Katelyn Shaver

HIST615

Problem #7

10/26/2011

This week we were given a map to dig for buried treasure with. The Map was of Barrow’s plantation in 1860 and 1881 and the treasure waiting down below was the ever-satisfying historical kind.

The map that was supplied was useful in helping to narrow down the location of the plantation, but it had some flaws to contend with that could distract and waylay a careless viewer. The most obvious of which would be the county name. The map given placed this plantation within the limits of “Ogelthorpe” County, Georgia. It is actually spelled as “Oglethorpe” County, on both the historical maps of the area and the present day representations. There is a second name that suffers as well; the road is just listed as “road” and gives no true label. Another factor was the orientation of this map—or lack thereof. No compass is given to orient the viewer as to which way is North, South, East or West. I had to use the same features I relied on to match the area to the satellite map to figure out the direction of the map (will go into more detail on this in a moment).

Also, this map was not the original maps produced. As far as I can tell, the first maps of the ones we were given for this project appeared in David C. Barrow, Jr.’s article titled "A Georgia Plantation," and published within the Scribner's Monthly, vol. 21 issue 5 (March 1881). An internet version of this article, full text, can be found here: http://www2.vcdh.virginia.edu/emancipation/ContViews/barrow_1.html. It is interesting to note that the author of this article is the son of the person who owned the plantation as according to the 1860 census which lists his father David C. Barrow as 45 and himself as 7. More on the family in a moment, first I will include what these original maps looked like below:

So where exactly is this plantation? That was the major question I attempted to answer first with my digging since I knew having a rough idea of the location could become a good tool, a good shove if you will, for linking onto other bits of information. I started knowing a few things—that this place was located in Oglethorpe County, GA, that it was likely owned by someone with the last name of Barrow, and that it was near where the Syll’s (also spelled Syls or on one map Syla) Fork and the Little River connected with a roadway, church, and school nearby in addition to a fair amount of wooded land in between cleared off farming spots near the road and buildings. Later I added to this information that the plantation was, to use David C. Barrow, Jr.’s words, “in "Middle Georgia" and "about two thousand acres of land, with the exception of a single acre, which Mr. Barrow has given to his tenants for church and school purposes, is the same size it was before the war.” (Scribner's Monthly, vol. 21 issue 5, pp. 831). Furthermore once I tracked down the family component, going by the 1860 census, I had a rough idea of its value (45.690 in real estate and 240.000 in personal estate, in non-adjusted numbers)

My first step was to locate the county on a state map of Georgia, then to find maps, both past and present, of Oglethorpe County. Below will be listed some of the ones I used. It should be noted that the historical one shown, which actually lists the plantation location, was not found till after the satellite image was tracked down and location puzzled out (much to my cringing, as that map could have saved me some time):

Present day map (pdf): http://www.dot.state.ga.us/maps/Documents/County%20maps/oglethorpe.pdf

Present day map: http://sparkleberrysprings.com/oglecolorcomp.png

Website with various historical maps of it (organized by year): http://georgiainfo.galileo.usg.edu/histcountymaps/oglethorpehistmaps.htm

Historical map from 1894 with plantation listed: http://georgiainfo.galileo.usg.edu/histcountymaps/oglethorpe1894map2.htm

In conjunction with looking at these maps I also brought up a satellite image of the present day Oglethorpe County. How did I know where to orient the satellite, you wonder? Well, I look the maps above and my own map and compared features I did not think would change much in a few hundred years—namely the rivers and road. Looking on the maps above, I rotated my map of the plantation until the rivers on it fit the rivers on the other maps. It was in this way I found out that the top of the given map was actually facing SE. Looking at the maps the closest road that fit the proper location of the rivers was the Spring Hill Church Road. The 1881 article mentions on page 835 a Spring Hill Church (assumed to be Baptist and he mentions the tenants being such). Bingo, things were starting to correlate. Finally, by looking at the present day maps I saw that the road and rivers were dead south of the city of Philomath, GA. Thus in mapquest, google earth, and yahoo maps I searched for “Philomath, GA 30660” and scrolled down accordingly to Old Springhill Church Road.

The church was another feature I used in my orienting. I knew from a document released by the New Springhill Baptist Church, located on Crawfordville Road, concerning the church history (found here: http://files.usgwarchives.net/ga/oglethorpe/churches/sprghill.txt) that the church had moved to another building but that the old Springhill Church was said to have been located on the Barrow plantation. Looking at the satellite map, although it is untitled, the barn like building near the road is most likely where the old church was (and possibly still is). The trees on the map above it follow what looks to be the same river branch as in the original map.

After locating the plantation I did some more research into the family. I put to use as well not only the census but these two documents which talked about two of David C. (Crenshaw) Barrow’s more famous sons David C. (Crenshaw) Barrow, II who apparently also taught at the University of Georgia (http://files.usgwarchives.org/ga/chatham/bios/gbs172barrowjr.txt) and Middleton “Pope” (census says B., other sources P.) Barrow who was a judge, worked for a time in the Georgia House of Representatives before finally became a state senator in 1882 (http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~gaogleth/barrow.htm), as well. To summarize from the usgwarchives page,

Dr. David Crenshaw Barrow II., a brother of Pope Barrow, a distinguish educator, has been for several years chancellor of the University of Georgia. The father of these two brothers was David Crenshaw Barrow I., a cotton planter of wealth and large affairs, who spent practically all of his life at his home in Athens and on his plantations in Oglethorpe county. He married Miss Lucy Pope, of Oglethorpe county, Georgia, the only child of Middleton Pope of that county, a direct descendant of the famous Nathaniel Pope of colonial Virginia. David Crenshaw Barrow I., who was born and lived in Baldwin county, after his marriage located in Oglethorpe county, but he owned plantations in both counties. He was the son of James Barrow, a native of Virginia, who entered the Continental army in North Carolina in 1776 and served in various capacities throughout the Revolutionary war. He was one of that brave little army, who under General Washington, watched through the long winter amid the cold and hardships of the camp at Valley Forge. He was sent under orders from General Lee to Savannah, and thereafter was in service in Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and New York, and was in the battles of Brandywine and Germantown. His last service in the war was in the North Carolina militia, and about 1800 he settled in Baldwin county, Georgia. His wife was Precious Patience Crenshaw, of Virginia.

I went on to find some historical images of the family and the plantation. The full amount from the county can be found at the Vanishing GA archive at this url: http://dlg.galileo.usg.edu/vanga/photos/ogl/jpg/

From the above site, these were the images specifically relating to the plantation:

Photograph of African-American children picking cotton on Sen. Pope Barrow home place, Oglethorpe County, 1899

Photograph of cabin located on home place of Sen. Pope Barrow, Oglethorpe County, Georgia, 1899

All of the sources I found enriched my understanding of the Barrow Plantation beyond the information the text article could provide. It is one thing to explain to me in words what the building looked like and entirely another to get the impression of such a structure as I do from the image above of the cabin. The lands of the plantation still exist and the plantation has left its mark on some of the features in the landscape still seen today. The buildings may not all have survived, but the historical maps help us to “see” where they once stood. It is also interesting to see how the placement of buildings changed after the Civil War in relation to the new social infrastructure and change in work style, while the land itself stayed relatively the same. All of the sources are telling the same story, but they are “cropped” in different ways and provided varied viewpoints and perspectives. A deeper analysis of the Barrow maps could be fruitful because it gives information beyond what text can record and could be a way to seeing aspects of the situation that could not (or by choice were excluded from) the textual sources. The placement of the buildings, the image of the African America family, and what is shown on the satellite image today could all be paths into exploring the non-recorded African American side to the Barrow Plantation story, for example. What I learned from this is that a picture really can be worth a 1000 words—yet a picture is not everything. It takes both visual and written sources to get the

whole “picture” of an event or place in the past. Thus, these images reveal much about Barrow’s Plantation and nineteenth-century American but they are merely showing one more piece to the puzzle (Granted, an important piece) and should be viewed with that in mind.