Existing comment:
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. |