The Backroads Traveler: Two Historic Churches in Hancock County, Georgia

Powelton Methodist Church.

I found Hancock County to be one of the most interesting places in Georgia. It has an historic courthouse, old mills, some really old houses, and an unusually large number of ancient churches. 

On Georgia Highway 22, about 15 miles northeast of Sparta, the county seat, is the sleepy village of Powelton, one of the oldest villages in Georgia and a very important town in post-Revolutionary War days.  

Powelton Methodist Church was built in 1830, although the congregation was organized long before that. The building has not been maintained recently and looks every one of its 190-plus years, although it appears to still be structurally sound. Some readers may recognize this as the church on the cover of the book Historic Rural Churches of Georgia.

Mount Zion Presbyterian Church.

About six or seven miles north of Sparta on Georgia 15 is the Mt. Zion Presbyterian Church. Built in 1814 at a cost of $700, the Greek Revival-style structure is all that remains of a once-thriving community with an academy that was one of Georgia’s most celebrated institutions. Famous educators and writers were associated with Mt. Zion, which is said to have narrowly lost to Athens as the location for the University of Georgia. 

I visited and photographed both churches on August 17, 2016. For the Powelton church I used an Olympus E-M5 camera with a Panasonic Lumix G-Vario 12-32mm lens. The Mt. Zion church was photographed with a Canon EOS 6D and the Canon EF 28-105mm lens.

Adapted from my book Backroads and Byways of Georgia.

Visit my online gallery at https://davejenkins.pixels.com/  

Signed copies of my book Backroads and Byways of Georgia are available. The price is $22.95 plus $4.95 shipping. My PayPal address is djphoto@vol.com (which is also my email). Or you can mail a check to 8943 Wesley Place, Knoxville, TN 37922. Include your address and tell me how you would like your book inscribed.

Photography and text copyright 2025 David B.Jenkins.

I post Monday, Wednesday, and Friday unless life gets in the way.

Soli Gloria Deo -- For the glory of God alone.

Tags:   photography     travel photography    digital photography     Olympus E-M5 camera     Panasonic Lumis 12-32mm lens       Canon EOS 6D camera     Canon EF 28-105mm lens     Historic churches     Hancock County, Georgia     Sparta, Georgia

The Backroads Traveler: Two Old Georgia Mills

 The Arrington Mill, McDuffie County

Here are two old mills that I think are especially beautiful. I discovered them both while working on my book Backroads and Byways of Georgia.

On an obscure backroad south of Thomson in McDuffie County in the east central part of the state sits the Arrington Mill, built on Fort Creek around 1920. The beauty and peacefulness of the scene are palpable.

Powered by an underwater turbine, which appears to be gone now, the mill, like many other small Georgia mills, most likely ground grain for local farmers. I visited and photographed the mill on July 14, 2016.

Perdue's Mill, Habersham County.

About four miles from Clarkesville in northeast Georgia is Perdue's Mill on Perdue Mill Road (sometimes called Pardue). Built in the 1930s on Perdue Mill Creek, it was in operation until the mid-1960s. The mill was powered by an 18-foot overshot wheel, which is now gone. The water came, not from the waterfall which is seen in the photo, but from a mill dam and pond above the cascade. 

I visited and photographed Perdue's Mill on October 27, 2016.

Vines on the wall of Perdue's Mill. I have been told they are Virginia Creeper, but I'm not enough of a botanist to verify that.

Each of these mills is beautiful in its own way. The Arrington Mill has an atmosphere of peacefulness; Perdue's Mill is a scene of raw, wild beauty.

The Arrington mill was photographed with an Olympus E-M5 camera and a Panasonic Lumix 14-140mm lens; the Perdue mill with a Canon EOS 6D and a Canon EF 28-105mm lens.

Visit my online gallery at https://davejenkins.pixels.com/  

Signed copies of my book Backroads and Byways of Georgia are available. The price is $22.95 plus $4.95 shipping. My PayPal address is djphoto@vol.com (which is also my email). Or you can mail a check to 8943 Wesley Place, Knoxville, TN 37922. Include your address and tell me how you would like your book inscribed.

Photography and text copyright 2025 David B.Jenkins.

I post Monday, Wednesday, and Friday unless life gets in the way.

Soli Gloria Deo -- For the glory of God alone.

Tags:   photography     travel photography    digital photography     Olympus E-M5 camera     Panasonic Lumis 14-140mm lens       Canon EOS 6D camera     Canon EF 28-105mm lens     old mills     McDuffie County, Georgia     Habersham County, Georgia

The Backroads Traveler: Bethel Brick Church

 The 1827 Bethel Brick Methodist Church, Screven County, Georgia.

 

At the northern end of Screven County,  near the South Carolina line and several miles north of U.S. Highway 301, on a road called the Oglethorpe Trail, lies the Bethel Brick Methodist Church, constructed by slave labor in 1827.  In 1859, just before the Civil War, the church had 150 white parishioners and 418 black members. The church has been in continuous use in all the years since its founding and is still in excellent condition. It is both the oldest Methodist church and the oldest church building in Screven County.

 

Louise and I visited the church on July 25, 2016, as I was working on my book Backroads and Byways of Georgia. It was a very hot day, and she and our little dog Georgia stayed in the car with the air conditioner running while I made photographs.

Although I found the church to be of interest, I eventually decided not to include it in my tour of the northern end of coastal Georgia because it was an outlier, too far from the other points of interest on the tour, which covered an area from just north of Savannah to Tybee Island and south nearly to Darien.

The photograph was made with an Olympus E-M5 digital camera fitted with a Panasonic Lumix Vario G 12-32mm lens.

 

Visit my online gallery at https://davejenkins.pixels.com/  

Signed copies of my book Backroads and Byways of Georgia are available. The price is $22.95 plus $4.95 shipping. My PayPal address is djphoto@vol.com (which is also my email). Or you can mail a check to 8943 Wesley Place, Knoxville, TN 37922. Include your address and tell me how you would like your book inscribed.

Photography and text copyright 2025 David B.Jenkins.

I post Monday, Wednesday, and Friday unless life gets in the way.

Soli Gloria Deo -- For the glory of God alone.

Tags:   photography     travel photography    digital photography     Olympus E-M5 camera     Panasonic Lumis 12-32mm lens       Screven County, Georgia    Bethel Brick Methodist Church     Historic churches     Coastal Georgia   Savannah

Why Do I Blog?

 Cloudfall over the escarpment of Lookout Mountain. McLemore Cove, Walker County, GA

My posts have been irregular this week, for which I apologize. As it says in the footnotes, I post Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, unless life gets in the way. So this week, life got in the way. We came back kinda tired from our anniversary/reunion trip to Indiana last week, and I've been having difficulty thinking of things to write about.

Blogging is a lot of trouble. It's a constant struggle to find new and interesting things to write about, and then, when I write a blog and post it, I have to find something else to write about next time. It's like having a baby, and then waking up pregnant the next morning.

So why do I do it? I do it because I love my pictures. I want them to live. And the only way any kind of art can have life is to be out there -- to be seen. I'm certainly not saying my photographs are great art, but I believe they deserve to live. To be seen. Otherwise, why make them at all? So I blog.

Like the picture at the top. Not great art, but lovely in its own way. It deserves to be seen.

If I kept any notes on this photo I don't know where they are. Best guess? Canon EOS A2 with the Canon 80-200 f2.8 L "Magic Drainpipe" lens and Fujichrome 100D film. 

Visit my online gallery at https://davejenkins.pixels.com/  

Signed copies of my book Backroads and Byways of Georgia are available. The price is $22.95 plus $4.95 shipping. My PayPal address is djphoto@vol.com (which is also my email). Or you can mail a check to 8943 Wesley Place, Knoxville, TN 37922. Include your address and tell me how you would like your book inscribed.

Photography and text copyright 2020-2025 David B.Jenkins.

I post Monday, Wednesday, and Friday unless life gets in the way.

Soli Gloria Deo -- For the glory of God alone.

Tags:   photography    travel photography     barns     Canon EOS A2 camera     Canon 80-2000 f2.8L lens      Fujichrome 100D film    film photography     "Magic Drainpipe"     blogging

Celebrating Our 60th Anniversary at Spring Mill

 Louise and me, with two sons, two daughters-in-law, two granddaughters, one grandson-in-law, five great grandchildren, and one dog (Georgia).

 Over the weekend Louise and I traveled to Southern Indiana to celebrate our 60th anniversary as part of a Jenkins Family Reunion, which, as always, was held at Spring Mill State Park near Mitchell.

I'm grateful to God for the years he has given Louise and me. We have been blessed with a fine family and an interesting and eventful life together. Sixty years is just a good start. I'm hoping for many more. 

I've written quite a bit about my life with Louise. Here's something I wrote about her on her 80th birthday.

The 1817 Hamer Mill at Spring Mill State Park.

Spring Mill State Park has been a constant in my life. My parents took me there as a baby. My first memory of the place is of an elementary school outing there when I was eight. Throughout my growing-up years, Spring Mill was where we went on picnics, school outings, Sunday School parties, etc. When we began having family reunions in the mid-80s, Spring Mill was the logical place to go, culminating in the celebration of my parents' 65th anniversary in 1999, an occasion for which every living member of the family, 90 or so people, was in attendance.

Dad died in 2000, at the age of 90, and reunions became somewhat more sporadic after that. We had a large group in 2022, and although the turnout for our anniversary was not as large, it was still a good group and a wonderful experience.

Read more about Spring Mill State Park and the Pioneer Village here.

Both photos: Fuji X-T3 camera, Fujinon XF 16-80mm lens

Visit my online gallery at https://davejenkins.pixels.com/  

Signed copies of my book Backroads and Byways of Georgia are available. The price is $22.95 plus $3.95 shipping. My PayPal address is djphoto@vol.com (which is also my email). Or you can mail a check to 8943 Wesley Place, Knoxville, TN 37922. Include your address and tell me how you would like your book inscribed.

Photography and text copyright 1999-2025 David B.Jenkins.

I post Monday, Wednesday, and Friday unless life gets in the way.

Soli Gloria Deo -- For the glory of God alone.

Tags:   photography     Indiana     Spring Mill State Park    Family portraits     digital photography     Fuji X-T3 digital camera     Fujinon XF 16-80mm lens     family reunions

The Assignment of a Lifetime: Part Two

 Horse Laugh. U.S. Hwy. 11, McMinn County, Tennessee.

 

Reposted from December, 2019, with additions.

Sorting Rock City's old file cards by states and within states by highways, I planned an itinerary for my first trip and began photographing at Sweetwater, Tennessee on October 24, 1994. Over the next 18 months, stealing time whenever my studio schedule allowed, the trail of barns led my old Chevy Blazer nearly 35,000 miles to more than 500 sites in 15 Southeastern and Midwestern states. Nearly 250 barns were found in 14 states, with only Michigan proving barren.

With 35-year-old, often sketchy records and occasional hearsay reports as my only sources of information, finding the sites was an endlessly fascinating piece of detective work. Barns have burned, blown down, been bulldozed for highway construction and subdivisions, or simply fallen from disuse and disrepair. Many of the largest and finest are gone. To complicate things still further, highways have been changed, re-routed, and re-named.

Often, the only way to locate a site was to find someone who remembered the property owner:

"Do you remember so-and-so, who had a place out on Highway 11 south of here?"

"Oh, yeah, knew him well. He and my daddy used to go fishin' together all the time. Good ol' feller. He's dead now."

"Well, he had this barn on his farm, with a sign that said 'See Rock City.' Here's an old picture of it."

"Sure, I remember that ol' barn. Fact is, I helped him take it down, back around 1975. It had got all rotten and falling down, y'know. Weren't safe."

I also learned to take the information I was given with a grain of salt. The people most familiar with an area are often the least observant. In Robbinsville, North Carolina I asked a gas station attendant about a barn. "Oh, sure," he said, "It was just down the road here, about a half mile. But it's been torn down." Checking for myself, I found his directions to the site were perfect. But not only was the barn still standing, it had just been repainted and was one of the rare barns with "See Rock City" signs on both sides!

In those pre-digital days, of course, everything was photographed on film, mostly Fujichrome 100. I began the project with a pair of Canon EOS-10S bodies and one EOS-RT and gradually upgraded my equipment so that by the time I finished I was working with two Canon A2s and a 10S. Lenses carried were the 70-210mm f4, the 28-105mm f3.5-4.5, the 50mm f1.8, the 35mm f2, and the 24mm f2.8, all Canon EF. Probably 90% of the photographs were made with the 24 and the 28-105. Exposures were almost always read with a Minolta Flashmeter III in incident mode. Color filters were used frequently to render scenes the way I felt them.

Each barn was also photographed in black and white, using a variety of systems and films according to my mood.  Sometimes I used Ilford's Delta 400 in one of the EOS bodies, at other times Ilford HP-5+ in a Mamiya RB or Pentax 6x7.  I also experimented with Agfa 400 in both the 35mm and 120 sizes.  All worked pretty well, and I can't say I really have a preference.  The developer used throughout was T-Max.  

An average day of photography might involve driving more than 450 miles in 12 to 15 hours, and result in locating eight or ten sites, of which three to five might have barns. Some days were better than that, of course, and some were much worse. I spent a total of about 75 days on the assignment, capturing images in winter snow, summer haze, the soft light of spring and the clear light of autumn. Working the sweet early and late light in midsummer meant 18-hour days and not much sleep.

I began the project with some idealism, I suppose. Expecting to find prosperous, story-book farmyards, I often found depressing scenes of rural desolation. Most of the barns were far from any farmhouse. Many were dilapidated, some were overgrown with brush. I learned to take whatever each situation gave me and tried to use that to make a photograph which expressed the spirit of the place

What began as the assignment of a lifetime grew into a labor of love as I came to treasure the dignity and individuality of each old barn. I learned to see beauty even in the isolation in which so many of them are ending their days. I learned that they wanted to be photographed in a direct, documentary way, without artifice. They seemed to say, "Here we are. This is the way we are. Please let us speak for ourselves."

Adapted from an article in Rangefinder magazine,May, 1999.

(Canon EOS 10S. 24mm f2.8 Canon EF lens. Fujichrome 100 film.)

Visit my online gallery at https://davejenkins.pixels.com/  

Signed copies of my book Backroads and Byways of Georgia are available. The price is $22.95 plus $4.95 shipping. My PayPal address is djphoto@vol.com (which is also my email). Or you can mail a check to 8943 Wesley Place, Knoxville, TN 37922. Include your address and tell me how you would like your book inscribed.

Photography and text copyright 2020-2025 David B.Jenkins.

I post Monday, Wednesday, and Friday unless life gets in the way.

Soli Gloria Deo -- For the glory of God alone.

Tags:   photography    travel photography     Rock City Gardens    See Rock City      coffee-table books    creating books    Rock City barns     Canon EOS A2 camera     Canon 24mm EF lens      Fujichrome 100D film    Clark Byers     barns     film photography     Canon EOS 10S camera     Minolta Flashmeter III     filters     1987 Chevy Blazer     black and white film photography

The Assignment of a Lifetime: Part I

 U.S. Highway165, Morehouse Parrish, Louisiana.

 

Reposted from December, 2019.

In Indiana, a black cat wound itself around the legs of an old farmer and looked up at me, eyes gleaming in the early light.  In Louisiana, a yellow locomotive emerged from behind a barn just at the right time, under just the right kind of sky.  In Tennessee, a pony positioned himself in front of a barn, threw back his head, and gave me the horse laugh.  Serendipity, which by definition is capricious and unpredictable, became a welcome and almost expected companion as time and again I traveled all day under overcast skies which opened to bathe a barn in rays as I arrived, then closed again.  It was my dream project, the assignment of a lifetime.  And it began with three little words: "Let's do it!"

The man who spoke them was Bill Chapin, president of Rock City Gardens, a tourist attraction near Chattanooga, Tennessee.  Behind the words, a lifetime dream: to create a book about the old barns whose painted message, "See Rock City" became one of the greatest outdoor advertising campaigns of all time.  They launched me on a project that was to occupy much of my time and effort for the next three years and affect my life and business profoundly.

 

It began with Bill's great-uncle, entrepreneur Garnet Carter, who laid out trails and swinging bridges through ten acres of massive rock formations on the cliffs of Lookout Mountain overlooking Chattanooga.  Hoping to regain his depression-lost fortune, he opened Rock City Gardens to the public in 1932, but unfortunately nobody much came.  Not until 1936 did things improve, when he hired an enterprising young sign painter named Clark Byers to travel the length and breadth of the land painting "See Rock City" on the roof or side of every barn whose owner would allow it.  So diligent and successful was he that as many as 900 barns in 19 states may have carried the Rock City slogan over the years, making it famous around the globe. 

 

The retirement of Byers in 1968, coupled with changing highway sign laws and the completion of the Interstate system brought about a drastic reduction in the barn painting program, as Rock City began to rely on other forms of advertising -- which ultimately brought me into the picture.  As a commercial photographer with a studio in Chattanooga, I began working for the attraction in the early '80s, photographing for brochures and other advertising.  In 1988, Bill told me of his long-held dream of a book about Rock City's barns and asked me to find out what it would cost.

Although he decided not to proceed at that time, my interest was kindled.  I obtained a list of the 110 barns they were still maintaining, and whenever my travels brought me near one I made a photograph of it if possible.  In 1994, after learning that the barns being maintained by Rock City had dwindled to 85, I went back to Chapin with my photos and told him that if he wanted to do a book, this was the time.

He didn't say much.  Just looked at the pictures for about 15 minutes, asked a few questions, then said the magic words: "Let's do it!"

 

       

A few days later I received a box containing hundreds of old file cards, the only record of most barn locations.  On each card was the name of the last known property owner, the highway route number, and the distance from the nearest town.  Many had a small photo attached, apparently taken about 1960; but some had only rough sketches of the barns.  Inside each card was a record of rents paid (usually $3 to $5 per year) and repaint dates.  Rock City had had no contact with most of the barns since the late '60s.  The only way to find out if they were still standing was to go and see. 

 

So I went.

 

Adapted from an article in Rangefinder magazine,May, 1999.

(Canon EOS-A2, 28-105 f3.5-4.5 Canon EF lens, Fujichrome 100D film.) 

Visit my online gallery at https://davejenkins.pixels.com/  

Signed copies of my book Backroads and Byways of Georgia are available. The price is $22.95 plus $4.95 shipping. My PayPal address is djphoto@vol.com (which is also my email). Or you can mail a check to 8943 Wesley Place, Knoxville, TN 37922. Include your address and tell me how you would like your book inscribed.

Photography and text copyright 2020-2025 David B.Jenkins.

I post Monday, Wednesday, and Friday unless life gets in the way.

Soli Gloria Deo -- For the glory of God alone.

Tags:   photography    travel photography     Rock City Gardens    See Rock City      coffee-table books    creating books    Rock City barns     Canon EOS A2 camera     Canon 28-105 EF lens      Fujichrome 100D film    Clark Byers     barns     film photography