Throughout many history books, the map of Barrow's Plantation includes an error that has been disregarded for many years. The two maps show how the area changed after the Reconstruction era. One map was dated as 1860 while the other was as 1881. The major production material gathered at the plantation was cotton. After Reconstruction, it was easily seen that tenant farmers' houses appeared throughout Oglethorpe County, "each man feeling the very natural desire to be his own "boss", and to farm to himself."[7] The error is still present today; it was our job as a group to find out what it was. After much research and analysis, it became evident that the major error in Barrow's Plantation was the orientation.
At first, the location of Barrow's Plantation did not stand out to our eyes besides it being in Oglethorpe County, Georgia. Now, where the plantation was exactly located was still a mystery. We began by searching on Google using keywords, "oglethorpe county, georgia maps" and chose the first link. Then what appealed to our eyes was the Oglethorpe County Historical Maps link since we are dealing with history. Following that link, we chose the 1894 map [1] since it was the most spread out and detailed out of all the others. This was the critical piece of evidence to help us solve the question. It was to our surprise that the map included a tiny label titled, "D.C. Barrow Pl." near the bottom of the map near Little River. At that point, we found out that Barrow's Plantation is located North of Little River , Southeast of the Woodstock District and two miles Southwest of Philomath.
Comparing the two maps of Barrow's Plantation made us realize that something was indeed wrong. On the one hand, illustrated in the 1881 map, Little River lies East to the plantation. On the other hand, looking to the newly found 1894 map, Little River is located to the South of Barrow's Plantation. It was easily seen that the orientation of the two maps were contradicting. This was the major error that the textbooks have not noticed for years. Clearly, the orientation of the maps shown in textbooks should be rotated 90 degrees clockwise in order to resemble the true orientation of the plantation.
Places that have not been touched in years usually disappear. However, with Barrow's Plantation, that is not the case. According to the satellite photo [2] that was obtained, it seems as though Barrow's Plantation has maintained its size for all those years with some growth. Searching up "Philomath, Georgia" at Yahoo Maps made it possible to find the satellite photo. By clicking on Get a New Map, we used Yahoo's beta version of their satellite photos and so on. Choosing the "Hybrid" view showed both the roads and terrain of the area. By looking hard enough, we soon found Barrow's Plantation by comparing the maps from the GDOT road and highway maps. What astonished us was that after all these years, the area surrounding the plantation did not overcome the whole area, but rather the area kept its size.
In search of evidence on Barrow's Plantation, we first used google and searched the two big rivers, Little River and Syll's Fork. We then came up with the following website, JSTOR [3]. This journal gives some information about the area and a source to check the date of the map at the bottom of page 9. An "I'm Feeling Lucky" Google search of: "a georgia plantation scribner's monthly vol 21", found in the journal itself gave us a link to the book that David C. Barrow Jr. wrote with the original map. The map of Barrow’s Plantation first appeared in: A Georgia Plantation. A Scribner’s Month, Vol. 21 Issue 5 (March 1881).
There are several other pictures associated with Barrow's Plantation. By reading more about the Barrow family, it was easy to find pictures that related to the plantation. Because we are looking for historical images, we searched "historical images georgia" in Google. As Professor Petrik has mentioned, it would be best to use a source that included ".edu" at the end. With luck, the first link that came up was one. By choosing the link, "Digital Library of Georgia", it redirected the browser to the actual site affiliated with the link. Now, at the beginning of the assignment, we were left with little to start off with besides the county name. What a coincidence, there is an option that lets you search for different images according to county. Obviously, "Oglethorpe County" was what we began with, so we will make it come to use now. This led to another page where it had yet another link to historical images. By viewing the images, there was one actual picture of Barrow's Plantation labeled "Pope House" [4]. Also, by going back a page and clicking on "Vanishing Georgia", there was yet another picture associated with Pope Barrow [5].
There are many other ways to interpret the information gathered by Barrow’s Plantation. The land used to be owned by Native American’s before the Barrow’s moved in. The Barrow’s, like most Americans, wanted the land the Native Americans had because it was great fertile land. A satellite picture shows that the plantation is still around today, and maybe has even grown. Few plantations could have lasted this long without good land to support it. Another reason for its unusually long life is for the workers who followed soon after. After the Civil War ended, many of the newly freed slaves moved back to plantations to work as tenant farmers. They separated out into their own homes instead of living in a single large home as was the purpose of the first two maps by David C. Barrow Jr. contradictory to the book written by David C. Barrow Jr., the freed black slaves were skilled farmers and produced even more crop than before. The increased production was not due to environmental factors as believed by most racist southerners, but the African Americans being motivated by their freedom to work harder, "Their success demonstrated what African Americans given a fair chance, might accomplish." [6]
[1] Oglethorpe County 1894 Map
http://www.cviog.uga.edu/Projects/gainfo/histcountymaps/oglethorpe1894map2.htm
[2] Yahoo Maps Screenshot
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v73/phanomenon/barrows2.jpg
[3] JSTOR.org Site
http://www.jstor.org/cgi-bin/jstor/logon?S1=cce44062.11612120240&T=1&config=jstor
[4] Pope's House
http://dbs.galib.uga.edu/larc/photos/hbo0559.jpg
[5] Pope's House 2
http://dlg.galileo.usg.edu/vanga/photos/ogl/jpg/ogl007b.jpg
[6] Nation of Nations pg. 460
[7] A Georgia Plantation. A Scribner’s Month, Vol. 21 Issue 5 (March 1881). Pg. 831
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