Smithonia is an

unincorporated community An unincorporated area is a region that is not governed by a local municipal corporation. Widespread unincorporated communities and areas are a distinguishing feature of the United States and Canada. Most other countries of the world either have ...

Oglethorpe County, Georgia Oglethorpe County is a county located in the northeastern part of the U.S. state of Georgia. As of the 2020 census, the population was 14,825. The county seat is Lexington. Oglethorpe County is included in the Athens-Clarke County, GA Metro ...

, United States, at the intersection of Crawford-Smithonia and Smithonia Roads. It is also the name of a historical plantation listed on the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic v ...

in 1984. Smithonia is reported in the database of the NRHP as the nearest community to

Howard's Covered Bridge Howard's Covered Bridge is a historic covered bridge outside of Smithonia in Oglethorpe County, Georgia, United States. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places on July 1, 1975. The bridge is located 3 miles southeast of Smithonia ...

, three miles away. The nearest city is Comer. Smithonia, near

Athens Athens ( ; el, Αθήνα, Athína ; grc, Ἀθῆναι, Athênai (pl.) ) is both the capital and largest city of Greece. With a population close to four million, it is also the seventh largest city in the European Union. Athens dominates ...

, was founded and named by

Georgia State Senator The Georgia State Senate is the upper house of the Georgia General Assembly, in the U.S. state of Georgia. Legal provisions The Georgia State Senate is the upper house of the Georgia General Assembly, with the lower house being the Georgia Ho ...

James Monroe Smith James Monroe Smith may refer to: * James Monroe Smith (Georgia planter) (1839–1915), planter and state legislator in Georgia * James Monroe Smith (academic administrator) (1888–1949), American educator and academic administrator in Louisiana * J ...

. The once small farm became the state's largest plantation.

History

The land was part of Georgia agricultural tycoon and state legislator Smith's property holdings. It was built in 1866 in a " Plantation Plain" architectural style. The Smith and Dunlap Railroad connected the property with the

Georgia Railroad Georgia most commonly refers to: * Georgia (country), a country in the Caucasus region of Eurasia * Georgia (U.S. state), a state in the Southeast United States Georgia may also refer to: Places Historical states and entities * Related to the ...

at Dunlap, Georgia. The rail line was also used to construct

. James M. Smith held hundreds of debt slaves on a farm that stretched thirty miles from the town he named after himself. He became a major buyer of convicts soon after Georgia's

Reconstruction Reconstruction may refer to: Politics, history, and sociology *Reconstruction (law), the transfer of a company's (or several companies') business to a new company *'' Perestroika'' (Russian for "reconstruction"), a late 20th century Soviet Unio ...

government was toppled by a campaign of voter fraud and

Ku Klux Klan The Ku Klux Klan (), commonly shortened to the KKK or the Klan, is an American white supremacist, right-wing terrorist, and hate group whose primary targets are African Americans, Jews, Latinos, Asian Americans, Native Americans, and ...

violence. For workers he relied on an army of convict slaves, including many

African Americans African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans and Afro-Americans) are an ethnic group consisting of Americans with partial or total ancestry from sub-Saharan Africa. The term "African American" generally denotes descendants of ens ...

he had owned before the war or their descendants. In the post-Civil War economy, Smith used the labor of the debt and convict slaves to grow a small farm into the state's largest plantation. If workers tried to flee, Smith relied on deputy sheriffs to recapture them and his own overseers to inflict brutal punishments. "They had dogs to trail them with so they always got caught, and then the whipping boss beat them almost to death," John Hill said. "It was awful to hear them hollering and begging for mercy. If they hollered 'Lord have mercy!' Marse Jim didn't hear them, but if they cried, "Marse Jim have mercy!' then he made them stop the beating. He say, 'The Lord rule Heaven, but Jim Smith ruled the earth.'"Blackmon, D. A. (2008).

Slavery By Another Name ''Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II'' is a book by American writer Douglas A. Blackmon, published by Anchor Books in 2008. It explores the forced labor of prisoners, overwhelmingl ...

, New York: Anchor Books.

References

{{authority control Historic districts on the National Register of Historic Places in Georgia (U.S. state) National Register of Historic Places in Oglethorpe County, Georgia Unincorporated communities in Oglethorpe County, Georgia Unincorporated communities in Georgia (U.S. state) Plantations in Georgia (U.S. state)