House History

 UPDATED 26JAN13

This page is to document the history of the house. It is a work in progress. I will be adding details about what occurred during the time that each owner held it as well as details about the owners.

? - 1887 - J. D. Sutton, W. P. Thompson, J. A. Gill


Until recently I was only able to trace the deeds back to 1904. I had assumed that A. P. Dixon bought a larger portion of land then in 1904 subdivided it, this proved to be wrong. I recently found a lot more information on another one of my trips to the courthouse.

I have had mention of what is called the "Wise survey". This was a survey conducted in 1887 by a surveyor named Wise. This survey was conducted because the Georgia Midland & Gulf railroad laid their line through town at that time. No one had a copy of the survey or know where one was.

The three people above owned large tracts of land just to the south of town, right where the railroad was coming through.



1887 - 1890 - Panola Land & Improvement Company


This is the corporation that managed the layout of the new part of town. They hired E. N. Wise to conduct the survey and lay out the streets. The property between the streets were laid out into blocks lettered A - P.  Blocks A - H on the north side of the railroad, and I - P on the south. Each block is 415' x 415', or four acres. Each block has 4 lots, numbered 1 - 4. Each lot is 207 1/2 x 207 1/2, or one acre.

The Panola Land and Improvement Company bought half of the lots.




In doing my research at the courthouse I recently found a copy of the Wise Survey, it was copied into a deed book sometime in the 1920's from the original survey.


Wise Survey



My property is a little over half of Block G, lot 4. I printed out a map from Google and drew the wise survey to scale on to it. It's pretty neat to see where the streets line up.



One of the neat things I found out from finding the wise Survey was that the road along the railroad was originally laid out as Main Street. The coming of the railroad was such a big thing that they were going to move downtown to be centered on it. For some unknown reason though it didn't stick. What was originally called Main Street is now just a tiny road one block long.

1890 - 1892 - J. R. Mahone (back part of lot)


This is a small strip in the SouthWest corner of the lot, it was 52' wide and 207.5' deep.


The interesting thing about this is that it appears that people were beginning to buy up lots fronting Main Street, presumably to build shops on. the 52' dimension fronted on Main Street.

The back part of my lot is on the North part of this lot.

1892 - 1897 - W. A. Mahone (Back part of lot)


Looks like W. A. Mahone inherited the lot.


He kept the lot until 1897 when he either sold it to W. D. Owen or it was seized by the Sheriff in 1896 and sold at auction to W. D. Owen. I found two conflicting deeds, both for this exact piece of property.

1894 - 1894 - J. T. Y. Brown, W. P. Thompson

These two people bought a bunch of lots from the Panola Land & Improvement Company.


1894 - ? - W. D. Owen


William Daniel Owen lived in the house across the street. A lot of the mouldings and trim are the exact same as on my house. I believe that both houses were built around the same time.




W. D. Owen is third from the right in the picture above.

UPDATE: 

Here is another picture of W.D. Owen taken sometime in the 30's:


I've recently found out that he was a US Marshal. His primary job was finding and destroying moonshine stills.

Here is one of many newspaper articles I found on W. D. Owen. This one is dated 02 Jun 1917:





-----
J. A. Aycock 1899-1904 (Renter)

I can not find John Andrew Aycock on any of the deeds but I know he lived in the house because of all the artifacts of his I've found. I'm assuming he rented the house from either W. D. Owen or A. P. Dixon.

The 1904 deed ( Pictured below in the A. P. Dixon section) mentions the property as the J.A. Aycock lot. As I mentioned in a previous post, Mr. Aycock was a contractor, he made wood mouldings. He was born in Whitesburg Ga, moved to Griffin Ga in the late 1880's, then to Woodbury in the 1899.

I found two newspaper articles about the planing mill that he built and owned in town:




I know he lived in the house because of a wedding invitation addressed to him. It is the earliest artifact I have found in the house. The wedding invitation is dated June 13, 1904.

I found a book a while back on the history of Woodbury. It's not really even a book but just a bunch of hand typed pages dated 1948. In this book it mentions that J.A. Aycock had a planing mill on the corner of Third street (now Durand St.) and Railroad street (now Date Ln.)(The book says Railroad St. because that's what it was called in 1948 but it was originally Main St. as mentioned earlier).




In 1902 it burned down.


This mill was set just south of the house in between it and the railroad. In the second picture above it mentions that it is now the site of Mrs. E.B. Morgans flower garden. In 1950 this lot was sub-divided and a small house was built on it for their daughter.


Mr. Aycock moved out before 1910 though because the 1910 census says that he lived on Depot Street (now Dromedary St.), that is one block over from here.



Here is Mr. & Mrs. Aycock's headstone in the city cemetery.


When Mrs. Aycock died in 1917 Mr. Aycock and one of his daughters moved to Bullochville (now Warm Springs) 10 miles south of Woodbury as shown in the 1920 cencus records.



The 1930 Census shows that he lived in Thomaston Ga.

Another interesting thing I've found is an Obituary for Mrs.Maggie Aycock's father. Turns out that her maiden name is Morgan. Her fathers name was Thomas Guinn Morgan and he was a Methodist Minister.

MORGAN, Rev. Thomas Guinn, was born in Herefordshire, England, February 24, 1824 and died at Woodbury, Ga., January 9, 1903; at the time of his death he was a member of Battle Hill Church, in Atlanta; he was licensed to preach in England by the Wesleyan Methodists, ordained deacon at Murfreesboro, Tenn., and elder at Santa Rosa, Cal.; he served churches in California, Georgia and Alabama from 1872 to 1895; he was thrice married, the first in England to Miss Sarah Leek, to Miss Agnes McLaughlin in California, and last to Mrs. Josephine Johnson, widow of Rev. J. B. Johnson; six children were born to his first marriage, Mrs. J. A. Aycock of Woodbury being the only one of the six who survives; the former Miss Annie Johnson, now Mrs. Cook, is a daughter of his last wife; [from J. S. Bryan in Wesleyan Advocate] Vol. 31, No. 12, February 20, 1903

Notice that the church he was a member of was in Atlanta yet he died in Woodbury. To me it looks like he became ill and moved in with his daughter. If so that means he died in the house.


The picture below is of John A. Aycock's son, John Jr.


The picture was taken in 1923. He went to Georgia Tech from 1919 - 1923, graduating with a Bachelors of Science in Cooperative Engineering.

Here is his yearbook entry:



He was born here in the house in 1900. Originally I thought he was born in 1891 because of the 1910 census that is posted a little way up the page. It lists him as 19 years old but he's not listed at all in the 1900 census. I finally noticed that his brother Amos is listed as being 9 years old in both the 1900 and 1910 census. It looks like they switched their dates around on the 1910 census. Because of this mix-up I hadn't been able to find any information on him until I noticed it.

John Jr. had a son in 1936 named John Andrew Aycock just like his father and grandfather but for some reason he is called John Jr. also.


 I definitively know that it is his son because of a Sons of the American Revolution application. In it John Andrew Aycock from Woodbury, Ga is listed as his father.




Now I just need to find a living relative of his. He lived in South Carolina, in his picture above he was attending The Citadel in Charleston.

One other thing I found that was pretty neat was John A. Aycock Jr. (the first one) birth certificate. It's from 1957, (the same year his son started attending The Citadel and applied for the Sons of the American Revolution). I'm thinking that he needed some type of identification either to enroll his son in The Citadel of for his sons SoAR application.



I've posted so much about Mr. Aycock and his family because I believe he was either the builder of the house or it's first resident. Soon I'm going to research his descendants to see if  I can find any more information on him and hopefully some pictures, either of him, his family, or the house. If I do find anything I will post it here.


? - 1904 - A.P. Dixon





The deed pictured above is for the sale of the property from A.P. Dixon to W. H. Hinton in 1904.

I dont have a deed for when Mr. Dixon bought the property. This is as far as I was able to trace the deeds backwards. As mentioned earlier I was able to find the original deed in 1887 that sub divided this lot, but tracing those forward I can only get to W. D. Owen.

There's a ten year gap between 1894 and 1904.


1904 - 1917 - W.H. Hinton

Here is the 1910 census showing the Hinton family living in the house.





1917 - 1944 - Leamon Powell / Jessie Moreland

Here is the deed for the sale of the property from W.H. Hinton to Leamon Powell & Jessie Moreland.


Leamon Powell was married to Ben Powell, Jessie Powell Moreland was her daughter. She was married to Jesse Bion Moreland. Both families lived in the house.

1920 Census

1930 Census

It's interesting to note that in 1920 there were three boarders living in the house. 

Wita was their first daughter. I found a Certificate of Achievement with her name on it behind one of the mantles. It was so fragile that it has since fallen apart so I dont have a picture of it unfortunately.

I do however have a picture of Wita:


This picture is from the 1935 yearbook from Agnes Scott college in Atlanta. She was a member of the Cotillion Club at the school:


I also have a picture of their second daughter, Betty Moreland, she went to the University of Georgia from 1946 -1950


She is on the far right in the picture.  She was the Treasurer of the Alpha Delta Pi sorority. 


 It was during the time that the Moreland's/Powell's lived in the house that both bathrooms were installed (1928 for the main, and 1937 for the upstairs). They also converted the Dining room door to a window. I just recently returned this back to a door. They also installed a separate electrical panel on it's own meter and a sink in the upstairs back bedroom. Whether this was for a rental unit or for Leamon and Ben I dont know. I think they also put up a wall separating the foyer from the main hall. I believe that there was fretwork hanging there originally.



 1944 - 1993 - E.B. Morgan

The Morgans lived in the house for the longest and are the most well known in town. There are still lots of the Morgan family living here.

E.B. Morgan started off working in the Oil Mill across the street and eventually ended up owning it.





The Morgans made lots of modifications to the house when they moved in. One thing they did was install red oak flooring on the entire first floor over the original pine floor. That is fine, I kind of like the red oak and from what I can tell the original flooring wasn't in the best of shape, but they did a few other things that I dont care for. One being the replacement of the fireplace surrounds and hearths. The original was subway tile, dark green for the Parlor, and white in the Living Room and the Study. They replaced it with ugly fake brick tiles.

The parlor subway tile is mentioned in this post. I found a bunch of white subway tile out in one of the sheds not long after buying the house, I'm sure it went to the surrounds of the other two rooms. I will be restoring all of them sometime in the near future, hopefully.

Another thing they did was to expand and enclose the back porch. You can see the demo of that addition here.


Here is a picture of the house taken sometime in the 50's or 60's.


From what I hear they had the entire house scrapped and repainted every 5 to 7 years.


 1993 - 1993 - Alton Rogers

I dont know much about him except that he owned some adjoining land and that he didnt own the house but for a few months.

 1993 - 1995 - Eula McGraw

EDIT: I now know who Eula McGraw is, it's actually Eula Morgan McGraw. She is one of E.B. Morgan's daughters.


I dont know anything about Eula. It is weird though that her first name is the same as one of J.A. Aycocks daughters. I doubt it could be her though. That would have made her over 100.

This is from the 1900 census.


 1995 - 1998 - Randy Johnson

Dont know anything about him.

1998 - 1999 - United Bank

Bank owned.

 1999 - 1999 - Jim Merchant

Dont know anything about him.

  1999 - 2007 - Maxine Guy

Dont know much about her.

 2007 - 2008 - American General Finance

Bank owned.

2008 - Present - Us