A Different Kind Of Lowcountry

By Tom Poland.  All photos by Tom Poland.

When I win the lottery, I’ll buy a home on St. Simon’s Island. I don’t care if it has a view of the water and I don’t give a plugged nickel if it’s not near a golf course, though I admit the better courses strike me as pretty. (You wonder, though, just how many majestic oaks fell to the saws.) What I do care about is St. Simons Island’s location. SSI is close to beaches with bone yards and big primary dune systems. And then there’s the deep history. Spaniards. Tabby ruins, the St. Simon’s Lighthouse, one magnificent allee´ of moss-draped oaks in particular, and Sidney’s marshes of Glynn and Jekyll. Lots to see, do, and appreciate down here including a modern marvel of a bridge.

I’ve been to SSI before as a way station for Georgia-Florida football escapades, but this time I was down to give a talk to the St. Simon’s Island Literary Guild, and my friend and co-author, Robert Clark drove down separately for a mission of his own. My friend, manager, and great supporter, Anonymous Mysterious Florida Woman, drove up as well and the three of us enjoyed our stay on the island.

We wasted little time touring places and while there a bookstore owner who saw our Reflections Of South Carolina series encouraged us to do a book on the Golden Isles. She told us that no one comprehensive book had been done on all of Georgia’s sea islands since the 1960s. We just might do something about that.

We ranged up coast to Darien and McIntosh County as well and saw historic sites such as an old rice plantation, Hofwyl-Broadfield (It’s pronounced “hoffle” much like “waffle.). I advise you to take the tour of the old plantation house for no other reason than to see one of just three remaining hand-carved mahogany four-post beds remaining in the Georgia-South Carolina (Georgialina) Lowcountry.

We saw a historic dairy farm alongside Highway 17 where an old ice cream factory once dispensed joy and a smokestack from an old rice plantation. We drove over to the Ashantilly Center but it was closed. I’ll get another chance at it as I’m being scheduled to speak there later this year. One Thomas Spalding had lived on Sapelo Island but realized he needed a base on the mainland for his many enterprises in Georgia. Ashantilly resulted. What little time we spent there was pretty much devoted to swatting away black flies. Perhaps October will be a better time to go.

We visited Fort King George where we looked out over a majestic sweep of marsh, saw an old cannon battery, a lovely, if austere officers’ barracks, and a fine four-seater outhouse. How’s that for coziness. It’s the oldest English fort on the Georgia coast and when you see the sentry boxes you feel as if you’re on a movie set. I highly recommend visiting it.

Old historic churches such as Needwood Baptist Church near Brunswick and its school for slaves are a must see too. Needwood Baptist Church, organized in 1866 on nearby Broadfield Plantation as Broadfield Baptist Church of the Zion Baptist Association sprang up in the 1870s. A redesign took place in 1885 when the church moved its congregation there. A stone’s throw away the one-room Needwood School provided elementary education for this community from 1907 until desegregation in the 1960s. Both structures offer glimpses of early Black vernacular architecture. Nearby you’ll come across an unusual sight. What appears to be a graveyard for jet skis.

The Georgia Lowcountry feels different from South Carolina’s. for one thing, there’s much less of it and as a result it has been carefully nurtured. See broad beaches here free of homes and large primary dune systems too.

That Georgia Lowcountry possesses allure. Add in great restaurants and the knowledge that you walk this planet where the sea meets land, and you realize you are in a special place, a place filled with enough culture, history, and beauty to fill a book, one Mr. Clark and I may well do. For certain, we’ll be going back to the Georgia Lowcountry with a mission on our mind. Meanwhile, I’m keeping this column short so there will be more rooms for photos. After all, you know what they say about a photo and 1,000 words.

Visit Tom Poland’s website at www.tompoland.net
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Tom Poland is the author of twelve books and more than 1,000 magazine features. A Southern writer, his work has appeared in magazines throughout the South. The University of South Carolina Press released his book, Georgialina, A Southland As We Knew It, in November 2015 and his and Robert Clark’s Reflections Of South Carolina, Vol. II in 2014. The History Press of Charleston published Classic Carolina Road Trips From Columbia in 2014. He writes a weekly column for newspapers in Georgia and South Carolina about the South, its people, traditions, lifestyle, and changing culture and speaks often to groups across South Carolina and Georgia, “Georgialina.”