Courthouse Annex: This wood-frame structure, situated on a site known since the creation of Bryan County in 1793 as “the Crossroads”, was built in 1939 with funding provided by Henry Ford. The building came to be familiarly called “the Courthouse” by local citizens. For many years it was used for civic meetings and as the official Richmond Hill voting site. The local Masonic Lodge and Order of the Eastern Star organizations held their meetings in this facility. Later, city and county governmental offices were housed here.
Ways Station: In 1856, the Savannah, Albany & Gulf R.R. was built across the nearby Ogeechee River into Bryan County. Near this site a train depot was built, which came to be known as “Ways No. 1 ½” for William J. Way, the first station master and a local rice planter on lands through which the railroad passed. A settlement grew up in the section between the railroad tracks and the Crossroads just to the west. It came to be called Ways Station, a designation that lasted until 1941 when the name of the community was changed to Richmond Hill.
J. F. Gregory: For nearly 20 years, J. F. (Jack) Gregory was the general manager and superintendent for all of Henry Ford’s various operations in and around Ways Station, later Richmond Hill. Serving for Ford from the 1920s until 1946, Gregory oversaw the activities of the Richmond Hill Plantation, a large agricultural enterprise that employed many local and area residents. Known as a hard-working, no-nonsense, manager, Gregory ran Ford’s operations with great efficiency and organization.
Community House: Outside of their expansive home on the Ogeechee River, this is the single most imposing structure built by Henry and Clara Ford during their sojourn in Richmond Hill from 1926 to 1951. Built by local labor in 1936 near the Ways Station School, the Community House served residents in the enhancement of their educational, social and cultural development. Cooking, home economics, sewing, dancing and other activities were taught at no cost to adults and children alike. Local social activities were held here, many attended by the Fords themselves.
Martha-Mary Chapel: Henry and Clara Ford had this chapel built in 1937 near the Community House and the Ways Station School. The chapel was named for the mothers of Henry Ford (Mary) and Clara Ford (Martha). Students from the nearby school utilized the Martha-Mary Chapel to conduct devotional services under the supervision of their teachers. The pews, tables and other furnishings for the chapel were constructed in the local plantation carpentry shop. Today, the chapel is owned by St. Anne’s Catholic Church.
Kindergarten Building: This structure was built in 1940 by Henry Ford to serve as a kindergarten for the children of Ways Station-Richmond Hill during the Ford era. The building included a kitchen and two large classrooms to accommodate children aged three years to six. Dr. Margaret Mustin was hired by Ford to serve as the first director of the kindergarten. The Ford Kindergarten building now serves as home to the Richmond Hill Historical Society and Museum.
Ford Plantation Commissary: The Commissary building and complex was built by Henry Ford in 1941 to serve the local community and the employees of Ford’s Richmond Hill Plantation. It sold groceries, dry goods and general merchandise at reasonable prices and specialized in fresh meats and vegetables. Also here was the Bakery, familiarly known to locals as the “Sweet Shop”, and operated for a number of years by Ira C. Womble. In 1941 a building adjacent to the Bakery was refurbished to serve as the new post office for the community renamed that year as Richmond Hill.
Canaan Church: The congregation of the Canaan Baptist Church, primarily African-American, was organized in 1913 by Rev. David Boles, Sr., who was pastor, and Brother Fred Gilbert, Deacon. It was the only organized denominational church in what is now Richmond Hill during the early 20th century. Many of the original congregants of the church were descendants of the antebellum rice plantation slaves of nearby Cherry Hill and Silk Hope plantations.
Burnt Church Cemetery: Near this site in 1830 the Bryan Neck Presbyterian Church was established, being the oldest organized congregation in Bryan County. The church served the numerous planter families of lower Bryan, which had become one of the most productive agricultural sections on the south Atlantic coast. The church burial ground was adjacent to the wood-frame sanctuary. On these grounds are interred members of some of Bryan County’s most prominent early families, including those of Clay, McAllister and Maxwell. The original church accidentally burned in 1882 and a new edifice was built in 1885 several miles east, near Keller.
Bryan Neck Missionary Baptist Church: Organized in 1869, this is the oldest African-American church congregation in lower Bryan County. The first structure for the church, a Prayer House, was built in 1870 on this site near the white Presbyterian Church (Burnt Church). London Harris, a freedman and spiritual leader of the local black community, was one of the organizers and first pastors for this church. The church was renovated and enlarged at the time the nearby Carver school was built in 1939.
George Washington Carver School: On these grounds in 1939, Henry Ford built a school to serve the educational needs of the African-American children of lower Bryan County. Professor Herman Cooper was appointed as the Principal when the school opened later that year, originally with grades one through six. Ford named the school in honor of the prominent African-American educator and agriculturist from Tuskegee Institute, Dr. George Washington Carver. In March 1940 Dr. Carver attended the dedication ceremonies here for the new school named in his honor.
Henry Ford at Richmond Hill: In 1925, Henry Ford of Detroit, Mich., a leading American automobile pioneer who perfected the assembly line concept of auto manufacturing, began acquiring large tracts of land on both sides of the nearby Ogeechee River. He sponsored extensive agricultural and forestry operations, providing the impoverished area with much-needed employment opportunities. Ford also implemented numerous civic improvements for the people of the Ways Station-Richmond Hill community, including medical, educational and cultural. Near here, on the river, Henry and Clara Ford built their winter home, Richmond, in 1936. Ford was active in the local community until his death in 1947.
New Historical Markers - Coming in May 2012
Rice Cultivation on the Ogeechee River
The production of rice on Bryan Neck utilized upstream fresh water and the tidal influences of the Ogeechee River. Heavy wooden trunks, or tide gates, along the levees and embankments in the rice fields allowed the inflow and outflow of fresh water in an elaborate system of irrigation and hydraulics during the summer growing season. A network of canals provided access for the tending of the fields by large forces of slave workers. The peak of this activity was in 1860 when 1.6 million pounds of rice was shipped from Bryan Neck plantations along the river. With a ready supply of labor no longer available after the Civil War, along with a series of destructive hurricanes in the 1880s, rice cultivation on the Ogeechee ended by 1900.
Richard James Arnold
Richard James Arnold (1796-1873) acquired nearby White Hall Plantation through his marriage in 1823 to Louisa Gindrat. A Rhode Island native, Arnold invested heavily in White Hall for the cultivation of cotton and in his Cherry Hill and Mulberry tracts further up the Ogeechee River on which he became the most prosperous rice planter in the region. By 1860 Arnold was the largest landowner in Bryan County, with over 15,000 acres and 195 slaves. Arnold was an innovative planter, regarded as being well advanced for his times in terms of his business concepts, his application of scientific principles to his agricultural methods and techniques and his philosophy of plantation and slave management.
Guale Village at Seven-Mile Bend
Across the Ogeechee River from this point was the northernmost town of the Province of Guale, the village of Satuache. Spanish records place Satuache about 10 miles northeast of Guale’s provincial capital at Mission Santa Catalina (St. Catherine’s Island). Indian artifacts at the Seven-Mile Bend attest to Guale activity in association with the Spanish mission of San Diego de Satuache. The Guale town and the Spanish mission there were abandoned ca. 1663. The name Ogeechee is Indian in origin and means River of the Uchee, (“seeing far away”) for a village further north on the 245-mile long river. The Seven-Mile Bend site was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1972.
The "Bottom" Village
The "Bottom” residential village, built in the mid-1930s, was the first housing project developed by Henry Ford for his employees in the Ways Station (later Richmond Hill) area. The name originated from the fact that the area had been a swamp or a "bottom" before Ford had it cleared and drained. There was a similar employee residential community on the Clyde Road just west of Ways Station called “Blueberry Village”. In the Bottoms there were 75 two-and-three-bedroom homes built for Ford’s workers. Also in the development were a recreation building and a baseball field. No rent was charged employees until 1945 when Ford, acceding to Internal Revenue Service requirements, began charging the modest sum of $15 per month. Ford, in turn, raised their pay $15 per month to take care of the rent.
Canaan Baptist Church
The congregation of the Canaan Baptist Church, primarily African-American, was organized in 1913 by Rev. David Boles, Sr., who was pastor, and Brother Fred Gilbert, Deacon. It was the only organized denominational church in what is now Richmond Hill during the early 20th century. The present sanctuary was built with support from Henry Ford. Many of the original congregants of the church were descendants of the antebellum rice plantation slaves of nearby Cherry Hill and Silk Hope plantations.
The Clay Family of Bryan Neck
In this cemetery are interred members of the Clay family, among the most prominent of Bryan Neck and coastal Georgia from the colonial era of Georgia through the 19th century. Prominent among these are Thomas Savage Clay (1801-1849) and his wife Matilda McAllister Clay (1818-1869). Clay and his sister, Eliza Caroline Clay (1805-1895) owned Richmond-on-the-Ogeechee, one of the most productive rice plantations on Bryan Neck. Their parents were Joseph Clay (1764-1811), prominent member of the Savannah clergy, and Mary Savage Clay (1770-1844), whose Savage family forebears owned Silk Hope plantation near Richmond.
George W. McAllister
Buried here is George Washington McAllister (1781-1850), a prominent planter of Bryan County. In 1817, McAllister acquired Strathy Hall Plantation on the Ogeechee River where he cultivated rice and was one of the largest slave owners on Bryan Neck. McAllister built his plantation house, Strathy Hall, in 1838, restored by Henry Ford ca. 1940. McAllister and his neighbors, Thomas Savage Clay and Richard James Arnold, organized the Bryan Neck Presbyterian Church on this site in 1830. His son, Joseph L. McAllister, made available for Confederate forces the land at nearby Genesis Point on which Fort McAllister was built in 1861.