Georgia Daylilies

There are numerous daylily gardens in North Georgia and one of my favorites is the Shumake Daylily Garden in Jefferson. No web site, no e-mail, but call 706-367-9175 to arrange a visit.

After a neighbor had told me about the garden and sung its praises, I went to see for myself in early April and came home with a handful of Soft Summer Night plants, which have done well in my garden and have been blooming for the past two weeks.

I went back for a visit today, having been told that “mid-June is the peak of the season”, but found a garden well past it already – no doubt the result of the horrendously hot weather we’ve had since about the middle of May. Nevertheless, I found many plants (among the thousands in the garden) with blooms still pretty enough to be photographed. Here are some of them:

Short:

 Prince Michael

 Priceless Memories

Joylene Nichole

Medium:

 Pink Peppermint

Touch The Future

Tall:

 Proud Mary

 Bama Bound

 Lavender Memories

Country Music Queen

Time To See

There are, as you might imagine, hundreds more, and I know I'll go back after Labor Day and buy some more. The prices are very reasonable, ranging from $6 to $15 (a few may be higher), and you cannot get them fresher than having them dug for you right when you are there!

The Shields-Ethridge Heritage Farm

For years, traveling to meetings and other events in Athens, I have passed the brown “Shields-Ethridge Heritage Farm” sign and often thought: “I’ve got to go there sometime”. “Sometime” finally arrived yesterday! The newspaper had informed me that Saturday would be the annual “Mule Day” celebration at the farm and I had decided to go and check it out.

It’s worth a visit!

The Shieldses came to Georgia at the end of the 18^th century, like so many others who migrated from Virginia and North Carolina to lands that had belonged to the native population for centuries. They grew tobacco on their hundreds of acres, and later cotton. Today, the farm is an outdoor museum of Georgia’s agricultural history.

The farm’s web site gives a brief overview of the Shields (James, 1785-1863, who had at least eight children, and Robert, 1827-1910, James’s youngest of three sons) and Ethridge families, but only makes casual reference to the Civil War years and the fact that slave ownership accounted for most of the family’s wealth at the time. Fortunately, we have the 2002 thesis of Frances Patricia Stallings, “Mr. Ira’s Masterpiece: Two Centuries of Agricultural Change at the Shields-Ethridge Farm” to complement the story.

“Mr. Ira” was Ira Washington Ethridge of Auburn, Georgia, who married Susan Ella Shields in 1896 and took over the farm’s management from his father-in-law Robert two years later. In today’s terms, he was an entrepreneur and “techie”, who embraced the changes that a new century demanded.

It would be interesting to know what became of the farm’s non-white residents. What happened to Sophia, to Jarvy and the “yellow boy Simon”, to Dicy and her sons Samuel, John and James? Do their ancestors still live in Georgia, or did they long ago move away?

Perhaps the most intriguing character in Ms. Stallings’s thesis is Jane Shields, the young widow of James’s brother Patrick (1775-1807), who in 1811, as a mother of seven, married a man named Thomas Thurmond, which was apparently not a welcome event in the family.

I enjoyed my visit and hope you will, too, when you get a chance to go there.

 Soap, in the 19th century, did not come from the store. It was made on the farm's premises and, having used some I bought yesterday, I can attest to its not being a bad product!

James Longstreet, General, CSA

Almost the first thing we noticed at Alta Vista cemetery in Gainesville (Georgia) on a warm, sunny afternoon in April, was the ubiquity of confederate flags. “It must be there,” the passenger in my car said, when he spotted a cluster of them ahead and slightly to the left, just after we had entered the gate. We were looking for the grave of James Longstreet.

No, it was not “there”. In fact, almost immediately we saw conference flags everywhere – to our left, our right and ahead along the streets and avenues that dissect the cemetery. “It must be,” we decided, “because of the observations going on all over the South in connection with the 150^th anniversary of the start of the Civil War.” Maybe. Maybe these flags had been planted by relatives of those who fought in the war on the Confederate side and simply wanted to honor their grandfathers and great-grandfathers, much as we go to a cemetery on Mother’s Day to lay a bouquet on the graves of the mothers we have lost. Then again, maybe the spirit of the Confederacy and its “lost cause” remains alive in North Georgia.

In the latter case, Longstreet might not have approved.

Archival material suggests that he was not in favor of secession in 1861, but that, once the die was cast, he, a Southerner by birth, signed on and reported for duty, becoming General Robert E. Lee’s Commander of the First Corps of the Army of Northern Virginia in 1862.

This post is not meant to retell the story of James Longstreet’s long life, his accomplishments and the controversies for which the locals seem to have forgiven him. But if you find yourself in North Georgia one of these days and have a little time for a drive to Gainesville, you will easily find his grave at Alta Vista (his first wife, Louise, and other relatives are interned there as well, in the same plot). And, you can find, on a dead-end street, among abandoned warehouses in an old industrial section of town, what remains of the Piedmont Hotel.

Dr. Durham’s Herb Walk

The minute I learned about Dr. Lindsey Durham’s “receipts” (prescriptions for cures) I knew I would have liked this man! He practiced “eclectic medicine”, just as I grow an eclectic garden. It’s not quite the same thing – I have no interest in practicing medicine or using my herbs for anything but teas and cooking, but my garden is eclectic because I grow thyme underneath a viburnum, yarrow among the daylilies and sage in front of a fothergilla; there is rosemary next to a rose and others flanking the mailbox. There is no such thing as a flower garden, an herb garden or a hedge of shrubs in my landscape!

Back to Dr. Durham: his grandfather, Abram Durham, came from England (County Durham) and settled in Virginia in 1750, where Lindsey’s father, Samuel Davis Durham was born in 1755. Samuel married Isabel Lindsey in 1781 and, with several others, set out for Georgia the following year.

Read Ellen Whitaker’s “A Brief History of the Life of Dr. Lindsey Durham” in her and Debbie C. Cosgrove’s “Dr. Durham’s Receipts: A 19^th Century Physician’s Use of Medicinal Herbs” for more details of this remarkable Georgian’s life and career.

Shortly after turning onto FR 1234 off Macedonia Road, off Georgia Highway 15, halfway between Watkinsville and Greensboro, one arrives at the Scull Shoals Education Center, where Debbie and Bill Cosgrove, with the help of countless volunteers, have established a small replica of Dr. Durham’s 13-acre herb garden.

Debbie Cosgrove (center, in black, outstretched arm) lecturing during Dr. Durham's Herb Walk on November 7, 2010.

Many of the trees, shrubs and flowering plants are labeled and it can be a pleasant Sunday afternoon to go and take a look, particularly in spring, but also in autumn, and especially with Debbie Cosgrove as guide. This is truly a place where the history of eclectic medicine comes to live.

Scull Shoals - Oconee National Forest - Georgia

If history and archeology fascinate you, include a guided tour of Scull Shoals on your itinerary. If you are more of a traditional tourist, however, the site will disappoint you. There is not a lot to see! And there are no creature comforts of any sort.

In early November, an archaeologist walked a small group of us through the site and imparted information about digs that had occurred or were expected to take place in the future. Warehouse ruins in top left.

The old forest has in many places given way to Chinese privet, there is scant evidence of river landings and even the best-preserved structures are, with one exception, not more than small heaps of rocks and bricks.

Warehouse ruins, dating back to 1870

All that's left of what was once the mill manager's or superintendent's large, 3-story house. 

I have now twice visited and will probably go again, but with its lack of facilities and ample presence of mosquitoes and other insects, it’s the “off-the-beaten-path” travelers, along with the history and archeology buffs, who are likely to be the only ones to find this an interesting place to visit.

In late September, author Robert Skarda conducted a tour of the site; warehouse ruins on right.

References:

Friends of Scull Shoals

Old Oconee Books

Remembering History

Often, when I travel the roads of North Georgia, I wonder what this land was like two hundred years ago, not long after white settlers began arriving here from Virginia, the Carolinas and the Georgia coast, before the Trail of Tears and long before the Civil War.

We have some knowledge from William Bartram’s writings. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Bartram

And more from contemporary writings by authors such as Robert Skarda, whose “Scull Shoals: The Mill Village that Vanished in Old Georgia” recounts a late 18^th-early 19^th century settlement along the Oconee river in northeast Georgia, including Georgia’s first paper mill. The book is available from Friends of Scull Shoals.

The area around Cleveland, where Loganberry Heritage Farm is located, belonged to the Cherokee nation; the pre-white settlement of Scull Shoals was part of the Creek lands. Unlike the Cherokees, who are an independent tribe, the Creeks were a confederation of tribes who were considered hard to distinguish from one another and whose names were so difficult to pronounce that, it is said, white settlers simply called them “Creeks” because of their location along creeks and small rivers.

The history of North Georgia is colorful, riven by brutal, unconscionable acts, and fascinating for a newcomer to the area.

The Enchanted Land

That’s what John Berryman (“Berry”) Turner and his family found in 1828, when they settled near what is now Cleveland, in North Georgia.

It’s what the original population had called it for centuries.

Georgia, in the early 1800s, was a place in turmoil. White settlers arrived in increasing numbers, from Virginia and the Carolinas, taking advantage of “land grants”, state lotteries that allowed the winners to take out grants for the purchase of hundreds of acres of land. Georgia held 8 such lotteries between 1805 and 1833.

Inheritances to Berry Turner’s large family (he and his first wife, Rebecca Etris, had 10 children; upon her death, when he was 65, he married Jemima Wilkens, age 18, and had another 7 children with her) and debt-settlements led to divisions that did not allow his original 250 acres to remain in the family.

Today, Berry’s 5^th generation descendant, Sharon Turner Mauney, owns 60 acres, including the site of the family’s original homestead, and has established LoganBerry Heritage Farm, “Logan” being another important family name in North Georgia. The naturally-grown produce includes (seasonally) tomatoes, corn, beans, garlic, herbs, greens, okra, masses of sunflowers, cosmos, zinnias and other flowering plants.

This agri-tourism destination now beckons visitors from all over the planet, primarily, of course, from Atlanta north, as well as the surrounding counties.

Call 706-348-6068 or send an e-mail (loganberryheritagefarm@gmail.com) to arrange a tour, or go and shop at the seasonal market. This year’s final market day is probably October 30 and Mother Nature will determine the first market day of 2011.