One of the joys each spring for local history lovers is the annual tour of homes, churches and other places sponsored by the Beech Island (S.C.) Historical Society.
The society’s 15th annual tour will be held 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday, April 29, featuring “14 historic and unusual places to visit.”
Prices for the self-guided tour are $25 for adults ($20 in advance) and $20 for seniors ($15 in advance). Children younger than 18 are free.
You also can have a chicken or pork barbecue lunch from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. for $15.
Advance tickets are at: Beech Island Appliance Service, 1516 Sand Bar Ferry Road; Historic Augusta, 415 Seventh St., Augusta; North Augusta Arts & Heritage Center, 100 Georgia Ave.; Jackson, S.C., Municipal Complex, 106 Main St.; Aiken County Parks, Recreation & Tourism Center, 133 Laurens St. NW, Aiken.
For more information, call Society President Jackie Bartley at (706) 833-3651 or email bdbartley@comcast.net or visit beechislandhistoricalsociety.com.
Places on the tour outlined in the society’s free brochure will be:
- Carolina Farms with its 1850s farm home and its wide variety of animals including goats, sheep, Emus, horses, chickens, turkeys, guineas, pigs, ducks, rabbits, peacocks and a milk cow.
- Trusty Farms plant nursery where, according to the society, “Ryan Trusty grows a wide variety of unusual food-bearing, flowering perennials, carnivores, and tropical and aquatic plants.”
- Boondock Farms, an agri-tourism farm where Jarett and Laura Acosta sell homemade jams, jellies and tomato pies as well as handmade candles.
- Jenks and Gloria Farmers’ old-school cottage garden where Jenks raises fields of beautiful pink crinum lilies.
- Also Redcliffe Plantation; First Baptist Church of Beech Island; Silver Bluff Baptist Church; the Beech Island Historical Society’s History & Visitors Center, Country Store and Agricultural Museum; Hammond and Zubly cemeteries; a 1737 Swiss settler’s archaeological site and the Silver Bluff Audubon Center and Sanctuary and Risher Cabin.
The tour is the society’s major annual fund raiser. Volunteers are needed to help with the barbecue lunch and serve as guides and ticket punchers at the stops. Call or email President Bartley if you are interested.
The society was organized in March of 1985 to preserve, protect and promote the area’s 300-plus years history dating before when America became America.
It meets every third Tuesday of each month at 7:30 p.m. September through March in its old building at 144 Old Jackson Highway just off Sand Bar Ferry Road near the Crossroads Café.
Don Rhodes has been a by-line journalist since 1963 writing for his Chamblee, Ga., High School newspaper and two weeklies in Decatur. He has worked for Morris Communications Co. since joining the Savannah Evening Press in March of 1967. He also has authored four national books, four regional books, national magazine articles and album notes for several music artists.
