Finding the Farm
Excerpt from Elizabeth Arndt's manuscript, "Conversations with History" Chapter One: Found the Farm. Written ca. 2001-2005
Across the road are some cows in Mr. Grizzard’s field, which I notice as I drive past our mailbox and swing into the driveway. The cows look like “new” cows. They stand or sit close to the barbed wire fence, looking down the road. One actually has his head stuck through the gap between the two upper strands of barbed wire, and looks down the road toward Bloomingdale, which is probably where they came from. Cows have a good sense of direction. Later on, they’ll get acclimated, spread out from their tight little herd to search out the best tasting grass and coolest shade. Right now it is February, cold and windy, and shade is not a factor.
Our house is not visible from the road, but within a hundred feet comes into view. It sits proudly on a little hill, an old farmhouse, whose builders knew that even though it was not a grand house, it would look grander on high ground. It is easy to remember our first impression many years ago when, as prospective home buyers, we drove down the very same drive, and suddenly—a small white house with a front porch came into view. It must have been love at first sight, or something comparable to it. The house was undeniably old, of a type that would have been built during the Colonial period or shortly afterwards. It was neatly symmetrical, having a center door flanked on each side by two windows. The upper floor, really a big loft, had two matching dormers, and identical chimneys stood at both ends of the house.
Recollections of our first look at the inside are less precise. We came in the back entrance through a mud room, a tiny kitchen, a dining room with floral wallpaper, and then into the living room. This room really caught our attention. It was very dark, even at midday.
View of the long driveway. Two oaks remain of the original oak avenue can be seen on either side of the road. Photo credit: Eva Joseph, 2024.
Everything inside was a chestnut- colored wood, which we later learned was heart pine: floors, wall paneling, ceiling, doors, windows and fireplace woodwork. Visitors seeing it for the first time, often ask if it is a log cabin because the beaded horizontal paneling gives that impression. To the right was a smaller, almost identical room, and beyond that a remodeled bathroom and bedroom.
Up a narrow, dark and nearly vertical flight of stairs was the loft bedroom, which had been recently remodeled by the owners. The wide pine flooring and hand-hewn ceiling joists attractively framed the newly sheetrocked white walls and ceiling. Two dormers to the rear of the building, matching those in front, made the room look light and airy. The room had a way of eliciting a “Wow” or “Oh”, or sometimes the more restrained, “Nice” from a first time visitor. We surely had the same reaction. A bathroom and much smaller bedroom completed the loft floor.
We went out through the screened front porch to a side deck, where we were greeted by a friendly three-legged dog, apparently on good terms with the real estate saleswoman. As we walked around to the front we admired the very Southern look of the porch roof as it extended with a graceful curve to the several posts that supported it. It was easy to imagine four white pillars in place of the posts and screening, and perhaps, some wide wooden steps, leading to a front walkway. As I drive past the house today, fourteen years after our first visit, I do like the look of the white pillars—we never have restored the front steps.
Very little else of the old house has changed during this time period. Our first impression was that the house looked small. Period houses truly are small by today’s standards, and old houses, like ours tend to look downright tiny because they are surrounded by ancient, overgrown trees and shrubs. The north side of the house is protected from winter winds by a huge magnolia, said to be the largest in the county. The tree is decked with an amazing amount of plant life, beginning with resurrection fern on the lower, nearly horizontal branches and continuing upward with a vigorous growth, even in the winter, of wisteria, grapevine, Virginia creeper, Carolina jasmine, and Boston ivy.
Jacob Fox Gould House as it looked 1995. photo credit: Elizabeth Arndt
Early morning photo of the 5-acre field. Photo credit: Eva Joseph
Ornamental flowering plants planted by Mrs. Fawcett
White narcissus planted in bloom. Two rows planted each side of the path to the front steps. Eva Joseph 2022.
This chilly morning, within the generally bleak February palette of tans and grays, one could see patches of vivid color. Beneath the big magnolia, a row of camellia bushes are blooming madly, even as some flowers show petals burned by freezing temperatures. White, pink, red, mottled pink, and red and white spotted flowers can be seen on the bushes and more remarkably, hundreds of petals strewn on the ground. Other camellias in the garden give a similar appearance, including one the size of a small tree, with an untidy, but magical semicircle of spent blossoms. Clearly someone, probably many people, had cared for the house and its garden before it came into our hands.
A plowed field is visible just beyond a living fence of crepe myrtle, privet, and other bushes. The field looks beautiful, in the way a well plowed field should, with neat furrows of soil. It was as tidy as dirt could be. When you walk along the field, here and there you can see a scattering of brick and metal fragments and colorful pieces of old china, some with fanciful landscapes, brightly colored bands, or flowers, roses being a favorite… These were evidence of other buildings and their occupants during the 200 years’ existence of the farm.
About half of the field is usually planted in crops, with the remainder in grass for goat pasture. At the end of March we’ll plant vegetables and corn, sometimes several varieties, for both human and animal consumption. Out in the pasture, I can see the entire herd, kids, nannies and Sweet William, the billygoat. The kids have left the shelter of the crawl space under the corn crib, after the sun warmed up the field, and are leaping and chasing each other, as if playing tag. Three of the four kids have brown heads like Sweet William, and one is pure white like its mother. Another has very soft hair, and feels like an Angora, or what I think could be Angora.
The opposite side of the property is a partially logged forest tract of about ten acres. Sometime in the first winter we lived here, we blazed a trail through it just to take a look at our new domain. Winter is the ideal time for exploration in the Deep South. Not only are most of the trees and shrubs leafless so you can see where you’re going, but the usual outdoor varmints are absent, including snakes, spiders, mosquitoes, biting flies, red bugs and gnats. Our safari took us through a briar patch, which we learned was an old home site, then down what a neighbor referred to as the “old buggy road”. We crossed several drainage ditches and ended in a stand of handsome old pine trees, where we circled around and came back to the house. We decided to leave it a natural area, and it is home to a small herd of deer.
Over the years we’ve stripped away some of the vines and weedy undergrowth in the yard and have been rewarded by finding an amazing variety of trees and shrubs, not the least of which were nine varieties of camellias, and five of azaleas. Another discovery was the front walkway.
During our first winter, we were surprised to see a double row of narcissus, jonquil, spider lily, and daffodils sprouting up in a wide swath down the center of our front lawn, from the brick steps to the driveway. A little scraping here and there revealed a stone and concrete front walk bordered by bricked flower beds, all hidden by a thick carpet of grass.
After we bought the farm, we found out that local preservationists had discussed buying the old house and moving it to keep it from being torn down. In the 1960s, a local historian, Walter Hartridge, asked Clint Gould, the last of four generations of Goulds to live in the house, to write down what he remembered of his family history and childhood experiences. Gould responded with 20 some painstakingly typed pages and several hand drawn maps.
He wrote not only about the house and farm circa 1900, but the whole neighborhood, including many families up and down Little Neck Road, Quacco Road, Ogeechee Road, Fort Argyle Road, and Grove Point Road. Some of his maps showed the entire area, others just the immediate neighborhood in more detail. What was most important to us was his description and sketch of the old home as it looked during his childhood. We knew we had a treasure—now, with Clint Gould’s “The Old Gould Home at Bethel”, we had a treasure map.
But first, before we became involved with the Gould family, we came to know the Fawcett family, owners of the property since 1937—more than 50 years--before we acquired it from them in 1993. The young couple, Don and Susie Fawcett, who sold us the farm, had received it from Don’s grandmother, Georgia Fawcett, one of the early preservationists in Savannah. We knew that she had bought the dilapidated old farmhouse during the Great Depression, and had restored it over a period of more than thirty years.
Copy of the original real estate flyer for the "R.H. Gould Place" from the early 1990s.
It includes a wonderful pen and ink drawing of the farmhouse by Susie Fawcett's good friend, Tina Braswell Fripp.
Pink chestnut rose planted the south side of the front porch. Eva Joseph 2023.
Variety of Tung Oil tree blooming in early spring. Eva Joseph 2023.
Japonese Saucer Magnolia. Eva Joseph 2025..
Bloom from one of the many old variety camelia bushes. Eva Joseph 2022.
Formosa azalea bushes lining the driveway. Eva Joseph 2022.
Red rose on south side of the deck. Eva Joseph 2022.