About the Project
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My name is Eva Joseph and the goal of this project is to publish the research of my mother and local historian, Elizabeth “Chica” Arndt (1941-2025) on the Jacob Fox Gould House, the Gould Family history, the Bethel Community and neighboring areas. She shared her research freely because she did not want the history of this part of West Chatham County to disappear. It was her wish to have her research available for free so that it may inspire future scholarship. The material is presented as part memoir, part history.
For Chica, the role of local historian came late in life. A month after attending my college graduation in May 1989, she was enrolled in graduate school at Armstrong State University in History with a focus on historic preservation – finally fulfilling her life-long dream. After earning a Masters Degree, she worked as the Interpretive Ranger at Wormsloe State Historic Site, creating programs, hosting thousands of school children, and running the bookshop and museum. In 1993, her husband Carl Arndt (1930-2019) and she were looking for a piece of land in the country to build a house. Her realtor, as a second thought, showed them a 20-acre property with an existing old farmhouse off Little Neck Rd. As soon as Chica saw the house, it immediately reminded her of her parents' 1810 summer home on Cape Cod nicknamed "Skinequit," and she knew it was something special.
Carl and Chica bought it, built a new wing and unwittingly became the next generation of caretakers of "the Farm", the antebellum Gould family homestead and heart of the Bethel Community. Carl and Chica quickly became pillars of their new community, becoming good friends with their neighbors, members of the Bethel Cemetery Association and Bethel-Burton Supper Club. Chica started working as an Assistant Manager for the Savannah-Ogeechee Canal (SOC) historic site while Carl volunteered and later served as Canal Master. At SOC, Chica put together educational programs for school-aged children and reenactments of Canal history, planted butterfly gardens, managed the museum and researched SOC history.
For 30 years, Chica worked to document the history around her. She recorded oral histories of the "old timers" researched and worked with local historic preservationists and architectural historians trying to document what history she could before Savannah's westward development would change the area forever.
In retirement, she volunteered at the Bloomingdale History Museum documenting local churches, and researching area garden club histories. Her research on the 1930s Civilian Conservation Corp Boy’s Camp in Bloomingdale for the Bloomingdale History Museum earned her the tongue-in-cheek, “Golden Digger” award, a gold spray-painted garden digger mounted on a plaque because of the impressive amount of material she was able to find.
In the last four years of her life, I was able to support her research through online sources which she had not been able to access. It filled in many historical gaps and new information for Gould family history and for several of our history “rabbit holes.” Among our favorite rabbit holes was the search for the enslaved or formerly enslaved man named “Quacco” whose name has lived on for more than 180 years on “Quacco Road,” a truly remarkable fact that I hope will one day be honored with an historical marker.
Excerpts from my mother’s writing is sourced from her manuscript entitled, “Conversations with History” and will be presented italicized. Sources are included and any suppositions or areas of needing further research will be clearly stated. It is astonishing the amount of material she collected using the “analogue method” of finding records the old-fashioned way, in-person, referencing real books, searching municipal records and hunting through newspapers records on microfiche.
Materials will continue to be added to this site until the legacy project is complete.
Pictured L to R: Elizabeth "Chica" Arndt, Eva Joseph and Karl Joseph. Pictured under the old magnolia tree on the north side of the Jacob Fox Gould House. The tree is a beloved feature on the property and was probably planted when the farm house was originally built. Photo credit: Mauricio Perez 2021.
Hand-drawn map by Chica Arndt illustrating West Chatham, and highlighting the Bethel and Black Ankle neighborhoods.
Acknowledgements
There are so many people to recognize who in large and small ways contributed to the preservation of the Jacob Fox Gould house and the collection of its history. The heroine of this story is Mrs. Georgia Fawcett without whom the old farmhouse would not exist. She purchased the Farm and 40 acres as a repossession in 1937, documented it through photographs and restored the house doing as little as possible but still making it habitable for herself and comfortable as a social hub for the neighborhood and her many Savannah friends. McDonald Fawcett, Mrs. Fawcett’s grandson, and his wife Susannah "Susie" continued to maintain the house and make it a home for their young family.
Susie kindly shared the photos by Mrs. Fawcett with my mother documenting the Farm's "before and after" photos and other images documenting the house. The photos have proven to be an invaluable resource in the study of the house. Thank you to the many Gould descendants who handed my mother what she called, “treasure maps." Some she knew well such as Walter Gould, and others not at all with one handing her memoirs anonymously. Her Bethel neighbors shared their stories and memories including the Duggars, the Griers, the Grizzards, Mrs. Jean Fair and others. Charles (Charlie) Duggar was a direct descendant of Jacob Fox Gould whose grandmother was Robert Henry Gould's daughter Elizabeth "Lizzie" Gould. His wife, Elsie and he related family stories, showed her the location of the Gould slave quarters, the rice field and related childhood and family memories of the old Bethel school and church. For all these stories, if you had shared one with my mother, it is sure she wrote it down and archived it.
To the historic preservationists and scholars who recognized the significance of the house, added to its documentation, and have been cheerleaders for its preservation, a big thank you. The Jacob Fox Gould House appeared on a Chatham County Historic Resource list as early as 1973 as the “Fawcett Cottage” and later inventories recognized it as highly significant and a resource to be nominated for the National Registry of Historic Places. In the 1990s, Beth Reiter and her Savannah Metropolitan Planning Commission colleagues started planning for the Farm’s relocation in case it was in danger of being razed. Ellen Harris was a great support to my mother and has championed the house supporting its analysis and documentation. Dr. E. G. Daves Rosell added the house to the Vernacular Architectural Forum tour of homes in 2007 and instigated the first of now several analyses of the house, adding to the body of research available on vernacular building practices in Chatham County. Dr. Carl Lounsbury who spent several days in August 2022 studying the house and producing a report that provided a foundation of critical scholarship that we are now able to build upon. My mother was thrilled to have a walking historic preservation encyclopedia in her home with whom she could finally ask all her questions! Robert (Bob) Ciucevich of Quatrefoil Historic Preservation Consulting and Sarah Ward of Ward Architecture who as local historic preservation consultants took a fresh look within a local context and determined the house aligns with an earlier form and construction timeline.
To Sonya Wallen, Telfair Building Curator for generously providing expert advice on preserving the house and connecting us with local historic preservation specialists Dr. Laura Seifert, our archeologist friend, who as a favor, examined one of the sheathing nails and determined the nail’s machine cut body had a “homemade” head which gave us one little piece of evidence that put the construction timeline earlier than previously thought. The Meadors Inc. Conservation and Preservation Planning team of Betty Prime and Kalen McNabb who spent a day collecting material samples and analyzing elements of the house to further provide evidence of an early 19th century construction. Finally, to the Georgia Historical Society (GHS) as an institution and a resource to all Georgians. The process of transferring the prodigious amount of my mother's papers will be ongoing and we encourage anyone interested to help donate to the GHS in processing the material under my mother's name.