Millen, which had a population of 3,492 in 2000, 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.
Vidalia onions make the county more prosperous than neighboring counties. Still, about 25 percent of county residents live below the poverty level. The median household income is $32,464 — more than $17,000 below the national average.
Just looking at this ghoulish photo of an that’s part of Haunted Montrose in Georgia gives us the willies. The seasonal attraction is a boost to the economy of this small Laurens County town of Montrose, population 154. Most interesting is how folks in this small community put the town on the map in a non-agricultural time of the year to generate extra revenue. See earlier photo.
Montrose, located in central Georgia, has a relatively low poverty rate of 11.2 percent, although 30 percent of its children live in poverty. Some 23.6 percent of residents of Laurens County (population 48,434) live in poverty, according to Census data
You can tell how popular pork products are through this old sign on a barn near Soperton, Ga. We remember the smoky tastiness of barbecue and Brunswick stew from rural Treutlen County from childhood. The photo is by VanishingSouthGeorgia.com photographer Brian Brown.
The county, almost in the middle of Georgia, is home to about 6,700 people, two-thirds of whom are white. Some 26 percent of the population live at or below the federal poverty line.
Providence Methodist Church, circa 1859 in rural Stewart County, Ga., has always caught the attention of VanishingSouthGeorgia.com photographer Brian Brown. It’s a fascinating church, he said here, that is located in western Georgia on the Alabama line in the small county — population 5,803 in 2013.
“On my last visit, however, I was appalled at the horrible condition of the cemetery,” he wrote after this 2011 photo.. “This is on state park land (or at least accessible only via state park road at which an entrance fee is collected) and an absolute disgrace to the department. I realize budget cuts have been a constant source of despair, but surely a friends group or volunteer organization could assist with its cleanup. It’s one of the oldest cemeteries in this section of the state, and if the government is going to oversee and promote the [Providence] canyon as a tourist attraction, it should have some respect for the pioneer citizens who rest permanently on its grounds.”
The county, where about 30 percent of those who are under 18 live in poverty, has lost population since 2010 and is about at its 1980 level in population. In its agricultural peak in 1900, almost 16,000 people lived in Stewart County.
Better South President Andy Brack remembers seeing the “Goat Man” as a boy when in the back seat of a station wagon traveling between his father’s country cousins in Allentown, Ga., to nearby Macon, where his grandparents lived. You’d see him pushing a wagon filled with all sorts of junk. He was, in a word, a “character.”
VanishingSouthGeorgia.com photographer Brian Brown has this to say about the photo he took in 2013 of the odd Washington County landmark: “Goat Town isn’t really a town and it never was, though you can locate it on a good map. It’s just down the hill from Deepstep, whose iconic old store is also associated with the Veal family. T. Jeff Veal III, who uses his grandfather’s old country store as a workshop to build custom furniture, explained to me that a large herd of goats was kept around the corner in years gone by and the name just stuck. I’ve been here a couple of times and it never ceases to amaze me; it’s widely popular with Georgia’s backroads photographers.” Photo is copyrighted by Brian Brown. All rights reserved.
VanishingSouthGeorgia.com photographer Brian Brown sent along this picture of the old Parker Store (ca. 1927) in rural Wilkinson County in central Georgia.
Brown writes, “According to Keith Colson, Mrs. Pearl Parker opened this store in 1927 and operated it until her death in 1970. Her daughter, Henry Belle Whitaker, kept it open until 1980. I’m unsure as to the actual community in which it is located, but it’s north of Irwinton on US Highway 441.”
Today, Wilkinson County has fewer people (9,577 in the 2012 Census estimate) than it did in the 1940s (11,025 people). About three in five people are white, with most of the rest being black. Poverty is about 20 percent.
VanishingSouthGeorgia.com photographer Brian Brown sent along this photo of a decaying farmhouse from Worth County, Ga. Click here to see a lot of other neat photos of the South Georgia county.
Worth County is located between Albany and Tifton in the central part of South Georgia. The county is home to Peter Pan Peanut Butter. Every jar made is produced in the county seat, Sylvester.
The county had about 21,300 people in 2013, according to the Census with whites representing 68.7 percent and blacks being 29.6 percent. Some 22 percent of people live below poverty levels, according to Census figures.
Here’s yet another abandoned rural store, this one called “Pretoria Station” in Dougherty County, which is home to the county seat of Albany.
Dougherty County is home to almost 93,000 people, according to 2013 U.S. Census estimates. Two-thirds of residents are black, with 30 percent being white. An estimated 30.6 people live in poverty, according to Census figures. The story is the same for Albany, where all but 17,000 of the county’s residents live. But the poverty rate is higher — 34.2 percent, about twice what is Georgia’s state average.
