Tarver Plantation

Tarver Plantation is a 1,300-acre tract of farmland and forest in Baker County, Georgia, anchored by a one-story Greek Revival house built about 1850 for newlyweds Henry Andrew Tarver and Elizabeth Solomon Tarver. In 1850 the plantation covered 3,700 acres and grew corn, cotton, oats, peas, beans and sweet potatoes, worked by enslaved labor until the Civil War and later by sharecroppers. It supplied food to the Confederate government during the war. The house has a full-width portico, side porticoes, transoms and sidelights, and an unusual Greek-cross hallway plan with a large room at each corner. Restoration in the 1940s added a larger kitchen wing and plaster ornament but left the mid-nineteenth-century character intact. Later the land served as a hunting preserve and seasonal home. A reported slave cemetery with one marked grave lies behind the house. The property was listed for its agricultural history and its architecture.