Exploring 173 Year Old Cotton Plantation In Georgia (A Step Back In Time)

hey everyone you're watching sidestep adventures and on today's video we're going to take a step back in time at the historic gerald plantation here in juliet georgia this plantation dates back to 1847 and was farmed up until 1965. there are a lot of cool buildings out here to check out so let's get started right now all right so here's a smokehouse right here that we'll take a look in and by the way the inside lighting will be provided by this through night tc-15 that they were through knight was kind enough to send me so if we get in any places that are too dark we use this light today like for some of the corners right here but check out all the old bottles up there on the uh on the smokehouse wall and there's even a even a piece of smoked meat up there alright so this is the 1895 house it says this simple house was built by dick gerald for his wife mamie and family which grew to include 12 children including willie most were born in the house dick taught school milled and operated the farm with his children and occasionally one or two farm hands dick is said to have built the home with woody milt himself and nails he made notice the handmade brick chimney the two front rooms were used as family rooms and sleeping areas and the rear was a kitchen and dining room connected to the house by a small hall her dog trot the beds dressers trunks wash stand desk and tables are all original a trundle bed and cot once completed the furnishings the dining room has the original pie safe and table despite its small size and lack of insulation this house is a typical georgia farm house and reflects the harsh economic realities of its time dick and mamie wanted a larger more comfortable home like his father john's 1847 house but instead of adding on to this one they decided to build a new home the 1920 house which i'll show you guys in just a minute this house became housing for farm hands and storage and this house has a really interesting smell in here i can't really describe it other than the the smell of old take a look at the old the old doorknob right there there's the handmade brick chimney it's interesting to think the people who built and lived in this house never would have imagined it would be part of a state park and you probably won't be able to see it on video but it's got the original wavy glass windows this stove was made by the southern company operative foundry company rome georgia foreign all right so here's the 1920 gerald house this is still a private residence and is not actually on the state park property but we can look at it from behind this fence and uh just so you guys have reference the other house that was built before that one is just right over there here's the old well and it's a it's still open under that i just looked down it there you go you guys can see it's 45 foot deep well it was dug here they got their water from some rock lined pretty neat but what i thought was fascinating is right over here this uh this chimney right here is the old syrup furnace it says john jarrell a skilled stone mason is said to have built this chimney and furnace used for cooking sugarcane syrup into 80 gallon kettles the rock work was later extended to accommodate long metal evaporator pans big kettles were also useful for scalding bristles off hogs at the annual winter hog butchering but what i thought was pretty interesting is it said when salt became scarce during the civil war they would bring salt water from savannah georgia up here and boil it down to get the salt out of it i thought that was that was pretty neat and these old sugar cane pans are full of tadpoles it's uh definitely better than mosquito larva in standing water i guess maybe maybe they eat the mosquito larva but uh let's keep going up this way take a look at these old buildings [Applause] i thought maybe that was another well but that's like a little mini cistern or something see down there it's not very far not very deep i don't know quite what that was maybe we can find out all right so this is the 1847 plantation house it says john fitzgerald built this plantation plane style house about 1847 for his wife elizabeth and seven children it is typical in size and layout of many cotton plantation houses the wood is virgin heart pine a durable and sturdy wood this room created by closing in a portion of the front porch was called the honeymoon room by the family it served as a bedroom for a local teacher travelers and older children the large front room served as a master bedroom nursery parlor sewing room and office john is said to have made much of this furniture lead up to the loft or attic providing sleeping quarters for the boys and storage beside the front room was the girl's bedroom the back porch was enclosed to provide two additional rooms the dining room and a bedroom in the 1890s this bedroom was converted into a store and served as a cardville post office across a narrow breezeway a new kitchen or stove room was added in 1818 replacing a log cookhouse which stood further from the house let's take a let's take a quick look underneath the house as we we always have to do that outside stuff adventures you here's the kitchen addition right here all right so this is the smokehouse out behind the 1847 plantation house this smokehouse is the last remaining log building still standing here at geral plantation and this was rebuilt in 1800 inside is a plank boat like the one the geral family used built by the historic site staff the 1847 kitchen once stood to the right of the smokehouse he's still walking in here i was just thinking again looking at this this hand-hewn wood in here that the people building this place rebuilding it back in 1870 would have had no idea i'd be walking inside of it when it was sort of a museum piece now so many years later and i think that's pretty interesting and that brick pit that i found when i first walked up to this house that was a flower pit it was used for storing household flowers and stuff in during the winter and then in the summertime was used for storing food like potatoes and that sort of thing he was on the sign back there told you we might find out what it was this is the old chicken house and uh we've got another thing that we always you guys like to take a look at on side step adventures we have the old outhouse and it's a two seater too there it is it's interesting looking at this house it's not what you immediately think of when you hear old southern plantation home i always think of the big white columned houses that are stereotypical of that but that wasn't always the case and that's that's kind of interesting to see that while we walk to some more buildings let me tell you a little bit about the gerald plantation so this site has over 20 original structures built by the gerald family from 1847 to 1945. the site was owned by three generations of one family for over 125 years and was donated to the state of georgia in 1974. settling on this land here in 1847 john fitzgerald and elizabeth middlebrooks acquired over 600 acres by 1863 that were farmed by the family and 42 enslaved people 1864 brought a raid by union soldiers and typhoid fever which claimed the lives of john's wife daughter and many enslaved by the end of that year john began to rebuild and also remarried his second wife nancy ann continued the farm operation after his death in 1884 and two of their children returned to help keep the farm alive maddie returned to care for her mother nieces and nephews and ran a general store in the 1847 home dick a teacher by trade built a second home on the plantation in 1895 and later industrialized the entire farm operation dick's son willie lee was the last gerald to farm the land retiring in 1965. so another interesting thing that i'd read elsewhere said that after the civil war ended this plantation actually grew to about a thousand acres and was used for timber mostly because the okamogee river is right back there somewhere behind it and so they would float logs downstream and it was farmed by the geral family and tenant farmers that were the the enslaved people that had remained after freedom came to work on the land as tenant farmers now unfortunately this area of the park down here these buildings that you see is currently closed due to renovations from storm damage so maybe we'll have to come back here to the geral plantation historic site and check it out at a later date when they open back up all right folks so that's going to conclude our tour of the gerald plantation today super neat place i'm hoping to make it back here when everything is open this is a great gym in the state of georgia if you're anywhere near here i highly recommend you to come and visit it i hope you enjoyed the video don't forget to like share and subscribe and i'll see you guys on the next adventure you

Channel: Sidestep Adventures

Views: 304,643

Keywords: wormsloe plantation, slave plantation, haunted plantation, georgia, slave plantations, abandoned plantation, slave plantation vlog, savannah georgia, i visited a slave plantation, slave plantation documentary, slave plantations in the south, slave plantations in tennessee, jarrell plantation, juliette, urban exploration, jarrell plantaion, georgia state parks, historic site, abandoned exploration, paranormal exporation, paranormal investigation, ghost hunters international

Id: a6Mxvd7qZS4

Length: 20min 50sec (1250 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 02 2020