Colonsay Plantation, Crawfordville Georgia

Date added: August 03, 2023 Categories: Georgia House Plantations & Farms

Colonsay Plantation is the only surviving identifiable home built by a Quaker in Georgia. Located on "Ceded Lands" territory that was acquired under the treaty with the Indians on June 1, 1773, the house sits on property that at the time of its construction was a part of Wilkes County, one of the original counties created by the Constitution of Georgia in 1777.

Marmaduke Mendenhall, a Quaker from North Carolina, moved to Georgia because of persecution from the governor of the former state, and he receive land that was originally to have been granted to Marmaduke's father. (The elder Mendenhall died before he was able to take possession of the grant.) The property, consisting of 600 acres in the fork of Williams Creek and Little River, was given to Mendenhall in 1785 and sometime between that date and 1789, when a fellow Quaker wrote of a "large meeting at Marmaduke Mendenhall's," the two-story house was built. Thus in addition to being a Quaker home, the structure is one of the oldest existing residences in the State.

The Mendenhall dwelling was also the site of several Quaker Meetings in the late 1780s and early 1790s. This is documented by the journals of two traveling Friends ministers, Job Scott and Thomas Scattergood.

Mendenhall and his wife died in 1797 leaving six young children, and in 1807 Mendenhall's executors sold the house and property to a large landowner named Charles R. Carter, who was already living in the house. Carter enlarged the simple Quaker home by adding a wing, and since that time the unpainted weatherboard structure has remained essentially unchanged.

Throughout its existence, the acreage around the house has always been a working farm. During the 19^th century, prior to the Civil War, it was a Southern plantation in every sense of the word. Although Mendenhall, being a Quaker, had no slaves, every owner after him worked the land with as many as forty slaves and often these 19th-century owners had other plantations as well. Cotton and Indian corn were the primary crops, but it was cotton that proved to be the most profitable.

Carter sold the property in 1827, and the house has had a series of owners since that time. The list includes Thomas Berry (1827-1836), Solomon Wilder (1836-1840), Thomas Hamilton (1840-approximately 1862), and various members of the Moore family including Benjamin, David, George and Mrs. Georgia Moore (1862-1927). In the 1890s, the original 600 acres belonging to Mendenhall were divided up, with the house and 100 acres belonging to Mrs. Georgia Moore, and the remaining property went to Edward A. Croake, who acquired the land through a judgment against the estate of David Moore.

The present owner's father, Judge T. G. Macfie, was able to obtain almost all of the original Mendenhall grant when he purchased approximately 500 acres of land from Judge Claude Norman in 1923, and the house and 100 acres from the Moore family in 1927. The Macfies added a small kitchen to the structure and continued to maintain the land as a working plantation. They grew cotton and farmed, in addition to raising cattle and sheep.

The plantation acquired its name, Colonsay, in 1923 from Judge Macfie who mamed it after a small island near the mainland of Scotland where he was born before emmigrating to South Africa and then to America.

The first Quakers, who arrived in Georgia in 1768, left early in the 19^th century because of the controversy over slavery. Slavery proved to be the chief cause of the break-up of the Quakers in the area of the Mendenhall home, and many, including Marmakuke's children and associates, moved to Ohio. After the breakup, the Quaker population eventually died out, leaving the Mendenhall home to the numerous plantation and slave owners. The limited Quaker houses left in the area have long since disappeared, making it even more remarkable that Colonsay has survived essentially intact.

Building Description

Colonsay Plantation, located in present-day Taliaferro County, was built c.1789 by Marmaduke Mendenhall, a Quaker who moved to Georgia from North Carolina after receiving a grant of land from the Indian cession of 1773. The house, originally in Wilkes County, was situated on 600 acres of oak, hickory, and pine land lying in the fork of Little River and Williams Creek. Today the plantation is preserved nearly intact with 540 acres.

The original portion of the house was located on an old post road called Sherrill's Road that transversed the Mendenhall property in the original grant. Made up of two stories, the Mendenhall home was almost a square, with evenly-spaced windows and one chimney. The exterior of the house, of weather-boarded pine, was never painted and remains that way today.

The first floor of the structure, consisting of one large room, was used as a meeting room and living area. Paneled in hard virgin pine siding, it has been oiled and is a dark chocolate brown. There is 30-inch wainscoting on the walls and four-foot-deep cupboards flank the mantel. To the right of the fireplace, a small circular stairway, incorporated into the wall next to the cupboard, winds up to the second floor. The door that once opened onto the post road has since been removed and the void filled in to become part of the wall.

The second floor served as the private quarters of the family. Very similar to the first floor in appearance, its walls are also hard virgin pine siding that has been oiled dark chocolate brown. The room has the original floor and contains a small closet in front of a single window. A mantel rests next to the closet.

In c.1820, an addition two rooms wide and one room deep, also of unpainted pine was built onto the older house. The first room, next to the original structure, served as a hallway and contained a small closet and stairs, which led up to the second floor. In addition, doors were located at either end of the hall which have vertical tongue and groove construction with diagonal bracing. The walls are paneled as in the original room, now used as a library.

To the right of the hallway is a family room, again with evenly-spaced windows and a fireplace. Above the wainscoting, weatherboarding was once exposed; but it has since been plastered and painted a cream yellow.

The second-floor hall, at one time divided into two L-shaped rooms, is now a landing with a bath at the end. Horizontal paneling was installed above the wainscoting, as opposed to the vertical siding used in the previously mentioned rooms.

The original large room above the family room has been divided into two smaller bedrooms. Both have ten-foot ceilings with exposed beams, as do the rooms on the first floor.

The only recent additions made to the house have been the kitchen in 1938, located to the rear of the library, and the attic, which was enlarged above the oldest part of the house.