barn, a smaller barn houses cows. A short distance from the large barn, facing the road, is a former store, the four-over-four windows still intact. McDonald noted that the store dates from the 1920s and is used today for storage.

Woods Bridge Road is the only road that connects Dry Pond with Commerce. Today, it might take 10 minutes to drive from Hwy. 82 to Hwy. 98. Years ago, heading to Commerce for supplies on the old dirt track was an all-day trek.

Halfway between the two highways is an unusual sight: set back from the road, near the old homeplace, is an old barn seemingly built in a depression.

“It wasn’t always like that,” said Emory Merk. “And at one time the old road ran right in front of the barn.”

Bobiesue Sims Strickland and her husband, Stan, live in what’s left of the Cheatham homeplace on Holders Siding Road. She is the fourth generation of the Cheatham family to live in the house. The land was deeded to her family for service during the Revolutionary War.

“Farming stopped sometime in the 1940s,” Strickland said.

Originally a 150-acre farm, the property was divided following the death of Strickland’s great aunt Montie Cheatham who lived to be 103. She never married and had no children, so the property was divided among 14 cousins. Strickland bought the house and 4.5 acres that included the barn from the estate in 1993—the rest is now Holders Mill subdivision.

Strickland was born in Commerce, but lived in Stone Mountain until she and her husband bought the old homeplace.

She noted that her great-grandfather and great-uncles took seven years building the house, but as in most farming communities, the barn, built from timber on the property, came first. Although the family moved into the “new” house around 1901, the barn dates back to about 1894.

The large barn was “in a state of disrepair,” Stan Strickland said. “We rebuilt one end using the loft floor.”

The barn housed mules and corn, while the back section had milking stalls for cows. Since Stan Strickland is a blacksmith who fashions decorative iron designs in his workshop and collects old tools, some of those decorate the outside of the old barn.

Bobiesue Sims Strickland still can’t quite believe she is living in her ancestor’s old homeplace. With barns, an old outhouse and a restored home, she is often overwhelmed.

“It’s awesome,” she said. “I found my grandmother’s flower bed and the flowers still come up.”

Gail Ellen Daly, a long-time reporter for the Chronicle, a daily newspaper serving northeast Connecticut, recently moved to Jackson County with her husband. They live in Apple Valley with their horses.

The Johnson Centennial Farm has not been overlooked. Due to its place in Jackson County’s past and present, the entire farm operation—not just the barns—will be a separate in-depth story in a future issue.

Living Jackson thanks Dave Rosselle, Emory and Ali Merk, and W.C. Ferguson for their contributions to this article.