Early Greek Revival Plantation Home in GA

Eudora Plantation House, Quitman Georgia

Date added: May 31, 2024

Do you have an update on the current status of this structure? Please tell us about it in the comments below.

Eudora Plantation in Brooks County today, was, before 1859, located amongst a substantial family land holding in Lowndes County.

Eudora, a stately columned plantation house, was supposedly built during the period between 1835 and 1848 by Major Frances Jones for his bride, Rachel Spain. However, the house may not have been finished by Jones, and no records are available to verify a building date or that the house even existed on that lot at that time.

Rachel Spain was the widow of Levi Spain and the mother of John W. Spain when she married Jones around 1842. The Joneses, as far as existing records can determine, never lived in the unfinished house. Records indicate Frances Jones was paying taxes on the property in absentia. Local tradition claims Jones lacked the money to finish the house and it remained partially unfinished until its owner, Mrs. Jinnin P. Worn, completed the upstairs and built a small porch on the back of the house. When Jones died in 1849, however, he left a large estate in his will, but without mention of a house fitting the description of Eudora.

Further local tradition states the house was designed and built by John Wind an English architect who lived in Thomasville and designed Greenwood Plantation in Thomas County for Frances' brother, Thomas. Although Eudora may have been designed by Wind, it probably was not constructed by him. Eudora lacks the kind of sophistication that Wind used in Greenwood and his other known buildings.

The only written reference to the lot for this period in the history of the plantation consists of a grant to William Kerklin, a minor child in the land lottery of 1827. Frances Jones may have acquired the lot as guardian to Kerklin or through his marriage to Rachel Spain with Levi Spain or John W. Spain as the boy's guardian. Deed records show that the land lot on which Eudora sits was a part of the Spain-Jones holdings.

According to more local tradition, the use of the natural spring near the house as a watering place for stagecoach horses suggests that the house could have been used as a resting place for the coach passengers.

After Major Frances Jones and Rachel died, their holdings passed to John W. Spain, Rachel's son. In 1860 Spain gave the lot on which Eudora sits among others to his daughter, Sarah, as a wedding present on her marriage to Mitchell Jones, a nephew of Frances Jones. The property had become a part of Brooks County in 1858, but the couple lived across the river at Wildwood Plantation in Lowndes County near the Spain family plantation, Forest Hills. The "Old Jones Place" as Eudora had been locally known was not mentioned in the deed.

Mitchell Jones had sold many of the other lots he acquired from his father-in-law by the time of his death in 1900; however, he kept lot nine, on which Eudora now sits and willed it to his daughters, Ada J. Paine and Bessie Smith as his " … farm in Brooks County … " In 1901, the Smiths and the Paines sold the lot to the West Coast Lumber Company, which had Frances Jones Spain, a son of John W. Spain as its president. Since 1901 all the records and documents are available for lot nine, and after 1860 some records can be located; however, the house is not mentioned in any of the earlier deeds. Before 1901 lot nine was probably used for logging and turpentine distilling. Subsequent owners must have rented the house because many residents in the county today can remember either living there themselves or hearing of families who had lived there.

The house was occupied by the Joe Hughs family at the time the Jinnin P. Worns purchased "The Old Jones Place" in 1962. After some searching, Mrs. Worn claims common ancestry to Major Frances Jones; however; she is unable to shed any more light on the building of the house.

Eudora today sits as one of the very few remaining examples of the prosperity that Brooks County once had. Stylistically, Eudora ranks as one of the outstanding houses in Brooks County. The unusual ogee arched doorway was either a very early precedent for the later Victorian stylings if the house had, in fact, been built as early as tradition states in the 1840s, or a point to be used for a later building date. There are many conflicts within the physical appearance that make a present-day, on-site evaluation difficult. The sills and floorboards indicate the earlier date, but the windows, stairway, and doorway point to a later date. Mrs. Worn claims no additions were made, and an on-site inspection seems to substantiate that claim. Whatever the date, however, Eudora stands as a local example of the late Greek Revival plantation house with Victorian embellishments that has long since faded from the county atmosphere.

Building Description

Eudora Plantation, reputedly the first of numerous mansions built in the area during the 1830s and 1840s, is situated in its natural setting which has changed little since the mid-nineteenth century.

Eudora is a two-story, four-room, central hall plan, Greek Revival mansion which has six classic Doric columns of eighteen flutes each supported by brick plinths placed outside the balustrade of the portico. The ogee-arched doorway is unique to the area, and if, in fact, the house was built as early as 1840 the architecture is an early example of the Victorian decorative element in Georgia.

The floors of the eleven-room house are made of unbroken heart pine in lengths of twenty feet. Two great chimneys serve eight hearths, and the ninth fireplace, restored in the original dining room wing, has its own chimney.

The original kitchen, detached from the house, with its eight-foot fireplace was burned in the early part of this century. The livery stables which served the stagecoach horses are gone completely. Later owners have converted the dining room into a kitchen, but have kept the large, open feeling of the room. Some of the original cabinets from the dining room are being used in the kitchen.

The large twelve-paned windows of the house have porcelain latches and some of the original tinted panes are unbroken.

When Mrs. Jinnin P. Worn and her husband purchased the plantation, they found that the original windows were not in place. They had been taken to a shop in Quitman many years before and, were only found by chance by Mrs. Worn while in the shop one day. She bought her windows back and they were fitted perfectly into the old house. Four small, paneled doors beneath the windows opened onto the portico, making doorways from the large windows.

The four corners of the house, using twenty-five-foot lengths of pine adzed into a solid ninety-degree support have kept the pegged braces and joists in alignment. The cypress shingled roof has now been replaced with a more fire-retardant material. Huge brick piers support the massive timbers of the framework, and needed only new mortar for strength when the restoration project was begun in 1962.

Eudora, presently situated on a 561.2-acre tract of pasture, forest, and cropland, is undisturbed, being mostly accessible by county dirt roads. The plantation house stands surrounded by green pastures, shaded by oaks, and faces southward. Piscola Creek bends in and out among the pine and cypress providing a home for the many wild creatures that feed in the area. Ponds and lakes on the property provide water for fox, heron, deer, racoon and possum.