Wimberly Plantation - Gleesom Hall, Jeffersonville Georgia

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

Front and South- west side of house looking east (1980)

Hardy Durham began purchasing plantation lands in Twiggs County, Georgia in Ca. 1813, and by 1853 he is listed in the county tax digest as owning 5300 acres, making him the second-largest landowner in the county and a prominent local figure. His plantation plain-type house located to the northwest of Gleesom Hall was demolished in Ca. 1955. Durham's cotton business became so successful he established a freight line from his land to the Ocmulgee River in order to ship his plantation goods downriver. After Dr. Wimberly and his wife occupied Gleesom Hall in Ca. 1845 they maintained their land as a cotton-producing plantation in association with her father, Hardy Durham.

Wimberly Plantation, large in its own right, was associated with one of the largest and earliest cotton plantations in Twiggs County. In Ca. 1844-1845, Hardy Durham, the second largest landholder in the county and major cotton businessman, built Gleesom Hall as a belated wedding present for his daughter Caroline and her husband Dr. Henry Slappey Wimberly. In all probability, at this same time, he deeded them the 1150 acres originally associated with Wimberly Plantation. Wimberly Plantation became a major cotton producer which was operated in association with the Durham holdings. The Wimberly land continued in agricultural use into the early part of the twentieth century, when it was allowed to revert to scrub pine.

The setting of the Gleesom Hall complex on a high, dry ridge between two watersheds is typical of antebellum plantation site planning. Whenever possible, owners selected the highest point on their land for house siting. The grounds immediately surrounding the house are purported to have been laid out by a Scottish gardener. Many informally arranged, fine old trees remain.

Architecturally, Gleesom Hall 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 overall form, interior arrangement, structural system, finish materials, and craftsmanship are representative of the best antebellum carpenter traditions. The architect of Gleesom Hall is believed to have been a "Mr. Sessions of Virginia", who is also purported to have designed a number of other residences and churches in Twiggs and the surrounding counties. Extensive research has failed to turn up significant information about Mr. Sessions, but he clearly played an important role in the architectural history of the area.

The outbuildings around Gleesom Hall represent nearly a century of building types. The smokehouse, dairy, and well-house are frequently found in conjunction with nineteenth-century plantations. The 1930s windmill and water tank provide evidence of early-twentieth-century technology.

Site Description

Wimberly Plantation is located on either side of Jeffersonville Road (Ga. Highway 96) about four miles southwest of Jeffersonville, in Twiggs County, Georgia. Wimberly Plantation consists of a Greek Revival style main house, known as Gleesom Hall, related outbuildings, a tenant house and a cemetery on nearly five hundred acres of land associated with an antebellum cotton plantation. Also in the vicinity of the main house are the known locations of three previously existing, historically significant outbuildings.

Wimberly Plantation is sited on a dry ridge between two watersheds. The land is mainly covered with scrub pines and hardwood that has been allowed to grow up since about 1925. A few agricultural plots remain. The main house is located near the north of the property, just to the east of Highway 96. Its surrounding grounds are informally landscaped with lawn, shrubbery and trees. In the immediate vicinity of the main house are several outbuildings including a mid-nineteenth-century brick smokehouse, a mid-nineteenth-century fieldstone and wood-framed dairy, a late nineteenth-century wood-framed well-house under a 1930's "aermotor" windmill, a 1930's elevated water storage tank, and a 1930's four-bay garage. In addition, the earlier locations of a barn, cook's house, and dovecote have been identified in this vicinity. Non-historic outbuildings are limited to a prefabricated caretaker's house, a metal carport and a concrete block pumphouse. Approximately half a mile to the south, also on the east side of Highway 96, is a family cemetery. To the southwest of the cemetery, across the road, is a one-story, turn-of-the-century tenant house.

Gleesom Hall, the main house, is a two-story, wood-framed, carpenter Greek Revival-style plantation house, built about 1845. Attached to the rear corners of the house, and connected by a rear porch or gallery, are a nineteenth-century schoolhouse and an early-twentieth-century kitchen. The main roof of the house and that of the schoolhouse are pyramidal; the kitchen roof is gabled. The main roof is covered with corrugated sheet metal, all others with channeled sheet metal. The main house and the schoolhouse wing have weatherboarding on three sides and flush horizontal siding on their front facades. Windows, uniformly, are six-over-six, double-hung sash with simple wood surrounds. An entablature extends around the house. The symmetrical, five-bay front facade has a two-story full-width portico supported by six square, paneled columns. Its trabeated entranceway has six-panel double doors surrounded by side and transom lights. Immediately above; on the second floor, an entrance with similar treatment leads onto a cantilevered balcony. The rear facade also features a trabeated double doorway with lighted transom which leads onto the first-floor porch. Above, on the second story, the double doors of a similar entrance have been replaced with sash windows which are surmounted by the original lighted transom.

The one-story, one-room schoolhouse has an interior chimney on the north-eastern wall. Its portico on the northwest front has three square columns and reflects the design of the main portico. The one-story kitchen wing is believed to have been a detached cook's house located elsewhere on the site that was moved to its present location between 1915 and 1920. Its overhanging gable roof forms a porch along its northwest front. A small shed-roofed porch on the southwest side of the house dating from the 1920s was enclosed to provide a downstairs bathroom and an interior connection between the main structure and the kitchen wing.

The house has a four-over-four room with central stair hall arrangement. The central hall has a single-run open stairway; in addition, a three-run stair that provides access to a rear bedroom is located in the south dining room. Four interior end chimneys serve a fireplace in each room. Wood mantels are original. The interior is finished with floors, baseboards, and ceilings of wood and plaster walls. The two parlors on the northeast side are connected by paneled pocket doors and have plaster cornices. Interior doors are six-paneled, and many of those on the first floor are surrounded by moldings that intersect at patera blocks.