51 
July, 1922 
indigenous, are characteristic outgrowths of 
the soil. 
But I started out not to wave the Star 
Spangled Banner for sycophantic critics but 
to give evidence of how one of our native vari¬ 
ations has kept its distinct qualities, positively 
flaunts its ancestry and personality while mak¬ 
ing itself at home at the other end of the con¬ 
tinent. 
It is so far a cry from New England to 
Georgia, that, architecturally one would say 
never the twain shall meet. But, should you 
chance, some spring morning, on a little town 
called Clinton on the high road from Macon 
to the old capitol of Georgia, Milledgeville,— 
should you turn down the narrow elm lined 
road where wistaria hangs purple festoons from 
tree to tree and lilacs blow their sweetness from 
every fence corner, while the cool sun of April 
dapples the prim white houses with faint tree 
shadows—should you look twice at the simple, 
graceful houses in their composed settings, you 
would forget the exotic red soil, condone the 
dilapidation and say convincedly, “New En¬ 
gland.” 
Clinton was settled the last part of the 18th 
Century by some enterprising New Englanders 
who came to make and sell cotton gins in 
Georgia. They transplanted to their new set¬ 
tlement just as much as was humanly possible 
of the atmosphere of the homes they had left 
behind. Their dwellings have the fineness, 
the restrained beauty and charming severity of 
the best New England designers and as these 
migrators prospered they put delicate furniture 
against the panelled walls or polychrome wall¬ 
papers of their “parlors”, they planted their 
prim gardens with old New England flowers 
and kept white their picket fence boundaries— 
recreated a bit of New England here in the 
far South. 
One gets here a breath of a cooler clime, a 
fainter fragrance than that pervading the sur¬ 
rounding country with its almost too colorful 
richness—red of soil, blue of sky, deep lush 
green of vegetation. These vignettes of New 
England set against the overgrown Southern 
background, have the wistful beauty of the 
stray vebenas one sometimes sees blown from 
some old fashioned garden to perpetuate them¬ 
selves in a forest clearing—out of place but 
with a subtler challenge for all that, a more in¬ 
dividual appeal than when hemmed behind 
white gates or clustered around Grandmother’s 
conch-shell borders. 
There are occasional examples elsewhere in 
Georgia, though none so perfect as Clinton, of 
the New Englander’s carrying with him to a 
distant home what he loved best and what most 
vividly expressed him in his architectural tra¬ 
ditions. Somehow in setting up his home he 
has always managed to make clear for “pry¬ 
ing historians of today,” the unmistakable 
qualities of the Puritan builder—the serious 
restrained outlook on the “carefully ordered 
days of this uncertain life”, the ascetic dignity, 
the poise and precision. A sampler from one 
of these old houses preserves some of the flavor 
of his philosophy. Its simple burden is this: 
“Seize, Mortals, seize the present hour, 
Improve each Moment as it flies; 
Life’s a short Summer, Man a Flower, 
He dies, alas how soon he dies.” 
.4 house in Milledgeville , showing 
a delicately designed doorway in 
the manner of the Greek revival 
and an unusually good balcony 
This house in Clinton is interesting for 
its two story porches of super-imposed 
orders, delicate cornice and steps of old 
millstones 
It is thought that the same architect 
built both this and the house shown 
opposite. Both have the steep New 
England roof 
