Thomasville, Georgia

In his later years, Oliver Hazard Payne maintained a winter home in Thomasville, Georgia, which had gained a reputation for winter retreats for hunting and fishing for many of the barons of the gilded age, including John D. Archbold of Standard Oil and  Harry Davidson of the Morgan group who spent a year recuperating in 1920 at Magnolia Plantation, his estate in Thomasville.  Colonel Payne willed his Thomasville property to  Payne Whitney, one of his favorite nephews.  

Greenwood Plantation
restored to lime-colored luxury

Visitors chat in front of Greenwood Plantation's restored main house during the unveiling in 1997. The photograph in the foreground shows the house burning down from an electrical fire in 1993. (AP Photo Associated Press)
 

THOMASVILLE -- The lime-hued mansion that has hosted President Eisenhower and Jacqueline Kennedy among its guests has been restored to antebellum artistry.

The Greenwood Plantation, one of the best-known homes of the region before a 1993 fire ravaged it, now has a brand-new exterior. Even the magnolia blossom adorning the top has more pluck.

"This is almost precisely what it was," said Terry Blanchard, business manager for the family that owns Greenwood.

Greenwood was built as the center of a cotton plantation around 1835-40 and acquired in 1899 as a hunting estate by Col. Oliver Hazard Payne. The family of one of his descendants, John Hay Whitney, has had the house for almost 100 years.

An electrical fire gutted the historic mansion in April 1993, shortly after the house had been redecorated.

"People were stunned," said Kate Whitney. "You felt like a piece of your heart had been burned."

"What you see now is a first-class job, a blue-ribbon job," she said when the house was unveiled last month.

The Whitney family announced plans last year to rebuild the mansion's roof and outer walls. The project developed after consultation with the Georgia Trust for Historic Preservation.

Henry H. Lewis Contractors Inc. of Baltimore -- the company that worked on Thomas Jefferson's Monticello estate -- took charge of the exterior preservation. Bracey Lumber Co. of Thomas County completed the mill work, a complicated task that involved careful analysis of drawings of the home to get accurate measurements for century-old beams.

The inside of the famous plantation still shows scars of the 1993 fire, but no decision has been made yet on restoring the inside.

• "You can't tell anything has ever happened to the house," said Thomasville Mayor Camille Payne. "It will give locals so much satisfaction to know something of so much beauty has been restored."
  
  Key dates in the history of Greenwood Plantation, located near Thomasville in south Georgia:
  
  · 1835-40, builder Tom Jones completes construction of the cotton plantation's Greek Revival mansion
  · 1899, Col. Oliver Hazard Payne buys Greenwood as a hunting estate
  · 1950s, President Eisenhower visits on a hunting trip as a guest of John Hay Whitney, a descendant of Payne who served as ambassador to Great Britain in the Eisenhower administration
  · 1963, Jacqueline Kennedy spends a week in seclusion at the house following the assassination of her husband, President Kennedy
  · 1993, fire guts the historic house
  · 1996, restoration project begins
  · 1997, restored exterior unveiled
   2002 .  Nature conservancy awarded management

The Nature Conservancy and Greenwood Plantation

The Nature Conservancy in July 2002 was awarded management of the historic Greenwood Plantation in Georgia. The 5,200-acre plantation is one of the most ecologically significant privately-held properties in the southeastern U.S. due to an extensive collection of unspoiled old-growth longleaf pine.

• Size: 5,200 acres
• Location: Thomas County, Georgia
• Animal Species: Red-cockaded woodpecker, pine snake, gopher tortoise, Bachman’s sparrow
• Plant Species: wire-leaf dropseed, yellow fringeless, snowy orchids, Turk’s cap lilies

Ecological Importance: Located in southwest Georgia's Red Hills, the Greenwood Plantation contains a 1,000-acre old-growth section of longleaf pine known as the "Big Woods," with trees ranging in age from 200 to 500 years old. Once covering more than 90 million acres across the Southeast, less than 3 percent of the original longleaf pine forests remain. This ecosystem support a diverse range of globally imperiled species.  The plantation also contains river frontage along the Ochlockonee River, river slope forests, a longleaf pine sandhill, and ponds and fields. (Pictured above:  Gopher tortoise.)

History:   Oliver Hazard Payne purchased the property in 1899, and left the Plantation to his nephew, "Plain" Payne Whitney.  When the latter died in 1927, the estate passed to his widow, Helen Hay, daughter of the Lincoln biographer, John Hay.  Her son,  John Hay Whitney, inherited Greenwood Plantation in 1944 and worked with pioneering foresters Ed and Roy Komarek, Herbert Stoddard and Leon Neel to manage the forest while preserving the integrity of the ecosystem. Their techniques of prescribed burning and sustainable forestry resulted in the special character and ecological value of this property today. John Whitney’s wife, Betsey, donated the property upon her death in 1998 to the Greentree Foundation, which Mrs. Whitney established in 1982 after the death of her husband.

Partners: The New York-based Greentree Foundation supports charitable, educational and scientific programs. Pictured at right: Longleaf pine with blazing star flowers.

Plans: Through an adaptive management plan developed with the Greentree Foundation, The Nature Conservancy will work to conserve and protect Greenwood as the highest quality example of a longleaf pine wiregrass ecosystem in the Red Hills and the East Gulf Coastal Plain Ecoregion. After one year, the Foundation expects to transfer title to the Conservancy.

Thomasville, Georgia

More than a century ago, Thomasville was celebrated as one of the most fashionable places in the world to visit. During the Victorian era, many wealthy northern socialites and pleasure seekers traveled by rail to enjoy Thomasville as their grand winter resort. Attracted to the genteel life of south Georgia, many made Thomasville their winter home and built "grand winter cottages". Although this era quickly faded in the early 1900s, more than fifty of these grand historic homes still grace Thomasville's streets.

Thomas County evolved from an Indian hunting domain into a prosperous region. The area's rich land permitted the formation of a classic old South society, a plantation economy based on cotton. The society was rigid and static, peopled by yeomen farmers, professional men, planters, slaves, free Negroes and businessmen both large and small.

With the advent of the Civil War, Thomasville played an important role in the Confederate cause, supplying goods and men to Savannah. The war itself touched the county only briefly when Federal prisoners were sent to Thomasville from Andersonville in late 1864 for a short period of time.

Although predominately agricultural in its early years, Thomas County was never totally dependent upon cotton, raising a variety of crops from pears to tobacco. These products yielded greater returns than those enjoyed by many of the County's neighbors. Although some racial tension existed during Reconstruction, Thomasville and Thomas County escaped much of the bitterness felt elsewhere in the South and remarkably good relations between blacks and whites were sustained throughout the period.

As the terminus for the railroad, Thomasville was accessible from the north and, during the late 1800's, became a winter resort of national and international fame. In the beginning of this era, Northerners and other visitors came for their health, breathing the pine-scented air as a curative for pulmonary ailments. They were soon joined, however, by healthy friends to enjoy hunting, fishing, and an active social life. Some of the most luxuriously appointed hotels of America's gilded age were located in Thomasville, the "Original Winter Resort of the South."

Many of the "winter cottages" built during the 1880's are now restored through efforts of Thomasville Landmarks and Thomasville citizens. The Lapham-Patterson House, a Victorian house museum open to the public, was built in 1885 as a winter residence by Charles W. Lapham of Chicago. Owned by the State of Georgia and maintained by Georgia Department of Natural Resources, the house is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Many of those who came to Thomasville during the "grand hotel era" bought property and built magnificent mansions and plantation homes. Many of these plantations are still owned by the families who built them and are visited year round. According to local historians, it was in Thomas County that Mark Hanna and William McKinley planned the strategy that led to McKinley's nomination for the President. President Eisenhower visited Thomas County in 1956 to rest after an illness and to decide whether or not to run for a second term. The local Glen Arven golf course, one of America's oldest, was a favorite of President Eisenhower's.

Although the "grand hotel era" ended with the extension of the railroad into southern Florida, Thomasville and Thomas County have continued the area's longstanding tradition of cultural and economic diversity. Today, Thomasville is home to both the second largest Farmer's Market in the State and to Fortune 500 companies.

There is a rich heritage in Thomasville and Thomas County, and the people work at guarding and preserving that heritage while boldly stepping forward to the challenges that lie ahead.

 Information about Greenwood taken from websource:   www.athensnewspapers.com/1997/110497/1104.a2mansion.html

info about Nature Conservancy role on web:  http://nature.org/success/greenwood/html