The Queen Anne-style Meriwether County courthouse was built in 1903.
The west central Georgia town of Greenville was established in 1828 as the county seat of Meriwether County and named after Revolutionary War general Nathaniel Green. Although the population of 800 isn't all that much greater than Crawfordville's, it seems much larger. That may be because it has a courthouse square with shops and offices.
The courthouse itself, a fine example of Queen Anne architecture, was built in 1903, one of the many erected during the two decades, 1890-1910, when there was a flurry of courthouse-building in Georgia.
The distinctive Three Gables House was built in 1870.
There is a number of fine, old homes in Greenville. Just a few blocks from the west side of the square is the unique Three Gables House, built by Confederate veteran Samuel Monroe Davidson. Other distinctive old houses include the Harmon-Watson-Matthews House, the Burwell Hill House, the Hiram Warner Hill House, and Twin Oaks. All of these are listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Stop by the Visitor Information Center on the north side of the square and pick up a driving tour brochure. You can even download a driving tour app for your cell phone.
The James Render House was the center of a 1900-acre plantation.
One of the easiest to find is the James Render House, located about a half mile south of the square on U.S. 27ALT and Georgia Highway 41. Render, who came to Meriwether County about 1832, established a large cotton plantation and built a Plantation Plain-style home. By 1850 his holdings had expanded to 1900 acres, growing a variety of crops in addition to cotton. He had eleven children, and among his descendants have been a governor of Georgia and a Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court.
The Greenville Presbyterian Church was built in 1836.
About two miles north of town is the Greenville Presbyterian Church. The congregation was organized in 1829 and this building was erected in1836, at a time when the West Georgia area was very much raw frontier. The church has weekly services and the building is obviously lovingly maintained, with a modern parish house in the rear. The cemetery is older than the church—I didn’t spend much time looking, but I easily found a gravestone with a death date of 1818.
(Adapted from my book Backroads and Byways of Georgia.)
Photos: A variety of cameras and lenses was used for these photographs. The courthouse and the James Render House were photographed with a Canon EOS 6D and the EF 28-105mm lens. The Three Gables House was photographed with the Fuji X-H1 camera and the Fujicron XC 16-50mm lens, and for the Greenville Presbyterian Church I used an Olympus E-M5 and the Panasonic Lumix G-Vario 14-140mm lens.
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Photography and text copyright 2023 David B.Jenkins.
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