{"nrhp_refnum":"85001620","name":"Smith-Harris House","other_names":[],"category":"building","location":{"address":"CR 207","address_restricted":false,"city":"Vesta","county":"Oglethorpe County","state":"GA","lat":33.94941837300004,"lon":-82.96170560593444,"geom_source":"nps_gis"},"listed_date":"1985-07-25","is_nhl":false,"nhl_designated_date":null,"areas_of_significance":["Landscape Architecture","Exploration/Settlement","Architecture","Agriculture"],"significance_levels":["local"],"summary":{"what_it_is":"A two-story clapboard plantation-plain house built in 1839 on a rural county road about a mile and a half west of Vesta, Oglethorpe County, Georgia, with a 1879 kitchen addition, outbuildings, and family and slave cemeteries.","why_significant":"The property is argued to be significant in agriculture, architecture, exploration/settlement, landscape architecture and local history. It represents a moderately sized piedmont cotton plantation and working farm, a good example of the plantation plain type built with local techniques, and an well-preserved informal farm landscape. It is also tied to the Joseph Smith and George Harris families, who held it from 1838 to 1983.","narrative":"Built in 1839 by Kit Taylor, a free Black builder hired by settler Joseph Smith, this two-story clapboard house sits in the countryside west of Vesta in Oglethorpe County, Georgia. It rests on a granite foundation with hand-hewn, pegged beams, hand-planed plank walls, carved mantels and six-over-six windows. A kitchen addition was added in 1879. The grounds hold a log smokehouse, corn crib, barns, a well, a family cemetery and a slave cemetery, along with oaks, walnuts, pecans, a scuppernong arbor, low granite walls and a terraced yard. Smith bought several hundred acres in 1838 and ran a cotton plantation and working farm that also grew wheat, corn, oats, peas and herbs. The house is valued as a representative mid-nineteenth-century farm of Georgia's piedmont, a good plantation-plain example with local building methods, and a well-preserved informal landscape. Smith and Harris descendants owned it from 1838 until 1983.","period_of_significance":"1839 - 1934","architect_builder":"Kit Taylor","architectural_style":"Plantation plain","criteria":[],"status_note":"Occupied private residence, described as in good condition and altered; electricity and plumbing were added in 1941.","vacant_flag":false,"machine_generated":true,"model":"claude-sonnet-5-5","prompt_version":"v1.0-2026-10-29","generated_at":"2026-10-29 02:55:42.995156-05","source_pdf":"https://s3.amazonaws.com/NARAprodstorage/lz/electronic-records/rg-079/NPS_GA/85001620.pdf"},"photo":null,"district":null,"sources":{"nps_snapshot_date":"2026-05-22","nara_catalog":"https://catalog.archives.gov/id/93209226","wikipedia":null,"wikidata":"https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q134440837"},"indexable":true,"url":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/georgia/oglethorpe-county/smith-harris-house-85001620/"}