By SHERRI SMITH BROWN

Georgia > Coastal Georgia > Liberty County > Hinesville

The Midway Museum in the historic community of Midway is just one of the places you can visit in Liberty County for a lesson in American history. 

Liberty County folks like to say that the county has played a major role in every significant event in American history – from the Revolutionary War to the Civil War to the Civil Rights movement to the fight against terrorism. No wonder that a trip through Liberty County is like taking a course in American history.

This county on the Georgia Coast has plenty of interesting towns and historic sights to visit:

• Allenhurst
• Flemington
• Fort Stewart
• Hinesville
• Midway
• Riceboro
• Sunbury
• Melon Bluff Nature & Heritage Reserve
• Geechee Kunda
• Midway Museum
• Fort Stewart Military Museum

Read more about Museums in Georgia and Georgia Cities and Georgia Counties, or find other activities in the Coastal Georgia Travel Region here at Brown’s Guides.

By SHERRI SMITH BROWN

Georgia > Central Georgia > Baldwin County > Milledgeville

There are a number of historic sites to visit in Milledgeville relating to the town’s place in history as a Georgia State Capitol, including the 1839 Old Governor’s Mansion, said to be one of the finest examples of High Greek Revival architecture in the nation.

Milledgeville is a lovely town in central Georgia with a history that includes being the capitol of the state during the Civil War years. You can spend a day or two in Milledgeville exploring its historic district, which boasts more than 20 architectural landmarks, with more than a dozen identified as historical sites.

As the home of renowned American writer Flannery O’Connor, Milledgeville is also a literary destination. Tour O’Connor’s home, Andalusia Farm, on the outskirts of Milledgeville or visit some of the memorials dedicated to her life and work in the historic town.

Below are some places to visit on a trip to Milledgeville:

• Old Capitol Museum
• Old Governor’s Mansion
• Andalusia Farm
• Historic Trolley Tours
• Lockerly Hall & Arboretum
• John Marlor Art Center
• GCSU’s Natural History Museum
• Brown-Stetson-Sanford House
• Blackridge Hall Art Gallery
• The Museum at GCSU/Flannery O’Connor Memorial Room

Read more about Milledgeville and Baldwin County, or find other activities in the Central Georgia Travel Region here at Brown’s Guides.

By SHERRI SMITH BROWN

Georgia > East Central Georgia > Wilkes County > Washington

This late 18th-century log cabin represents the home of Job Callaway and is one of several historical buildings that you can see at Callaway Plantation in Washington. 

As late as the early 1770s, Georgia’s boundaries were mostly within the coastal region. In only a confined area beyond Augusta were the Piedmont’s heavier soils and hardwood forests included within Georgia’s boundary. Frontiersmen were trickling down into this area from their homes in Virginia, Maryland and the Carolinas. Self-reliant, with few slaves and little love for coastal aristocrats, they brought a new way of life centered around the cultivation of tobacco and corn.

As the population grew, Georgia needed more of this Piedmont land — land inhabited by the Creek and Cherokee Indians. In 1773, Georgia’s Royal Governor, James Wright, purchased two tracts of land from the Cherokees and Creeks; one strip of coastal plain, stretching between the Ogeechee and Altamaha rivers, which made way for the cultivation of rice; the other on the Piedmont, stretching north to Hart County on the Savannah River and almost to Athens on the west. Out of these Piedmont “ceded lands,” Wilkes County was formed along with the first Constitution of Georgia in 1777.

Settlers flooded into the new area via the Piedmont route from the north. Most of these families were non-slaveholders who took farm-size tracts of 200 acres or less, thus blending well with the tobacco and corn growing frontiersmen who had preceded them into the Piedmont a few years earlier. (more…)

By SHERRI SMITH BROWN

Georgia > West Central Georgia > Troup County > LaGrange

Built by Benjamin Harvey Hill in the early 1850s, Bellevue in LaGrange is a National Historic Landmark and one of Georgia’s finest examples of Greek Revival architecture.  

There are numerous lovely antebellum homes across Georgia. Bellevue, listed on the National Register of Historic Places and designated a National Historic Landmark by the National Park Service in 1973, is one of the finest examples of Greek Revival architecture in the state.

Sitting atop a gently sloping hill, the beautifully restored home originally presided over a 1200-acre plantation owned by Georgia orator and statesman Benjamin Harvey Hill. It was built from 1853 to 1855 for his wife, Caroline Holt Hill. Ionic columns grace the wide porticos on three sides of the home. Inside, massive wood cornices around the doorways and large windows were hand carved by slaves. All of the original fireplaces were made of Italian black marble. There are original heart pine floors, carved pediments, and plaster ceiling medallions

The home is furnished in the style of the 1850s. Many donated antiques of the period are on display, including a half-tester bed in one of the upstairs bedrooms. The rosewood piano Hill gave his wife as a wedding present is the only piece of original furniture now in the mansion. Portraits of Hill and Caroline hang in the main drawing room. In the main entry, there is a large oil portrait of the Senator as well. (more…)

By SHERRI SMITH BROWN

The suffering of Union prisoners at Andersonville and of POWs in all American wars is the story told at Andersonville National Historic Site.

Where the small stream named Stockade Branch merges with Sweetwater Creek, just six miles west of the Flint River, once stood the most notorious war prison in the Confederacy—Andersonville. From 1864 to 1865, Confederate guards interred 45,000 Union prisoners of war (POW) over a period of 14 months. Of these, 12,914 died from disease, poor sanitation, malnutrition, overcrowding or exposure to the elements. Stockade Branch ran through this 26.5-acre area, surrounded by a 15-foot high stockade of hewed pine logs. When it entered the pen, it carried fresh water; when it exited, it carried human filth and suffering of men living an extremely harsh and miserable existence.

Andersonville, or Camp Sumter as it was officially known, was one of the largest of the many Confederate military prisons established during the Civil War. Today, Andersonville National Historic Site is one of the most moving Civil War shrines in all the South. The white cross Union graves lie in rows in the Andersonville National Cemetery, and the prison site itself stands as a stark reminder of the horrors of that war. (more…)