Webb Family Farm

Along a mile of U.S. Highway 19 north of Smithville in Sumter County, Georgia, about 800 acres of level farmland hold three historic farmhouses and their outbuildings. The land was once part of John Ronaldson Webb's holdings, which his widow divided among seven sons in 1900. The George F. Webb House and Emory C. Webb House, both built in 1901, are one-story Victorian Eclectic homes with Queen Anne-influenced detail, including wrap-around porches, stained glass and fishscale shingles; the George Webb House also has a central turret. The William A. Webb House began as a two-room house in 1875 and was enlarged in 1903 and the 1910s. Smokehouses, barns, cribs, wash houses and windmills remain, along with three of more than twenty tenant houses. Cotton was the main crop until the boll weevil of the 1920s led to more varied farming. The Webbs also ran stores and a cotton gin in Sumter and were active in the local Baptist church.