The bright green trim around this deteriorating cottage just inside Ehrhardt on U.S. Highway 601 is about all that’s left that doesn’t look worn.
The town of about 600 people is in rural Bamberg County where 27 percent of its 15,763 people live below the federal poverty level, according to 2012 Census estimates. The majority of residents are black (61.4 percent) with whites comprising 36.8 percent.
VanishingSouthGeorgia.com photographer Brian Brown likes the hand-painted sign on this door of this old building in Emmalane, about four miles southwest of Millen, Ga.: “L.P. Mons, Well Driller.”
“There are lots of cotton farms in this area off the Old Savannah Highway south of Millen. In fact, the oldest cotton farm in America (Juanita M. Joiner Farm) and the oldest timberland company (Southern Woodland Company) are operated by the 8th generation of the family on lands dating to 1783.This relic, located in the vicinity of the farm, probably served the now-forgotten community of Emmalane as a general store or commissary.”
Jenkins County, whose county seat is Millen, was home to 9,213 people, according to the U.S. Census in 2012, an increase of 10 percent from two years earlier. Almost 30 percent of residents live in poverty.
Old farmhouse and silos, Emmalane community, Jenkins County, Ga.
VanishingSouthGeorgia.com photographer Brian Brown sent along this typical Georgia country scene about four miles southwest of Millen — an old Victorian farmhouse surrounded by silos, farm implements, dirt roads and mud puddles.
Remind you a little bit of some of the descriptions of eastern Georgia from Tobacco Road (1932) author Erskine Caldwell? Nearby on Brown’s photoblog, you can find other neat stuff around the Emmalane community: Brinson’s Bar-B-Que (“a well-loved institution in Jenkins County … three slices, of Sunbeam bread, a generous helping of potato salad and Brinson’s sweet tea complete this classic Southern meal”), Skull Creek Baptist Church and an old general store.
Jenkins County, whose county seat is Millen, was home to 9,213 people, according to the U.S. Census in 2012, an increase of 10 percent from two years earlier. Almost 30 percent of residents live in poverty.
VanishingSouthGeorgia.com photographer Brian Brown writes that this old Neoclassical Revival home is currently for sale in Millen in eastern Georgia. The house, said to have been built in 1892-93 and named the “Joseph and Lucinda Applewhite House,” reportedly did not have the columns when originally built in the Queen Anne style. The columns were said to have been added in the 1980s during a renovation.
One person who saw the photo of the home in Millen, which had a population of 3,492 in 2000, wrote, “There’s nothing lonelier than an abandoned house. Oh, the memories that were made there.”
Millen is the county seat of Jenkins County, which was home to 9,213 people, according to the U.S. Census in 2012, an increase of 10 percent from two years earlier. Almost 30 percent of residents live in poverty.
Carswell Grove Baptist Church, Jenkins County, Ga.
The historic Carswell Grove Baptist Church, pictured above, about 10 miles northwest of Millen, Ga., has a complicated history, writes Georgia photographer Brian Brown in this post on VanishingSouthGeorgia.com. The current church building, now on the National Register of Historic Places, was constructed in 1919 after a lynch mob burned down its predecessor during a time of racial violence that was known as “Red Summer.”
According to an excerpt of an article in the Harvard Divinity Bulletin, the church had one of the largest black congregations in eastern Georgia in 1919. An April 13 of that year as hundreds gathered to celebrate its founding, an altercation broke out after two white police officers arrived. Both police officers and a black man were killed. Another man, Joe Ruffin, was severely wounded. According to the story, which writer Cameron McWhirter published as a book in 2011(Red Summer: The Summer of 1919 and the Awakening of Black America):
“A white mob quickly formed and went on a rampage. The mob burned the church down, then killed two of Ruffin’s sons—one of them a thirteen-year-old. Rioters threw the bodies in the flames, then spread out through the area, burning black lodges, churches, and cars. They killed several other people; no one knows how many. The wounded Joe Ruffin was saved from the lynch mob only because a white county commissioner drove him at high speed to the nearest big city, Augusta, and put him in the county jail there.”
Brown said efforts were ongoing to preserve and stabilize the current church structure.
Jenkins County, whose county seat is Millen, was home to 9,213 people, according to the U.S. Census in 2012, an increase of 10 percent from two years earlier. Almost 30 percent of residents live in poverty.
Lane, S.C., was once a busy railroad hub that boasted two hotels, several successful businesses and a number of large houses, writes retired editor and photographer Linda W. Brown.
“While some of the houses are still well-maintained, this one is fading fast,” she says.
These days, Lane, which is in Williamsburg County, has about 600 people.
Just under 34,000 people live in Williamsburg County, which is about the number who lived there in 1900, according to Census figures. Population peaked in 1950 at 43,807, but has dropped slowly since then.
About two-thirds of county residents are black, with almost all of those remaining being white. Only 2 percent of those in the county are of Hispanic descent. Some 32.8 percent of residents live in poverty, according to the Census. Of the county’s 1,921 firms, 36.5 percent are black-owned — a percentage that is three times South Carolina’s average.
This abandoned baseball field where wood is warping and steel stands are rusting seems reflective of how tired Timmonsville, S.C. seems. Per capita income for the town was $11,714 in 2000. In 2010, the town had 2,315 people. Ten years later, it had grown by five people.
Timmonsville’s poverty rate was 26.6 percent in 2000, much higher than its home county, Florence, which had 19.4 percent poverty in 2010. Florence, just a few miles away from Timmonsville, is the largest city in the Pee Dee with 37,498 people in 2012. Florence County had 137,948 people, according to a 2012 estimate.
If you drive through the college town of Statesboro in mideastern Georgia, you probably wouldn’t think that 50.7 percent of residents lived in poverty, according to a five-year average by the U.S. Census. Sure, there are parts of town that have challenges, but it certainly doesn’t look like half of the residents are poor.
About the best we can figure is that the Census must have counted a lot of the 20,000+ students from Georgia Southern University as residents who live below the poverty level. And in a small town like Statesboro — population 29,779 — the number of college students, indeed, may make the community look statistically poorer than it is. (Anybody know differently or have a better explanation?)
The community is 54 percent white and 40 percent black. Its median household income is $19,554, according to the Census. If the Bureau is counting college students, the skewed demographics that Statesboro is experiencing can have a dramatic impact because it won’t be able to attract medium- and higher-end stores and shops. In a story told us by a newspaperman during a September visit, we learned that a major grocer won’t move to town because of Statesboro’s relatively low median household income. And that’s a shame because the community seems like it’s got a lot going for it — something the fast-food chains certainly have discovered.
Statesboro is the county seat of Bulloch County, which has 72,694 people (2012), two thirds of which are white. Just over 30 percent of residents live in poverty. The median household income for the county is $33,902.
Autumn barn, Williamsburg County, S.C. Photo by Linda W. Brown.
Not only does the autumn sunlight dance warm shades and shadows on this old barn off McIntosh Road in Williamsburg County, S.C., but it highlights how the barn is in the autumn of its days, according to retired editor Linda W. Brown.
Such pastoral scenes dot the landscape of the Southern Crescent to reflect two realities — the relaxed beauty of the area and the slow decay of infrastructure that once powered the rural South.
Just under 34,000 people live in Williamsburg County, which is about the number who lived there in 1900, according to Census figures. Population peaked in 1950 at 43,807, but has dropped slowly since then.
About two-thirds of county residents are black, with almost all of those remaining being white. Only 2 percent of those in the county are of Hispanic descent. Some 32.8 percent of residents live in poverty, according to the Census. Of the county’s 1,921 firms, 36.5 percent are black-owned — a percentage that is three times South Carolina’s average.
Orange dirt roads. Pine trees. Cotton fields. This photo evokes the writing of Georgia’s Erskine Caldwell. It was taken in Georgia’s cotton country just north of the intersection of U.S. Highway 80 and Georgia Highway 121 in Emanuel County.
According to the Cotton Council International 2013 Buyers’ Guide, Georgia farmers grew more than 15 percent of the nation’s cotton in 2011-12 by producing 2.465 million bales. The only state that grew more cotton was Texas, which produced 3.5 million of the nation’s 15.573 million bales in 2011-12.
Emanuel County,located north of Statesboro, Ga., has almost 23,000 people and a poverty rate of 24.5 percent, according to the U.S. Census.
Photo taken Sept. 23, 2013, by Michael Kaynard. All rights reserved.
