This Greek Revival Plantation House was built in 1850

Twin Oaks Plantation, Greenville Georgia

Date added: May 26, 2024

West (front) and south (side) facades and grounds (1980)

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Twin Oaks is an excellent and well-preserved antebellum Greek Revival plantation house. Like many houses from this period, it was built of wood, stone, and brick secured from the site. The house was built by a slave craftsman, Elbert Wimbish. The landscaping of the grounds, especially the planting of trees, and the siting of the house upon a knoll are characteristic of Greek Revival-period landscape architecture. J.M.C. Robertson, the original owner of the house, was a wealthy planter and cotton industrialist.

J.M.C. Robertson's plantation house was started about 1855. The highly skilled builder/craftsman Elbert Wimbish, a slave owned by Dr. Hezekiah S. Wimbish, was borrowed to build the house. Wimbish is known to have built the Greek Revival home of Dr. Wimbish, also in Greenville. The plantation is said to be made of hand-hewn heart-of-pine logs seasoned for at least two years, and bricks that were mixed, molded, and kiln-dried at the construction site.

The design of the house embodies the characteristics of classical architecture. The front portico is in the Greek Doric order with monumental columns and a central balcony, Bilateral symmetry is the rule in this four-over-four with a central stair-hall structure. The roof pitch is low. The windows and doors are trabeated. The structure is painted white. All these characteristics were thought to represent the classical temple form of the ancient Greeks.

The location of Twin Oaks was the site of a pioneer log structure built by Jordon Rees. Old photographs reveal that the structure was made of hand-hewn logs and mortise-and-tenon construction. The house had a single brick end chimney. It was one-and-a-half stories high; presumably, the upper half was the sleeping area. Not much is known about Jordon Rees except that he acquired the land in Meriwether County after the 1825 treaty with the Lower Creek Indians and the distribution of land in the 1827 Land Lottery.

Jordon Rees sold his land to J.M.C. Robertson in 1839. The land conveyance consisted of Land Lot 186 (202-1/2 acres), the north half of Lot 199 (101-1/2 acres) and the southwest corner of Land Lot 187 (2-1/2 acres), all in the Eighth District of Meriwether County. James M.C. Robertson (1809-1886) came to Meriwether County from Clarke County, Georgia, in 1830. Three years after he purchased the land from Rees, he married Mary Park Holmes Kendel, who lived on a large plantation four miles south of Greenville. When their plantation home on Land Lot 186 was finished in 1860, the Robertson family called it "Twin Oaks" after the two oak trees planted in the front yard named for his two daughters, Mary Harris and Leonora Frances Robertson.

Mr. Robertson played a significant role in the early industrial history of the area. He and his partner, Thomas Leslie, built a pioneer cotton mill on Flat Shoals Creek, a few miles outside of Greenville in Troup County. It began operation in 1847. He was an early cotton industrialist in an area whose economy later was based on the mill industry. He was also a prosperous planter. A 1903 article in the Meriwether Vindicator titled "Old Men of Meriwether" said that Mr. Robertson was one of the county's most successful antebellum plantation owners. The article describes "his corncribs were the largest in this section of the country … his wheat crops large … his porkers were numerous and of ponderous size and weight … his cotton crops … got the best prices. He had orchards of pears, plums, apples, and peaches." Robertson was known to have owned at least twenty slaves. The 1903 article describes the slave houses as "well built and located in a beautiful grove shaded by mammoth oaks and the tenants well fed and comfortably clad." The Vindicator reports that "his plantation was not only self sustaining but a source of annual profit." As he prospered he acquired more land in the county.

Mary Eliza Robertson inherited the home after the death of her parents. She died in 1928 and the plantation was sold to Eugene T. Strozier in 1931 at public auction.

Mr. Strozier sold the property to Mr. and Mrs. Roy J. Winsor in 1937. It was during their residence that the home was renamed Winsor Hall. When Mr. Winsor bought the estate, it was "run down," and tenants living there paid $1.50 per month per room. The Winsors modernized the plumbing and electrical systems and did some cosmetic work such as replastering. Unfortunately, they took down many outbuildings which they felt were not worthy of renovation. Mr. Winsor is known for his invention of one-man power road graders. By 1935, he held several patent rights on several broad fundamental road graders. His efforts advanced the transportation industry of his time.

The house was next owned by Mr. and Mrs. Don Greenlees, who acquired the estate in 1962. After Mr. Greenlees' retirement from Sears, Roebuck and Company, the couple wanted an old Southern plantation house. The changes they made included lowering the ceiling in the master bedroom and paneling the room in mahogany, and screening the southeast end of the veranda. They built a modern kitchen in the old dining room and added a modern bathroom in the kitchen and at the end of the hall upstairs. A bathroom was also added to the basement. Gas heating was also installed. The Greenlees raised cattle, chickens and Tennessee walking horses, and sold shrubbery from a shop on the place.

In 1970, Mr. and Mrs. Paul Rodger, from LaGrange, bought the estate. They sold it in 1975 to Drs. Ann and Harper Gaston, from California. The Gastons planned to recreate the original environs of the plantation and retire there.

Building Description

Twin Oaks consists of a house with outbuildings standing on a knoll surrounded by about 50 acres of mostly cleared land. The main house is a two-story, wood-frame, antebellum Greek Revival plantation house. It is nearly square in plan and cubical in massing, with a low-hipped roof and a raised masonry basement. The front facade features a two-story Doric portico, flush siding, and a doorway with side and transom lights. The interior is arranged in the standard four-over-four with central stair hall configuration. During the past, at least 16 outbuildings have been associated with the property; today, only five remain, and only one, a detached kitchen to the rear of the house, dates from the nineteenth century. Large trees, including several oaks, shade the house and its surrounding lawn.

The house is an antebellum Greek Revival plantation house whose appearance today is not unlike the original appearance when built. A two-story, heavy frame structure, the house sits on a high stuccoed brick basement. Square, hand-hewn beams, mortised-and-tenoned together, support the main floor. Capping the house is a pyramidal hipped roof and a simple cornice and entablature. There are two pairs of interior end chimneys rising through the roof. The front facade has a monumental portico consisting of six fluted columns in the Doric order. The structure is five bays wide and four bays deep.

The exterior detailing of the Twin Oaks house is classically derived from such handbooks as those by Asher Benjamin. Each story of the front facade is articulated by a Greek Revival doorway, with transom and sidelights, which is flanked by a pair of windows. A notable feature of the six-over-six windows is the eared architrave. The shutters, painted green, appear to be original. Another notable feature is the fluted pilaster at each front corner of the house, mirroring the fluted columns of the porch. On the second story, the central cantilevered balcony has lattice railing; matching lattice work is found on the low railing which surrounds the front portico. The exterior is sheathed in clapboard except the front facade, which has flush siding.

The interior of the Twin Oaks house consists of a four-room-over-four room with central stair hall plan. Originally, the first floor consisted of a parlor and dining room on the north side of the hall and a drawing room and master bedroom on the south side. Today, the parlor is a dining room; the dining room is a modern kitchen; the drawing room is a living room and the master bedroom is a library. A stairway rising from the rear of the wide hall leads to the second floor. The stairway has molded railing and simple square balusters. All four rooms upstairs were originally and still are bedrooms. The heart-of-pine floors run east to west in the hallways and north to south in the side rooms. At the east end of the hall a trabeated door leads to the cantilevered balcony. At the west end of the hall a modern bathroom has been added. Each bedroom has a fireplace with simple Greek Revival mantels. On the first floor, the fluted pilasters on the mantel, transom door and facade all match.

The house has a full basement. Underneath the floor of the portico is a storage area closed by a thick wall. The basement originally consisted of a spinning room, kitchen, wine cellar, plantation office with a well under the floor, and a cellar with a clay floor. Today, the basement is mainly used for storage; a small one-bedroom apartment has been built in the area known as the spinning room and kitchen.

There have been at least 16 outbuildings associated with the house. Today, all five standing outbuildings are behind the main house, toward the east. With one exception, all of these structures appear to have been built during the first half of the twentieth century. The exception is referred to as the cook's home and is assumed to have served as the plantation kitchen. It is a frame structure, a single story high, with a rock hearth and chimney.

A log dwelling, assumed to be the pioneer home of Jordan Rees, once stood about 20 meters to the northeast of the plantation home. It was removed when its partial collapse presented a safety problem. The foundation stones and chimney rubble of Rees' one-and-a-half-story log home are still clearly visible.

The foundation ruins of several structures are also located behind the main house. Some are made of concrete, and one has an unusual apparatus attached, constructed of 55-gallon oil drums placed end to end and resembling a horizontal flue to a large smokehouse.

In the 1930s, the plantation was rehabilitated by Roy J. Winsor. As part of the rehabilitation, the grounds were "improved" and "old decrepit cabins, former slave quarters, were torn down including the old smokehouse: and some dependencies too far gone to be worthwhile for renovation". Aerial photographs from 1941 and 1965 reveal several outbuildings that are no longer standing. Today, there are no above-ground remains of these structures. Two large barns, the cookhouse, and a utility structure all made of white clapboard still exist.

Twin Oaks is located within the Greenville city limits about 1.2 kilometers north of the courthouse between Georgia Highway 100 and U.S. Highway 27. The house and dependencies occupy a relatively level expanse of hill with steep slopes to the north. Tributaries of Kennel Creek are found to the north and south of the property. A few feet back from Georgia Highway 100 is a gate entrance made of gray concrete with acorns sculptured on the two central piers. A gravel driveway leads up to the side of the house which is framed by massive oak trees; a terraced front walk, lined with trees, leads directly to the front door.

Twin Oaks was once at the center of a 300-acre plantation. During the twentieth century, this plantation was subdivided by two major highways. Outlying agricultural land was sold off, and some of it, especially to the west, was developed. Thus, Twin Oaks today is no longer part of a working plantation.