Nolan Plantation

The Nolan farm operated from 1856 until about 1970 and covered around 2,000 acres in Morgan County, Georgia. This is the second Nolan farm home, built sometime between 1905 and 1910. The first Nolan home is a plantation plain I-form house located further south on the opposite side of Highway 83. Behind this house, to the west along Nolan Store Road, was a complex of farm structures and tenant homes.

The store adjacent to this home was actually the commissary. There are rumors that the tenant homes were actually slave quarters, although the building in question is actually a tenant house with wooden boards that are clearly not old enough to date to the antebellum era. Like most plantations of that era, the Nolan property supported its own commissary. It was essentially a credit-based store for employees.

The cotton plantation included a blacksmith’s shop, commissary store, cotton gin and several tenant houses. Once slave labor ended in 1865, many of the workers remained on the property as tenant farmers. Remnants of the tenant houses and farm structures still exist in the woods and fields near the crossroads. At its peak, the Nolan plantation was one of the largest tenant farming operations in Morgan County.

The Greek Revival plantation home has been vacant for the past 35 plus years. It has been used in some filming recently, including a FOX network series. That would explain the limited restoration that has been done. Rumors swirl around this house as to its preservation status. The current owner has expressed no desire to sell the property or restore the house. On behalf of the landowner, the Madison-Morgan Conservancy staff prepared the nomination for the National Register of Historic Places for the Nolan house. The house was added to the register in 2015.