Living On The Edge

The Quarterman place was a working farm at the eastern edge of Flemington alongside the Old Sunbury Road. It was situated between the highway and the Goshen Swamp. It was somewhat of a knoll rising up out of the swamp and there was a large red two story home with porches all around and cedar shingles on the outside walls. It was adorned with an elaborate network of lightning rods on all four corners and following the peaks of all of the angles of the roof line.  A very large barn stood near the house and a herd of cows were housed in the barn at night. The barn was set back from the road about such that the front of the barn was just a little nearer the road than was the rear of the mainhouse. There were two identical cabins built out in front of the barn and to the left of the big house if your view was from the road.

The cows roamed freely along the road as Georgia was an open range state up until about 1953 I believe. I'm not sure just how large the Quarterman place was but I'd guess that originally it might have been as much as sixty to a hundred acres. It was composed of some open fields cultivated in summer months and there was some woodland areas which had numerous long leaf pine trees that were worked for the collection of pine gum or "tar" for the sale to the navel stores industry of the time. The trees had "catfaces" slashed into the side of the trunk where cups were attached beneath the catface for collection of the sap.

The rear of the Quarterman estate went slightly into the swamp. As I said earlier it was an island or perhaps a knoll rising up out of the Goshen to form the Quartermn place.

East of Flemington was the predominately black community of McIntosh. Originally the Homer Smith place was part of Flemington but at some point after the land was sold to the lumber company it came to be considered to be in McIntosh. Apparently Mr. or perhaps it was Mrs. Quarterman decided to sell four acres of their land on the eastern edge of the estate. Those four one acre lots are what is now the Homer Smith homestead as it exists today and that is what was cut out of that corner of their land.  That being the south eastern corner of the Quarterman estate.

It appears to me that the Quartermans decided to sell four acres of road frontage each of which would have a 100 foot frontage on the highway. The western most of those four acres is what is today referred to as the Greenhouse. I think the first acre sold was what is today known as the Greenhouse. It was the acre nearest to the Quartermans and it was to have been the first of four total ultimately there would perhaps be three additional sites between the Quartermans and the next land owner which was a Mr Jessie Perry who owned 5 acres and his next neighbor going east was the Sullivan place which was composed of some sixty plus acres which stretched alongside the highway almost to the intersection of the channel of the Goshen where it passed beneath the highway.