Turnwold Plantation

Putnam County · dedicated 1955 · Located on Old Phoenix Road north of Sparta Highway (Georgia Route 16) near Eatonton.

Here, from 1862 to 1866, Joel Chandler Harris, author of "Uncle Remus", lived and worked as a printer's apprentice on what was probably the only newspaper ever printed on a Southern plantation, "The Countryman," a weekly newspaper edited and published by Joseph Addison Turner, owner of "Turnwold." Mr. Turner, planter, lawyer, scholar and writer, encouraged his youthful apprentice in writing and the use of the large plantation library. In the slave quarters, the boy Harris heard African animal legends and the true Negro folklore of the old South, which he immortalized in his "Uncle Remus" stories.

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David Rumsey Map Collection, Stanford Libraries

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Turnwold Plantation

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