John Chapman Plantation - Hollywood, Jeffersonville Georgia

Date added: August 13, 2023 Categories: Georgia House Plantations & Farms

Front and west side of house looking southeast (1981)

John Chapman (1820-1892), first owner of the plantation was deeded the land by his father William Chapman who died in 1848. These lands had been associated with the Chapman family since 1807 when William drew Land Lot 111 during the 1807 Land Lottery. By 1830 he had acquired Land Lot 112 and part of Lot 85, which together constitute the core of the historic plantation holdings. John Chapman became one of Twiggs County's wealthiest citizens and major plantation owners who married four times and left nine children. After his death in 1892, the plantation was run by his widow and children until 1906, when it was sold to Mrs. Pearl Napier O'Daniel, wife of Dr. Mark H. O'Daniel (1861-1915), an important Twiggs County physician. Dr. O'Daniel worked for eight years as a doctor at the Insane Asylum at Milledgeville before setting up his office at the plantation. In 1905, he organized and served as the first president of the Twiggs County Medical Association. Soon after O'Daniel's death, the property was sold again to William B. Gettys (1863-1926), a third important Twiggs County figure credited with originating the commercial timber industry within the area. Gettys bought up large tracts of timberland around Jeffersonville and established a large and highly successful sawmill which he sold before moving to Hollywood in 1918. The property remains in the Getty family today. Beginning in 1931 Eloise Getty Duggan and her husband Charles Duggan began developing the plantation into the modern agricultural operation, including a commercial dairy, cattle-breeding stock, timberlands and contract crop planting, which it is today.

The John Chapman Plantation, originally encompassing 2,000 acres, was a major antebellum cotton plantation in Twiggs County that continued to produce cotton into the twentieth century. In the 1860 agricultural census, the plantation is listed as producing 136 bales of ginned cotton. The existence of the ca. 1880 tenant houses document the post-bellum transition from a slave labor plantation to one worked by tenant farmers. The ca. 1930 switch from cotton to dairy farming and timbering illustrates the demise of Georgia's cotton economy about this time, due to the destruction caused by the boll weevil and the wildly fluctuating price of cotton. The Chapman Plantation is important as an example of a large agricultural complex that has been in continuous operation for over one hundred years.

"Hollywood", the main house, built about 1850, is a fine intact example of a Greek Revival style antebellum plantation house designed by a carpenter/architect. It is one of only two such large residential structures in this style remaining in Twiggs County. Its design, construction, materials, workmanship and detailing are of the highest quality for its style, type and period. Its interior finishing details, including the ceiling medallions, ceiling moldings and elaborate plaster cornices of acanthus and grape leaves in high relief, are particularly outstanding. These plaster medallions and cornices are attributed to a Savannah craftsman, Francis McDermott, who is associated with some very similar work at two ca. 1848 houses in nearby Hancock County. The architect of Hollywood is believed to have been a "Mr. Sessions of Virginia" who is also purported to have designed a number of residences and churches in Twiggs and the surrounding counties. Extensive research has failed to turn up significant information about Mr. Sessions, and he may possibly have been a free black entrepreneur. He clearly played an important role in the architectural history of the area. The date of the house is somewhat problematic, most recorded histories and local sources dating it to 1849-1850 and family tradition to 1857. Either date is possible, although as Sessions' known work in Georgia falls between 1844 and 1852, the earlier date seems more likely.

The setting of Hollywood on one of the few knolls on the gently rolling Chapman Plantation property is an example of typical antebellum plantation house siting. Planters, whenever possible, seemed to have selected the highest, driest point on their lands to locate their houses. The grounds of Hollywood are of particular interest because of the many varieties of native southern trees planted there informally by the first owner. Family tradition holds that John Chapman, upon the completion of his house, had his slaves "go down to the swamps of the Ocmulgee River and dig forty varieties of trees for the yard." Many of these original trees, which include holly, boxwood, oak, magnolia, mulberry and arbor vitae, remain today.

Building Description

The John Chapman Plantation consists of a main plantation house known as "Hollywood" with its informally landscaped grounds, associated domestic and agricultural outbuildings, three tenant farmhouses, several newer structures and the known sites of several previously existing outbuildings. The main residence is a two-story Greek Revival style house dating from the mid-nineteenth century. The plantation occupies 846 acres of gently rolling fall line countryside, variously wooded and in field, immediately east of the Jeffersonville city limits in Twiggs County, Georgia.

"Hollywood", the main house, is a four-over-four room wood-frame carpenter Greek Revival-style residence with a separate dining room/kitchen wing attached to the house at the southeast corner. The house has a brick pier foundation with brick infill. It is weatherboarded, except on the front facade of the main house and two facades of the dining room wing which are sheathed with wide flush boards. The main roof is pyramidal; the dining room and kitchen roofs are hipped. The main house has four interior end chimneys, and the dining room wing has one on its east side. Except on the first floor of the front facade where the sash are six-over-nine, windows throughout are six-over-six double-hung sash with simple wood surrounds and wooden blinds. The five-bay front facade features a full-width, two-story Doric-style portico with six square columns. Its full entablature extends around the entire house. The trabeated entranceway has double six-panel doors flanked by sidelights and surmounted by overlights and a pediment-like lintel. The side and overlights in this entrance are cobalt blue glass, believed to be original to the house. Above the main entrance is a simpler trabeated entrance which provides access to a cantilevered balcony. Two similar entrances are located on the first and second floors of the rear facade. The rear has a full-width one-story porch, now screened in, with a balustrade above, The porch extends to the east forming the portico of the dining room wing and attaching it to the main house. This portico, also screened-in, features three square columns that reflect the design of the main house. A kitchen/bathroom wing was added to the rear of the dining room in 1906 and connected to the dining room by a breezeway. At the same time, a porch was constructed along the western side of the dining room to tie the main house to the kitchen/bathroom addition. In 1918 another porch was constructed along the eastern side of the kitchen addition, and the breezeway connecting the dining room and kitchen was enclosed. All the rear porches were screened-in in 1940. In 1958 a small one-story bathroom/dressing room addition was attached to the east side of the main house.

The interior of the house has a four-over-four room with central stairhall plan, with the dining room/kitchen area attached at the southeast corner. Finishing details are particularly rich. Walls and ceilings are plastered, and floors have wide boards. The downstairs rooms feature wide baseboards, picture rails, ceiling moldings in one room and elaborate cornices and ceiling medallions. The dining room and southeast room with their simple medallions of concentric circle moldings and classic wood cornices have the simplest treatment. The hall and other three rooms all have elaborately molded plaster medallions featuring various acanthus leaf designs in high relief. The northeast room has the ceiling molding, and the two west rooms, joined by pocket doors, have ornate plaster cornices formed of bands of acanthus leaves, grapes and grape leaves molded in high relief. Windows and doors in these rooms have wide molded trim that meets at patera blocks; elsewhere in the house is found simple architrave trim. Upstairs finishing details are less elaborate, featuring baseboards and picture rails in all four bedrooms and the central hall. The two east bedrooms have built-in closets between their shared wall. Wood mantels in all rooms have simple Greek Revival designs. The central stairhall has an open single-run stair with simply turned balusters and a walnut handrail.

Hollywood sits on a rise amidst its informally landscaped grounds. Foundation plantings surround the house and many varieties of native trees, planted, by the first owner, including holly, live oak, magnolia, sweet gum and arbor vitae, are scattered around the grassed area to the front and sides of the house. Forty varieties are said to have been planted originally, and many remain, although some were destroyed in a 1953 tornado. The original drive led straight to Hollywood's main entrance, but this was later replaced by a semi-circular drive of which only the west half remains in use. This now curves around to the west towards a collection of agricultural buildings before leading back to Irwington Road. The plank fence surrounding the yard was first built in 1906. To the rear and west of the house stretch out the associated domestic and agricultural outbuildings and a dirt road which leads to three tenant houses and the plantation lands, used presently for cattle grazing, a commercial hay crop and limited tree farming.

Closest to the house, directly to the rear of the dining room/kitchen wing, is a ca. 1906 water tower, a forty-foot open iron-framed structure supporting a wooden water tank. Just beyond is the original kitchen/laundry dating from 1850-1860. This is a wood frame, gable-roofed, weatherboarded structure sitting on brick piers. A massive central chimney with large fireplaces in each of the two rooms rises through the structure. To the east of the kitchen building are a ca. 1935 one-story weather-boarded chick brooder house and a wood post and galvanized pipe scuppernong arbor built about 1900. Beyond these to the south is the kitchen garden. Adjacent to the kitchen garden on its west is a pecan grove which backs up to a hipped roof, sheet metal-covered garage/utility shed dating from ca. 1920. To the west of the main house is a one-story, weatherboarded, hipped roof structure, built about 1906-1907, that served as a doctor's office for Dr. Mark H. O'Daniel, a later owner of the plantation. Eight agricultural outbuildings are located to the southwest of the house along the driveway extension. On the south of the drive are a ca. 1880 mule barn and storage barn, both in deteriorated condition. Both are balloon-framed weatherboarded structures with sheet-metal-covered gable roofs. Just opposite them, across the drive, are a ca. 1920 sheet metal-covered post and frame storage barn and a ca. 1970 metal equipment shelter. Further to the west are a ca. 1975 covered cattle corral, a ca. 1969 sheet metal covered hay and equipment barn and a ca. 1935 concrete block and novelty siding milking barn which is attached to a ca. 1935 dairy of similar construction. Along the road leading back through the plantation at regular intervals are three ca. 1880 tenant houses with their wells and the archaeological evidence of earlier structures or landscape features. The most northerly house is a one-story saddlebag structure covered with sheet metal with a front porch and rear additions. Next along the road is a one-story, two-room, asphalt-covered, weatherboarded house with rear additions. Its end chimneys have collapsed, and the whole structure is in very deteriorated condition. Two small storage sheds are associated with this house. Farthest to the south is a similar house, also seriously deteriorated, whose weatherboarding is still exposed.