Local Home Listed in National Register

The Pope-Talmadge House, located on Calvin Road in Jasper County was listed in the National Register of Historic Places on July 8, 2009. The property owner sponsored the nomination and prepared the nomination materials.

Charles Weymon Pope (1851-1920), a prosperous farmer and landowner in Jasper County, constructed the Pope-Talmadge House circa 1883. As documented in the 1900 U.S. Census, Charles Pope, his wife, Mary Elizabeth Hunter Pope, and their nine children lived on the property. After Mary Pope’s death in 1940, their daughter, Sallie Pauline Pope Talmadge, inherited the house and approximately 30 acres. Sallie and her husband, Burton Lagare Talmadge, lived in the house and farmed the property until 1972, when their daughter, Margaret Elizabeth Talmadge, inherited the house and approximately 15 acres of land. The property is now owned by Margaret Talmadge’s grandniece.

The Pope-Talmadge House is significant in the area of architecture as a good example of a circa 1883 one-story, frame Georgian cottage. According to Georgia’s Living Places: Historic Houses in Their Landscaped Settings, the Georgian cottage is the most popular and long-lived house type in Georgia, with the greatest concentration of this house type built between 1850 and 1890. The Georgian cottage floor plan is characterized by a central hallway with two rooms on either side.
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The Pope-Talmadge House retains its character-defining floor plan and its historic materials including the wood floors, ceilings, mantels, plaster and beadboard walls, wood door and window surrounds, and moldings. The central hall and front two rooms retain their flushboard walls. To the rear of the house is an ell attached by a partially enclosed breezeway. The ell may possibly predate the house but there is no firm historical or architectural evidence to support this. The ell now houses the kitchen and dining room.

Changes include adding bathrooms to the rear rooms in the house and adding drywall and modern finishes to the rooms in the rear ell. There are three noncontributing outbuildings on the property: a pump house built in 2001, and a smokehouse and corncrib that were recently rebuilt using a majority of new materials. The property is informally landscaped with mature trees and shrubs and is located in a rural setting.

The Historic Preservation Division (HPD) of the Georgia Department of Natural Resources serves as Georgia’s state historic preservation office. Its mission is to promote the preservation and use of historic places for a better Georgia. HPD’s programs include archaeology protection and education, environmental review, grants, historic resource surveys, tax incentives, the National Register of Historic Places, community planning and technical assistance.

The mission of the Department of Natural Resources is to sustain, enhance, protect and conserve Georgia’s natural, historic and cultural resources for present and future generations, while recognizing the importance of promoting the development of commerce and industry that utilize sound environmental practices.