GEORGIA HISTORICAL MARKERS
Location: US Highway 27, Louvale, Georgia Marker Dedication or Erection Date: January 1, 1986 Erected by the Historic Chattahoochee Commission and the Antioch Primitive Baptist Church, 1986.
Antioch Institute Built in the 1850's, the school was operated by the Antioch Primitive Baptist Church until it was sold to Stewart County in 1895. The building is believed to have been used for church services until the handsome building to the south was erected for that purpose about 1885. The county operated the Louvale High School here until 1928 when the upper grades were transferred to Lumpkin. The elementary school remained until 1942. The school is now used as the Louvale Community House which serves as the home for the Sybil and John B. Richardson School of Sacred Harp Singing.
Location: U.S. Highway 27, Georgia Highway 27, (Courthouse Square), Lumpkin, Georgia Marker Dedication or Erection Date: 1980 Erected by the Historic Chattahoochee Commission and the Stewart County Historical Commission, 1980
Bedingfield Inn The Bedingfield Inn or Tavern was constructed on this site in 1836 by Dr. Bryan N. Bedingfield as a family residence and stagecoach stop. It was a center for commercial and community activities and a one-day's travel from Columbus, Fort Gaines, Americus, and Eufaula, Alabama. Also known as the "Harrell House," "Cuba House" and "Ard House," it continued as a hotel or boarding house into the 1930's. In 1965, it was purchased by the Stewart County Historical Commission and restored as an 1840 house museum.
Location: Cemetery by the railroad tracks, Richland, Georgia Marker Dedication or Erection Date: January 1, 1988 Erected by the Historic Chattahoochee Commission and the Stewart County Historical Commission, 1980.
Cedarwood Cemetery In 1832 Henry Audulf gave 8 acres of this land for two churches and a cemetery. A native of Germany, Audulf was the first settler here. Methodist and Baptist churches were built. A few years later both were destroyed by a tornado. Only the Methodists rebuilt here. In 1912 the congregation moved to a new church. This cemetery alone remains of Audulf's gift. Here rest many of Richland's earliest citizens including Audulf's son, John; his granddaughter, Mary Ann Audulf; and her husband, Dr. Jubilee Smith, physician, minister and prominent Mason, who also served the community as pharmacist and dentist.
Location: In front of the courthouse, Lumpkin, Georgia Marker Dedication or Erection Date: January 1, 1986 Erected by the Historic Chattahoochee Commission and the Stewart County Commission, 1986.
County Courthouse This handsome structure as built in 1895 in the Classical style made popular by the buildings housing the Columbian Exposition in Chicago (1893-94) to which Lumpkin-born architect John Wellborn Root was a major contributor. It replaced a wooden courthouse built on the same site in 1837. The first seat of county government in 1831 was a small frame structure elsewhere on this square. In 1922 a fire destroyed the interior of the present building which was rebuilt in fire-resistent materials. Fully refurbished in 1985, the building contains county offices, the Superior Court and virtually complete county records.
Location: In front of the Kirbo Interpretive Center, Florence Marina State Park, Omaha, Georgia Marker Dedication or Erection Date: January 1, 1992 Erected by the Historic Chattahoochee Commission, Georgia Department of Natural Resources, and Stewart County 1992.
Florence Located on this site was the frontier town of Florence, which was incorporated on December 14, 1837 after the Creek Indians burned the nearby town of Roanoke in 1836. Florence was originally named Liverpool after the English port city. For many years the town flourished and could boast of a covered bridge linking it to Alabama, a newspaper, bank and hotel. Florence began to decline after the flood of 1846 washed away the bridge and the town was later bypassed by the railroad. The town site is now occupied by a few scattered homes, farmland and Florence Marina State Park which takes its name form the former community.
Location: Green Grove Road SW - about 8 miles SW of Old Eufaula Highway, Lumpkin, Georgia Marker Dedication or Erection Date: January 1, 2000 Erected by the Historic Chattahoochee Commission and the Friends of the Green Grove Missionary Baptist Church, School and Cemetery Complex, 2000.
SIDE 1: Green Grove Schoolhouse The old schoolhouse was moved to the Green Grove community from the nearby community of Wesley Chapel and rebuilt at this site c. 1937. During the next 21 years the school produced many professionals which included a large number of teachers. The Stewart County Board of Education closed the school in 1958 and sold it to the African American trustees in the community. Green Grove was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1995. Today the complex continues to serve the religious, educational and cultural needs of families and friends whose lives have been shaped by the historic church and schoolhouse.
SIDE 2: Green Grove Missionary Baptist Church This church served as the focus for the religious, educational and cultural life of African Americans in the Green Grove community during the late 19th century and well into the 20th century. Deacons Perry Hudson, Isaac Shorter and Lewis Cherry held the first church assembly under a brush arbor in 1886. The first church building was destroyed by a tornado c. 1919 and the second house of worship was consumed by a fire c. 1924. The congregation then moved the church to the present site which is three miles south of the original location.
Location: US 280, Richland, Georgia Marker Dedication or Erection Date: January 1, 1986 Erected by the Historic Chattahoochee Commission and the City of Richland 1986.
Historic Richland First settled in 1827, Richland was named for the home district of several pioneer families from South Carolina. The community became a busy railroad junction when the Savannah, Americus and Montgomery and the Columbus Southern rail lines met here in 1889. Richland was incorporated in 1890. By 1913, the city had 3 banks, 3 hotels, 25 stores, guano factory, cotton seed oil mill, Coca-Coca bottling plant and other enterprises. The older part of the city is a historic district listed in the National Register of Historic Places as significant in areas of city planning, transportation, architecture and social history.
Location: US Highway 27, Louvale, Georgia Marker Dedication or Erection Date: January 1, 1986 Erected by the Historic Chattahoochee Commission and the Louvale Community, 1986.
Louvale Church Row Originally Antioch, the town developing at the terminus of the Savannah, Americus and Montgomery (Little SAM) Railroad, was renamed Louvale in 1886. Antioch Primitive Baptist Church, founded 1832 in Pleasant Valley, moved to Moccasin Gap 1842 and here 1851. Present church was erected c. 1885 to replace original log structure.
Marvin Methodist Church, founded 1830 in Green Hill. Moved here 1990 when present building was erected.
New Hope Baptist Church, constituted 1860 two miles from here. Moved to present building in 1901.
Location: Seven miles west of Lumpkin, Georgia, via Georgia Highway 39 connector Marker Dedication or Erection Date: January 1, 1980 Erected by the Historic Chattahoochee Commission and the Stewart County Historical Commission, 1980.
Providence Church, when first organized, 1832-33, was a log building on the south side of the road. Two acres were donated by David Lowe for a church and school (Providence Academy). This land is now between two of the canyons. The present building was built in 1859, on the north side of the Old Lumpkin-Florence Road. Many Stewart County pioneer families are in the cemetery. Charter members were Goodes, Lowes, Worthingtons, Perkins, Kirkpatricks, Seays, Pitts, Adams, Shermans, and Pattersons.
Location: Westville 1850's Village, Lumpkin, Georgia Marker Dedication or Erection Date: January 1, 1988 Erected by the Historic Chattahoochee Commission and the Institute for the Study of American Cultures, 1988.
SIDE 1: Westville Symposium On October 12, 1973 an informal group of fifty persons, having an interest in several areas of academic research, met at Westville's Yellow Creek campmeeting tabernacle for a three day symposium to discuss a subject of mutual concern. They came from across the nation to share information about evidence of transoceanic contacts between precolumbian Americans and ancient peoples of Europe, Asia and Africa. A major problem was popular skepticism resulting from the scholarly dictum of NEBC (No Europeans Before Columbus).
SIDE 2: Academic Pioneers The first Westville Symposium on precolumbian transoceanic contacts was a significant event in American historiography and was followed by similar meetings here in 1974 and 1975. More than 150 people participated in this series of talks. Many of those who assembled at Westville have become leaders in the revisionist movement in American history that has grown since that time. Although strongly resisted by conservatives, this new history promises a more accurate understanding of precolumbian Americans as an interacting component of world society and not as an isolated culturally backward segment of mankind as the NEBC school had taught.