GA -- Plains -- Jimmy Carter NHS:
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- Specific picture descriptions: Photos above with "i" icons next to the bracketed sequence numbers (e.g. "[1] ") are described as follows:
- JC_030828_002.JPG: The train depot was Jimmy's campaign headquarters during the 1976 elections.
- JC_030828_006.JPG: Billy's service station is still across the street although it's privately owned.
- JC_030828_038.JPG: You'll see the outhouse again later. It's a two-seater with corn cobs as toilet paper. I never really understood two-seaters. You have the door for privacy but in a two-seater, you're sitting directly next to someone else without any barriers at all.
- JC_030828_045.JPG: Here's the main house. Two signs:
The Earl and Lillian Carter Home
James Earl Carter Sr and his family moved into this middle-class rural dwelling as its second owners in 1928, six years after the home had been built. Heating was accomplished by fireplaces and wood stoves. Initially, there was no running water and electricity was unavailable until 1938. Earl Carter sold the farm to TR Downer in 1949. The Downer family owned the property until 1994 when the National Park Service purchased it. The home is restored to its 1930's appearance before it had electricity. Earl and Lillian Carter and their four children Jimmy, Gloria, Ruth, and Billy lived here.
Jimmy Carter Slept Here
"Our lives then were centered almost completely around our own family and our own home..." -- Jimmy Carter, 1975, "Why Not The Best?"
This is the homeplace -- "hot in the summer and cold in the winter" -- of a Georgia farmboy who would someday sleep in the White House. Here young Jimmy Carter ran, dodging dogs, chickens, geese, and guinea fowl. The yard was swept white sand, weeded clean to keep snakes and bugs away from the house. Behind you, a woodpile stacked high with hickory, oak, and pine for the fireplaces and kitchen stove took up much of the back yard. A chinaberry tree near the house held a treehouse where Jimmy played.
As you step into the back porch, listen for the echoes of his father, "Mr Earl" Carter, hurrying out on some farm business, and his mother, "Miss Lillian," banging on the screen door on her way to help someone with her nursing skills. You'd have found the back door unlocked.
- JC_030828_046.JPG: Winds of Change.
Purchased from a catalog in 1935 for about $100, a steel woodmill like the one reconstructed here provided the Carters a welcome reprieve from the drudgery of pumping water for both the family and livestock by hand.
Windpower drew water from a deep well as raised it to the wooden tank on the tower. Pressure from that tank made it possible, for the first time, to have running water inside the house, supplying the new conveniences of lavatory, commode, and a cold shower.
Experiences here on the farm and in the nuclear navy gave Jimmy Carter insights about energy resources not dependent on oil.
- JC_030828_052.JPG: Kitchen. Much of the food in this home was produced in the Carters' fields, garden, pasture, and yard. Cooking and canning using the wood cookstove made meal preparation an extensive process. The heat from the woodstove added warmth to the home during the cold winters but was not as welcome in the hot summer. As a nurse, "Miss Lillian" was a strong advocate of eating well to stay healthy. Archery neighbors who visited the Carter home fondly remember Miss Lillian making sure they left with a plate of food because she did not want anyone to be hungry.
- JC_030828_053.JPG: Jimmy's Bedroom. Like most boys, Jimmy enjoyed spending much of his time outdoors. His bedroom, however, was the place where he kept many of his collected treasures. Postcards, letters, and souvenirs sent to him by his Uncle Tom Gordy, who was in the navy, sparked dreams of far away places, the ocean, and a future naval career. Lillian Carter instilled a love of reading in her children, which is evident by the books in her son's room and throughout the house.
- JC_030828_057.JPG: Bathroom. Finally getting an indoor bathroom was a big event in the Carter family. No one complained about bathing in the cold shower with water coming directly from the tank on the windmill. An even greater blessing was not having to walk outside and across the yard to go to the outhouse. Notice the unique showerhead -- a bucket with holes in the bottom! The faucet on the pipe controlled the flow of water to the shower.
- JC_030828_062.JPG: Dining Room: This formal eating area was used for Sunday dinners, holidays, and when there was company. The closets were filled with toys, books, linens, and dishes. Sometimes the children would lay their schoolbooks on the table and use this room for doing their homework. Lillian Carter was not the seamstress of the family; her daughter Gloria sewed when she was in high school. Occasionally, the Carters would entertain and the table would be pushed back to allow room for dancing.
- JC_030828_066.JPG: Breakfast Room: The family enjoyed most of their meals in this less formal eating area. Blocks of ice for the icebox were delivered from town regularly to help preserve perishable items. Family meals were usually very quiet. Miss Lillian encouraged her family to read, even at mealtimes, so you would have seen the children at the table engrossed in books and magazines.
- JC_030828_074.JPG: Earl and Lillian's Bedroom: Although this is South Georgia, the cold days were remembered more vividly than the hot summer times. This room was the only place where the Carters tried to keep a fire going full-time in the winter. Earl would build up the flame before he left for work in the dark morning hours. The children with goose pimples on their bodies and toes curled up on the icy floors would rush in here on cold mornings to put on their clothes for school. Billy, born in 1937 and the youngest of the children, stayed in this room with his parents until he could occupy his older brother's room after he left to attend college. The young girl in the photograph is "Miss Lillian" at age 15.
- JC_030828_085.JPG: Gloria and Ruth's Bedroom: Jimmy's two sisters shared this bedroom. For birthdays and other special occasions, they had sleepover company. After falling asleep, guests would awaken and sometimes go into hysterics when the train came by the front of the home about 2 o'clock every morning. It sounded terrible, as though the train was coming right through the house. The Carters were accustomed to the train passing and usually slept right through all the noise. Sometimes the girls would slip out the front window and sit on the front door step and talk.
- JC_030828_094.JPG: Living Room: Coming in this room from school each day, the children first stopped by the black desk, which they had nicknamed "Mother." Their mother's nursing career kept her frequently away from home. She would write down chores for the children and leave their "to do" list on the desk. The family gathered in this room following the evening meal. Earl Carter prepared his Sunday school lesson and read the newspaper by oil lamp. When he got out of his favorite chair, the children were quick to check his chair for change that might have slipped out of his pockets.
- JC_030828_097.JPG: Front porch. The railroad line was just across the street, maybe 50 feet from here.
- JC_030828_122.JPG: Among other business ventures, his dad had a small country store set up next to the house. This is it, complete with gas pump. The windmill, with the water storage container that would be used for family showers, is directly behind it.
- JC_030828_145.JPG: The work barn
- JC_030828_153.JPG: Next-door Neighbors
"The nearest house to ours, between the barn and the main road, was the home of a special family. Jack Clark was in charge of the barn, the mules and horses, the equipment and harness, and rarely worked in the field... For me and the other boys... he seemed to be in charge of everything.
"His wife Rachel was also special... There was something about her character and demeanor that set her apart... Her skill as field worker, hoeing, picking cotton, or shaking peanuts was legend... Rachel was the one who took me fishing... and taught me... the names of trees and wildflowers, the habits of animals, how to avoid getting lost in the woods and swamps...
"Whenever both my mother and father were away from home, I stayed with Jack and Rachel. Perhaps because of this, I felt at ease in the homes of the other black families in the neighborhood. My childhood was really theirs." -- Jimmy Carter, 1999.
The Clark home originally sat in the curve of the highway to your right. Road work in the 1960's moved the house here. Just up the road was the whistle-stop community of Archery, consisting mostly of African-American families. Some of the people who lived there were employed by Earl Carter to work on his farm.
- JC_030828_156.JPG: Catch the Mules.
"During the... season all the workers arose each morning at 4:00 am..., wakened by the ringing of a large farm bell. We would go to the barn and catch the mules by lantern light, put the plow stocks, seed, fertilizer, and other supplies on the wagons, and drive out to the field where we would be working that day... and wait for it to be light enough to cultivate..." -- Jimmy Carter, 1975, "Why Not the Best?" ...
Before World War II, mules -- not a gasoline-driven tractor -- provided the "horsepower" needed to farm in south Georgia.
- JC_030828_168.JPG: Here's the outside of the work barn
- Wikipedia Description: Jimmy Carter National Historic Site
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Jimmy Carter National Historic Site, located in Plains, Georgia, preserves sites associated with James Earl "Jimmy" Carter, Jr. (1924 - present), 39th President of the United States. These include his residence, boyhood farm, school, and the town railroad depot, which served as his campaign headquarters during the 1976 election. The building which used to be Plains High School (which closed in 1979) serves as the park’s museum and visitor center. As President Carter lives in Plains, the area surrounding the residence is under the protection of the Secret Service and the home is not open to the public.
The Carters returned to Plains in January 1981. The former President and First Lady Rosalynn Carter pursue many of the goals of his administration through the Carter Center in Atlanta, which has programs to alleviate human suffering and to promote human rights and world peace. When they are in Plains, Carter teaches Sunday school at Maranatha Baptist Church, which is open to the public.
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