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Tarva Plantation 1850
S
cale is the key word when considering Tarva Plantation. There is of course the scale
of the property: some five thousand acres of pine wood, live oaks, a pond that anywhere but South Georgia would be called a lake, springs, thickets, sweet gums that
look like cypresses, waves of sedge, and miles of roads which lead from one beautiful
wild scene to another.
There is the scale of the properties in the neighborhood. The scale of these places
is described in numbers of acres which most folk think of only in terms of national parks.
When one considers the total amount of land devoted to hunting plantations in Baker and
Dougherty counties, the numbers are more like those used to describe military reservations.
In fact, one can ride the main road from Albany to Newton and for 15 of its 20 miles, three
plantations pass endlessly on either side. This amount of open land under management
lends the area a feel rarely available on the
eastern side of the Mississippi and much of
it, including Tarva, is subject to conservation easements which will protect it in perpetuity.
Then there is the scale of the house.
It is simple and not large by many standards
but, oh, what scale. There is a freedom of
movement inside this house which is at
once rooted in 19th century necessities and
remarkably modern in conception. It has
the almost mystical feel of the local pecan
groves which share its unrelenting symmetry. There was no modern conceit of connecting the house to nature. Rather, with
its massive doors and windows, one seems
to still be outside among the oaks.
Tarva received its name from 2oth
century owners who heard this pronunciation of the family name Tarver. There were
Tarvers in the area from the beginning. One
source says that Hartwell H. Tarver accompanied Nelson Tift on his trip to establish a
trading post and lay out the town of Albany
in 1836.
Hartwell Tarver was from Brunswick County, Virginia, and settled in Twiggs County,
southeast of Macon. He amassed several thousand acres in Baker County following the Battle of Chickasawachee Swamp earlier that year. Along the way, he was made a General of the
Georgia Militia, served as postmaster of Tarversville, sired eight children by two wives, and
at his death in 1851 was considered one of the wealthiest men in Georgia.
It is unknown how Hartwell Tarver’s lands were divided at his death as the Twiggs
County Courthouse burned in 1901. However, he is said to have built houses for three of his
children in what was then Baker County. The two in Baker County survive in pristine condition. The third was built in what after 1853 became Dougherty County.
The first, Pinebloom, was built for daughter Dollie who in 1848 married Alfred H.
Colquitt, governor of Georgia from 1876 to 1882. Three miles north, he built a house for
his son, Henry Andrew. The house is said to have been a wedding present for Henry who
married Elizabeth Griffen Solomon in 1850. Tarva’s given date of construction relies on this
tradition.
Henry Andrew Tarver (1826-1897) had been in Baker County since at least 1847 when
he was appointed to serve on a committee for advancing the construction of a road in District
8 of the county which included the land which became Tarva. According to the 1850 census,
he was a prominent planter owning 700 acres of improved and 3000 acres of unimproved
land worked by
55 slaves. He
served
on
grand juries in
1855 and 1861.
After the War
Between
the
States, he was
elected to the
Georgia Legislature in 1872.
His service
in the legislature prompted
the Tarvers to
move to Atlanta and to treat
the plantation
as a summer
home. An 1886 article in the Albany Patriot reported that the Misses Cutliff had gone for a
short visit “to the attractive country house of Col. H. A. Tarver of Baker County.” Although
Tarver served only one term in the General Assembly, the family likely enjoyed the governorship of his brother-in-law. When the Tarvers returned from Atlanta in 1887, they took
up residence in Albany.
Henry, or H. A. as he was called, and Elizabeth, known as Fannie, had eight children, one of whom was Henry Andrew, Jr. It is not clear how the plantation was divided among those surviving at the first Henry’s death in 1897 but the plantation
house passed to Henry Andrew, Jr. Also known as H. A., he was born in 1865 at Tarva. He graduated from Emory College in 1884 and returned to Albany. His marriage
to Frances Welborn Holcombe in November of 1892 was described as a “Brilliant Social Event” in a full column article on the front page of the Albany Weekly Herald.
Henry progressed in local politics from Deputy Clerk of Dougherty County to County Treasurer to Alderman of the City of Albany to Mayor for three terms. Albany’s Municipal Auditorium is a lasting monument to his years of leadership. Prior to his death in 1935,
he was encouraging preparations for the centennial of the city his grandfather had helped
lay out.
Henry was not the only Tarver to take an active part in local affairs. His
younger brother, Owen Fort, was elected repeatedly without opposition as Dougherty County Sheriff, an office in which he was serving at the time of his death in 1944. During this
period little is known about the ongoing operation and actual ownership of today’s Tarva
but Fort was the last Tarver to own the house.
The second Henry died intestate, no will is listed in the Dougherty County indices for
the first Henry, and any record of Hartwell’s will, if he had one, went up in flames in 1901. To
further confuse things, a portion of the plantation passed to a sister of the first Henry, Ann Tarver Hobbs,
and to her
d a u g h t e r,
Mary Decoursey
H o b b s
Jones. One
clue
lies
in the will
of the first
Henry’s
wife, Elizabeth, who
in 1909 directed that
Fort’s share
be directed
to the second Henry.
Tarva was reassembled by Russell A. Alger, Jr., beginning in 1941 when he purchased
the house and 1296 acres from Fort Tarver. He conveyed this property to his father’s trustee
who in the same year purchased the 1743 acre tract which included Mrs. Jones’ interest for
$8.00 per acre. The final tract of 1427 acres which had been owned by the Reynolds Brothers
Lumber Company was purchased in 1945.
It is as difficult to keep the various Russell Algers straight as the Henry Tarvers. The
Russell who bought the Tarver Place was actually the third of the group and had a son by
the same name. They all hailed from Michigan where the first, a major general in the Union
army, built a successful lumber business and served as Michigan governor, Secretary of War
under President McKinley, and was a U. S. Senator at the time of his death. His son Russell
was one of the initial investors in the Packard Motor Car Company and built a mansion in
Grosse Pointe designed by Charles A. Platt, the New York architect best known for his design of the Freer Gallery in Washington, D.C. His son Russell grew up in that house, married Phoebe Bailey of New York, had a son named Russell, and bought Tarva.
Knowing a good architect when he saw one, Alger retained Edward Vason Jones
(1909-1980), to restore Tarva. Jones was trained as a dentist but his love was architecture
and his first building was the lodge at Gillionville Plantation. That effort led to a four year
stint with Hentz Adler & Schutze where he worked with highly regarded classicist, Philip
Trammell Schutze from 1938 to 1942. After designing ships in Savannah for the war, Jones
opened his Albany practice in 1945. It ultimately led him to the State Department’s Diplomatic Reception Rooms and the White House where his work achieved national recognition.
Jones’ calling cards were a deep respect for the classical architecture of South Georgia and
restraint. He used both for the Algers at Tarva.
The Algers did not stay long at Tarva, selling to Mary Haskell Hunter of Cleveland,
Ohio, in 1947. Mrs. Hunter was the granddaughter of Howard Melville Hanna, a brother of
the more famous Marcus Alonzo
or Mark Hanna. Howard joined
his brother in forming the M. A.
Hanna Co., now Polyone Corp.
He was involved in shipping and
oil, eventually selling his energy interests to Standard Oil of
Ohio. Various family members
owned hunting properties near
Thomasville.
Russell Alger and Mary
Hunter may have been acquainted through their grandfathers’
connections with President
McKinley or Mrs. Hunter may
have simply been smitten with
Tarva. However she ended up
in Baker County rather than in
Thomasville, once she came, she
held the property until her death in 1972.
During her ownership, she continued work with Jones and later with Frank McCall of
Moultrie on renovating the kitchen. She collected numerous antiques and brought an aunt’s
collection of ruby glass to add to the charm of the place. She named it Tarva, ostensibly
because everyone pronounced it like that anyway. Her will left her real property, including
a horse farm near Lexington, Kentucky, and a ranch in Missoula, Montana, to her daughter,
Barbara.
Barbara Hunter’s passion was breeding and racing thoroughbreds at her Brownwood
Farm. In a 2010 article about Brownwood in the racing publication, BloodHorse, her farm
manager was quoted as saying, “She’s not much on changing things.” So it was at Tarva.
Things continued on for the next forty years pretty much as they had for the prior twenty-five.
Since Ms. Hunter’s death in 2012, the current owners have worked to bring Tarva
up to date without sacrificing its inherent charms. Much of that charm derives from the
scale of the place. Rather than replicating the Greek temples others were building in the
1850s, the Tarvers chose a form ultimately derived from the “cottages” of Louisiana and the
tropics. The house is a one story structure with porch supported by square posts spanning
the facade, all under a relatively low hip roof. The entry and its mates on both sides of the
house feature wide, four-panel, double doors with transoms and sidelights, the latter aligned
with the panes of the other windows. The entrance has the only trim in the house truly in
the Greek mode with its fluted pilasters and entablature, and the porch posts are spread at
the center to allow a full view of it. The fully turned balusters of the porch railing contrast
with the simplicity of the posts.
The remarkable thing about the house is the cross hall which opens to porches on
either side of the house. The intersection of the two halls is reflected in the diagonals of
the wide pine flooring, reminiscent of the crossing in a cruciform church. At the corners of
these halls, four equal size rooms with ceilings over fifteen feet high and fireplaces in
interior chimneys provide twin parlors, the
dining room, and the principal bedroom.
The parlors open off the hall through high
double doors and each features four windows. Those facing the front of the house
extend to the floor. These room have large
plaster medallions and elaborate cornices
rising from an egg-and-dart molding and
including a grapevine motif popular in the
era. The woodwork on the interior, other
than the mantels, hints at the coming Italianate style with its use of modified pediments over all the openings.
Another pair of double doors are
available to separate the principal bedroom
and the two which are located in line with
it from the main part of the house. All of these originally opened to a shuttered porch which
was presumably enclosed by Edward Vason Jones, to judge from its elegant triple-hung windows. This and the rebuilding of the steps to the three porches are the only visible signs of
intervention by Jones, a testimony to his deft handling of the insertion of modern necessities.
The only major changes which have occurred to the house are in the kitchen wing.
There are references to the original kitchen being a separate building which would be expected for a house of this stature in 1850. There are also references to the hall behind the dining
room having been a breezeway. The best guess is that the current kitchen was added at some
point in the late 19th century and connected by a breezeway. This is consistent with the
lower height of its ceilings and would have still allowed for windows on the rear wall of the
dining room, maintaining the symmetry of the house. Regardless of when the conversion
took place, the dining room still has two marvelous windows and the kitchen would make
any caterer green with envy.
The current owners have brought the entire house into pristine condition. The furnishings from the Hunters’ times have been augmented with comfort in mind. The baths
and systems have been updated to the highest standards and the glass in the bedroom windows onto the porch has been replaced with mirror to ensure privacy for all who are lucky
enough to stay there. The two guest rooms in the adjacent cottage have also been updated.
They have undertaken the challenge of preparing the land to serve as a prime hunting property. The result is a remarkable house on an idyllic expanse of land. The combination is as
rare as the care which succeeding owners have lavished on this South Georgia landmark.
This report was commissioned by Chip Hall and Lee Walters,
Plantation Services, Charleston, South Carolina, and Albany, Georgia
W I L D H O L LY S T U D I O
1908
Webb
Road,
Simpsonville,
Kentucky
40067
(502)722-0819
(502)381-0791
jdm@johndavidmyles.comm
Tarva Plantation 1850 was researched, written, and designed by John David Myles,
principal of Wild Holly Studio. An attorney, former circuit judge, and preservationist,
he has written and lectured for the Filson Historical Society in his native Kentucky
and is the author of a soon to be published comprehensive study of historic architecture in Shelby County, Kentucky. Myles has also consulted on various restoration
projects. He and his wife, Mary Helen, received awards from the Ida Lee Willis Foundation and Preservation Kentucky for their restoration of the 1839 John Dale house in
Simpsonville, Kentucky, where they live with their Scottish terrier and stray cat.
Copyright 2016 Wild Holly Studios