The Nolan farm operated from 1856 until about 1970 and covered around 2,000 acres in Morgan County, Georgia. This plantation home is the second Nolan farm home, built sometime between 1905 and 1910. The first Nolan home is a plantation plain I-form house located further south on the opposite side of Highway 83. Behind this house, to the west along Nolan Store Road, was a complex of farm structures and tenant homes.
The cotton plantation included a blacksmith’s shop, a commissary store, a cotton gin, and several tenant houses. Once slave labor ended in 1865, many of the workers remained on the property as tenant farmers. Remnants of the tenant houses and farm structures still exist in the woods and fields near the crossroads. At its peak, the Nolan plantation was one of the most extensive tenant farming operations in Morgan County.
The store across the street from the home was the commissary, a credit-based store for employees of the farm. There are rumors that the tenant homes were slave quarters. Historians believe the building in question is a tenant house with wooden boards that are not old enough to date to the antebellum era. For the last 35 plus years, the Neoclassical home has remained unoccupied. In recent years, the house underwent a limited restoration for a FOX network series. The current owner has expressed no desire to sell the property or restore the home any further. The Nolan house was added to the NRHP in 2015 after the Madison-Morgan Conservancy staff prepared the nomination.
Thank you for reading. Please share the blog with your friends. I appreciate your support. You can find me on Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok. For more amazing, abandoned places check out my photography books.