Birdsville Plantation

At Birdsville Plantation, visitors and caretakers describe children's laughter at night and doors that open and close on their own. Birdsville Plantation near Millen is one of the few colonial-era houses still standing in Georgia's interior, a two-story house begun around 1789 by the Jones family and enlarged in 1847 by Henry Philip Jones with Greek Revival and Italianate additions, including an inset portico with Corinthian columns. Like other plantations of its era, it depended on the labor of the enslaved people who built and worked it. Local accounts say it survived Sherman's March to the Sea when Union soldiers who found freshly dug graves of twin children are said to have spared the house. The 50-acre property was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1971 and still has its original outbuildings.