The Elisha Winn House

by Denise Weimer

This month, I continue my exploration of historic sites of Gwinnett County, Georgia, just north of Atlanta. One of the earliest remaining homes of the county is the Elisha Winn House, located near Dacula. The plantation-plain home was built in 1812 in the headright lands of Jackson County, six years before Gwinnett was created. During that period, Elisha Winn was a justice of inferior court in Jackson County. He purchased the 7,300-acre tract on the Appalachee River, and much of the planning for the new county occurred in the Winn home. Inferior court and county elections were held in the parlor, and the first five judges of inferior court were commissioned. Winn succeeded the current judge in 1820 and went on to become the state senator from Gwinnett in 1826 and state representative in the 1830s. Early sessions of superior court (1819-22) were held in the barn, and the first jail was built on site. 

Elisha and his wife, Judith, had thirteen children. Their daughter Philadelphia married in the house (at age thirteen!) to a store owner, William Maltbie, who later helped found the nearby town of Lawrenceville, where he served as postmaster, then clerk and justice of inferior court. The Winn family moved to Lawrenceville about 1824 for better schools, building The Cedars west of town.

The Winn house is constructed of heart pine in two-over-two room design with a gable roof and a chimney at each end. The log kitchen was removed in the 1860s when the Sims family, subsequent owners, added a rear wing for their caretaker. An itinerant painter transformed the plain pine interior woodwork to resemble mahogany doors, burled walnut trim, and stone mantels. Much of the furniture was plantation-plain in style, bereft of carving, with sparse geometric trim. Furniture that was painted would have been mostly in earthy colors, such as you see in the Chief Vann House (https://www.hhhistory.com/2019/03/the-chief-vann-house.html).

The Gwinnett County Historical Society purchased the original Winn home and three acres in 1978, then added over sixteen acres in 1994. Several buildings were also donated, including barns, a jail, a schoolhouse, a blacksmith shop, a cotton house, and an outhouse. The historical society hosts a living history fair every October (http://gwinnetths.org/winnhouse.html). When I visited the property to take photos, I found a maze of orange construction tape, as the county is adding sidewalks and a stage to better host events. Here’s hoping I can attend in the future and bring my historical books!

The 1875 Walnut Grove School served seven grades

Represented by Hartline Literary Agency, Denise Weimer holds a journalism degree with a minor in history from Asbury University. She’s a managing editor for the historical imprints of Lighthouse Publishing of the Carolinas and the author of almost a dozen published novels and a number of novellas. A wife and mother of two daughters, she always pauses for coffee, chocolate, and old houses! Connect with Denise here:  Monthly Newsletter Sign-up  
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The Farthest Settlement on the Georgia Frontier

by Denise Weimer

Travel with me today back to the 1810s, to the westernmost outpost on the Georgia frontier before you crossed into Creek or Cherokee lands. We’re in the Piedmont, that rolling, red-clay land south of the Appalachians of hills, hardwood forests, creeks, and rivers. At the last stagecoach stop west, near the source of the Appalachee River, local farmers established Hog Mountain community, a place where they could buy, sell, and trade livestock. By 1811, Moore and Maltbie, natives of Connecticut, ran a trading post. Included among the inventory of goods:

Corded and feather beds, walnut sideboards, Windsor chairs, candlesticks, spinning wheels, looms, reels, looking glasses, pewter basins, chairs, copper stills, Dutch ovens, iron spiders, teakettles, cedar piggins, jugs, decanters, London window glass, wine glasses, dueling pistols, shot, powder horns, gunpowder, saw-gins, Swede iron, saddles, gigs, harness, corsets for men, tin trunks, bombazets (thin twill-woven worsted cloth with smooth finished used for dresses and coats), osnaburgs (rough, coarse, durable cotton fabric in plain weave originally made of flax), saddlebags, muscovado sugar, Jamaica and Antigua rum, Spanish brandy, Philadelphia rye whiskey, Teneriffe wine, claret, Holland gin, Malaga wine, London porter, Spanish “segars”

Notice the corsets for men? 

When Moore died on a trip to New York to purchase goods, William Maltbie prepared to dispose of the floundering business. And then he met Philadelphia Winn, the thirteen-year-old daughter of Elisha Winn, a justice and later judge and state representative who owned over seven thousand acres and a plantation-plain house on the river (see The Elisha Winn House, https://www.hhhistory.com/search?q=Elisha+winn+house). William and Philadelphia were married in the home’s parlor. William continued to run the trading post until 1821, when he helped establish the town of Lawrenceville, where he became the first postmaster.

Shadrack Bogan moved to Hog Mountain in 1815. He ran a trading post that sold beads to Cherokee women and blankets and firewater to the braves and soon built Hog Mountain House. An interesting tale of that inn is included in my new release, A Counterfeit Betrothal, of four travelers who stopped there, then were never seen again, though their relatives came to search for them. Years later, their carriage was found on a distant hill.

A central fixture of Hog Mountain community was Fort Daniel, speculated to have been built around the turn of the century prior (see A Fort on the Georgia Frontier, https://www.hhhistory.com/search?q=A+Fort+on+the+Georgia+Frontier). By 1812, Red Stick Creek warriors allied to the British posed a threat to the frontier, so in the fall and winter of 1813, Fort Daniel was rebuilt and militia sent to relieve the locals already serving in ten-day rotations. Isham Williams, a local cattle drover, supplied beef to the soldiers. Fort Daniel served as a staging point for the building of Atlanta’s Peachtree Road, where the militia constructed Fort Peachtree.

Fort Daniel remained largely forgotten until its rediscovery on private property in 2009. Gwinnett County purchased the site, and archeological work and living history events continue under the oversight of the Fort Daniel Foundation. I’ll be at their annual October fair with A Counterfeit Betrothal. If you’re local, come see me and enjoy some Federal-era fun!

NEW RELEASE, Book One of the Scouts of the Georgia Frontier, A Counterfeit Betrothal:

At the farthest Georgia outpost this side of hostile Creek Territory, Jared Lockridge serves his country as a scout to redeem his father’s botched heritage. Then he comes across a burning cabin and a traumatized woman just widowed by a fatal shot. Lame in one foot, Esther has always known she is secondhand goods, but the gentle carpenter-turned-scout draws out her heart…even though his is already pledged to another. His family’s love offers hope even as violence erupts along the frontier—and Jared’s investigation into local incidents brings danger to their doorstep.

https://www.amazon.com/Counterfeit-Betrothal-Scouts-Georgia-Frontier-ebook/dp/B0C8ZP46QD/

Denise Weimer writes historical and contemporary romance from her home in North Georgia and also serves as a freelance editor and the Acquisitions & Editorial Liaison for Wild Heart Books. A wife and mother of two daughters, she always pauses for coffee, chocolate, and old houses.

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Isaac Adair House

by Denise Weimer

As 2020 winds to a close, I’m penning one last article about the historic sites of Gwinnett County, Georgia, north of Atlanta. You’ve visited Freeman’s Mill, the Elisha Winn House, McDaniel Farm Park, and Lawrenceville Female Seminary with me, and today, the Isaac Adair House. As mentioned in last month’s article on the seminary, the Adair House has been relocated on the same lot as the old school. The beautifully landscaped complex serves as not only a historical interpretive center but an event venue and the site of many weddings.

According to the National Register report, Isaac Adair arrived in Lawrenceville from South Carolina with his father, George, in 1824. They purchased land and returned with their family members. Isaac would have been only nineteen in 1827, the construction date of the house, so it’s likely his father helped him with setting up his farm and building his home, which more resembled South Carolina homes than the Plantation Plain-style then common in Georgia. Isaac built his two-story, two-room-deep home in Federal and Georgian style at Pike Street and Hurricane Shoals Road. Federal style may be glimpsed in the symmetry of doors and nine-over-nine windows, the central front entrance with its transom and side windows around the door, and pedimented front porch. 

Isaac Adair sold the home to a young physician named James Gordon in 1844 and moved to Alabama. Adair must’ve had the wanderlust bug, for he relocated again to Arkansas, then Texas, where his wife died, his health failed, and he lost his property during the Civil War. In April 1866, he attempted to return to Georgia to visit his sister but died just short of his destination. Meanwhile, Dr. Gordon had worked the 300-acre farm until 1854, when the Adair house came into the possession of the Craig family, South Carolinians who had married into the Adair family. By the Civil War, the house presided over 1,000+ acres. The land was rent-farmed in the years following. Twice moved in more recent years to escape city expansion and privately renovated, the home was placed on the National Register in 2000 and purchased by the county in 2008.

Evidence of stenciling

The interior paint colors have been reproduced in creamy tans, yellows, and sky blues, with evidences remaining of wallpaper and stenciling. The downstairs is currently used for weddings and events, but a couple of rooms upstairs display local textile industry and a period bedroom. 

Represented by Hartline Literary Agency, Denise Weimer holds a journalism degree with a minor in history from Asbury University. She’s a managing editor for the historical imprints of Lighthouse Publishing of the Carolinas and the author of almost a dozen published novels and a number of novellas. A wife and mother of two daughters, she always pauses for coffee, chocolate, and old houses!

Connect with Denise here:
Monthly Newsletter Sign-up
Website
Facebook
Twitter
BookBub