Birdsville Plantation

Birdsville Plantation is a crossroads farm complex northwest of Millen, Georgia, built around a main house that grew in two stages. Philip Jones, who received a 287-acre land grant in 1784 for Revolutionary War service, built the rear section before his death in 1789. About 1850, Dr. William B. Jones added a Greek Revival front with twin Corinthian columns, a heavy cornice and pediment, twin bays, ironwork and Carpenter Gothic scrollwork, all financed by cotton. Inside, the early rooms have Federal woodwork, and a stair hall door is grained so convincingly that it looks like panelled wood. Around the house stand a two-room kitchen, well house, smokehouse, blacksmith shop, stagestop-apothecary, cotton gin, barn, family burial ground and an avenue of old trees. The land has passed through the same family since the grant. The nomination calls it perhaps the only complete and essentially unaltered plantation complex surviving in Georgia. The listed area was later set at 50 acres.