Thomasville, Georgia
In his later years, Oliver Hazard Payne maintained a winter
home in Thomasville, Georgia, a town that gained a
reputation for winter retreats for hunting and fishing for
many of the barons of the gilded age, including John D.
Archbold of Standard Oil and Harry Davidson of the Morgan
group who spent a year recuperating in 1920 at Magnolia
Plantation, his estate in Thomasville. Colonel Payne willed
his Thomasville property to Payne Whitney, one of his
favorite nephews. Later it became the property of John Hay
Whitney, the son of Payne Whitney and Helen Hay Whitney.
Greenwood Plantation
Visitors chat in front of Greenwood
Plantation's restored main house during the unveiling in
1997. The photograph in the foreground shows the house
burning down from an electrical fire in 1993. (AP Photo
Associated Press)
THOMASVILLE -- The lime-hued mansion that has hosted
President Eisenhower and Jacqueline Kennedy among its
guests has been restored to antebellum artistry.
The Greenwood Plantation, one of the best-known homes of
the region before a 1993 fire ravaged it, now has a








brandnew
exterior. Even the
magnolia blossom
adorning the top
has more pluck.
"This is almost
precisely what it
~
was," said Terry
Blanchard,
1
business manager
for the family that
owns Greenwood.
Greenwood was
•
built as the center
~
1..,..
'
of a cotton
plantation around
1835-40 and
acquired in 1899
as a hunting
estate by Col.
Oliver Hazard
Payne. The family
of one of his
descendants,
John Hay Whitney, has had the house for almost 100 years.
An electrical fire gutted the historic mansion in April 1993,
shortly after the house had been redecorated.
"People were stunned," said Kate Whitney. "You felt like a
piece of your heart had been burned."
"What you see now is a first-class job, a blue-ribbon job,"
she said when the house was unveiled last month.


The Whitney family announced plans last year to rebuild the
mansion's roof and outer walls. The project developed after
consultation with the Georgia Trust for Historic Preservation.
Henry H. Lewis Contractors Inc. of Baltimore -- the company
that worked on Thomas Jefferson's Monticello estate -- took
charge of the exterior preservation. Bracey Lumber Co. of
Thomas County completed the mill work, a complicated task
that involved careful analysis of drawings of the home to get
accurate measurements for century-old beams.
The inside of the famous plantation still shows scars of the
1993 fire, but no decision has been made yet on restoring
the inside.
"You can't tell anything has ever happened to the house,"
said Thomasville Mayor Camille Payne. "It will give locals so
much satisfaction to know something of so much beauty has
been restored."
Key dates in the history of Greenwood Plantation, located
near Thomasville in south Georgia:
• 1835-40, builder Tom Jones completes construction of
the cotton plantation's Greek Revival mansion
• 1899, Col. Oliver Hazard Payne buys Greenwood as a
hunting estate
• 1950s, President Eisenhower visits on a hunting trip as a
guest of John Hay Whitney, a descendant of Payne who
served as ambassador to Great Britain in the Eisenhower
administration
• 1963, Jacqueline Kennedy spends a week in seclusion at
the house following the assassination of her husband,
President Kennedy
• 1993, fire guts the historic house
• 1996, restoration project begins






• 1997, restored exterior unveiled
• 2002, Nature Conservancy awarded management
The Nature Conservancy and Greenwood Plantation
The Nature Conservancy in July 2002 was awarded
management of the historic Greenwood Plantation in
Georgia. The 5,200-acre plantation is one of the most
ecologically significant privately-held properties in the
southeastern U.S. due to an extensive collection of unspoiled
old-growth longleaf pine.
• Size:
5,200 acres
• Location:
Thomas County, Georgia
• Animal Species:
Red-cockaded woodpecker, pine snake,
gopher tortoise, Bachman's sparrow
• Plant Species:
wire-leaf dropseed, yellow fringeless,
snowy orchids, Turk's cap lilies
Ecological Importance:
Located
in southwest Georgia's Red Hills,
the Greenwood Plantation contains
a 1,000-acre old-growth section of
longleaf pine known as the "Big
Woods," with trees ranging in age
from 200 to 500 years old. Once
covering more than 90 million acres across the Southeast,
less than 3 percent;of the original longleaf pine forests
remain. This ecosystem support a diverse range of globally
imperiled species. The plantation also contains river frontage
along the Ochlockonee River, river slope forests, a longleaf
pine sandhill, and ponds and fields. (Pictured above: Gopher
tortoise.)
History:
Oliver Hazard Payne purchased the property in
1899, and left the Plantation to his nephew, "Plain" Payne








Whitney. When the latter died in 1927, the estate passed to
his widow, Helen Hay, daughter of the Lincoln biographer,
John Hay. Her son, John Hay Whitney, inherited Greenwood
Plantation in 1944 and worked with pioneering foresters Ed
and Roy Komarek, Herbert Stoddard and Leon Neel to
manage the forest while preserving the integrity of the
ecosystem. Their techniques of prescribed burning and
sustainable forestry resulted in the special character and
ecological value of this property today. John Whitney's wife,
Betsey, donated the property u pan her death in 1998 to the
Greentree Foundation, which Mrs. Whitney established in
1982 after the death of her husband.
Partners : The New York-based
Greentree Foundation supports
charitable, educational and
scientific programs. Pictured at
right: Longleaf pine with blazing
star flowers.
Plans: Through an adaptive
management plan developed with the Greentree Foundation,
The Nature Conservancy will work to conserve and protect
Greenwood as the highest quality example of a longleaf pine
wiregrass ecosystem in the Red Hills and the East Gulf
Coastal Plain Ecoregion. After one year, the Foundation
expects to transfer title to the Conservancy
References:
The above information is taken from two websites about Thomasville:
www.rose.net
and
www.thomasvillega.net
Information about Greenwood taken from websource:
www.athensnewspapers.com/1997 /110497 /1104.a2mansion. html
Info about Nature Conservancy role may be found on the website
http ://nature.org/success/greenwood/html/
original draft: 6 March 2003; revised and reformated 16-20 January 2011