Home / Academics / Division of Social and Behavioral Sciences /

The Historic Village at Brewton-Parker College

Cooper-Conner House, Historic Barn and Berry Thompson House

        There are two anchors for the Brewton-Parker College Historic Village: the Cooper-Conner House (1798), and the Berry Thompson House (1842). Both houses were local landmarks and the family homes of large and influential families in Montgomery, Toombs, and Tattnall counties. The Cooper-Conner House was built with the expansion of the Georgia frontier at the conclusion of the American Revolution, when the patent system of colonial government was no longer applicable, and the Berry Thompson House was built forty years later, when the State of Georgia held a land lottery.

The Cooper-Conner House

       The Cooper-Conner House now located on the Brewton-Parker College campus was built in 1798 by Revolutionary War soldier Richard Cooper (1758-1834) for his son, George Cooper on land that had been officially made part of Georgia (in Montgomery County) in 1793.  Richard Cooper himself lived in Tattnall County on the Ohoopee River,near its junction with the Altamaha, settling in expanded Georgia as a result of his war bounty, building his house on the frontier. George Cooper (1783-1862) farmed and occupied the house until 1838, when he sold it to his brother-in-law, Thomas Benton Conner (1798-1886), who occupied the house until his death, and willed it to his wife,then heirs, and left also “my large pot and sugar boiler.” The house passed to a female child of Thomas B. Conner and remained in her family until its donation in 1991 to Brewton-Parker College.  The house had been known locally both as the Cooper-Conner House and the Indian House (due to peep holes in the outer walls designed to allow inhabitants to look for approaching American Indians). The College acquired not only the house itself, but also many of the artifacts of the house, including Thomas B. Conner’s“large pot and sugar boiler,” and moved the house, which was in disrepair, to its own campus in Mount Vernon, Georgia. The furnishings in the house date from between the date of its construction (1798) and the date at which the last head of household lived in the house full-time (1913).  The original location of the house had been near Old River Rd.in unincorporated Montgomery County, approximately eight miles from the Brewton-Parker College campus. The house’s location had itself changed prior to its move, as the river it has been on changed its course and came to be known as the Dead River. Upon the move of the house, some interpolated structures were removed (enclosures that had been recent additions to allow renting the house to tenants), and it has been restored extensively in the years between the move and the present. Further, a log house built around 1880 and formerly across the Oconee River from the Cooper-Conner House was moved to an adjacent lot.The Cooper-Conner House has within it many historically significant items. Since the house was built in 1798 and occupied by a planting family until 1913, artifacts made and in use in the 19th century have been accepted and added to the house. These include a hand-spun and woven coverlet from 1857, kitchen chairs with hide bottoms used for wagons as well as inside the house, a bench from the Dead River Meeting House (a church in Long Pond, GA), hewn and assembled around 1860, a large black pot from around 1836, a yarn “weasel” for measuring yarn, from the early 1800’s, a feather mattress from 1880, a 19th century alkaline, glazed, Edgefield bowl made by slaves at the Herlong plantation

near Edgefield, South Carolina, and a palmetto broom, made of indigenous plants and commonly in use in south Georgia. Additionally, the house has Thomas B. Conner’s prized“large pot and sugar boiler” that he bequeathed by name to his wife.

The Berry Thompson House

       Berry C. Thompson, Sr. (1822-1901) moved to Georgia as the state’s frontier expanded in the 1790’s, at the same time that George Cooper was establishing his house, and the Berry Thompson House is the house that he built when he set out on his own. Berry was a first generation Georgian of this frontier and a successful trader in real estate, as well as a grist miller. Thompson’s land holdings at their height were vast, including the entirety of many contemporary communities, extending in a roughly contiguous strip three and four miles from his house in some cases. His house is modest and practical, and it remained solely in his family from his own day to the time of its donation and transportation to Brewton-Parker College.The Berry Thompson House has been structurally altered more thoroughly than the Cooper-Conner House had. The house had served for a time as a school and was located near the North Thompson Pond community. Therefore Brewton-Parker College has, since acquisition and translation,

devoted more attention to restoration than artifact acquisition. However, within the Berry Thompson are a number of furnishings made by Thompson himself. Thompson was a furniture maker, as well as trader and miller, and the house contains a chair he made in the 1870’s, a cast iron pot made in Kentucky in 1865, and hand made wooden serving bowls.

The Historic Village Today

           Today, the Brewton-Parker College Historic Village has accomplished its first duty of preservation and renovation, and the buildings of the Historic Village have been arranged in a bucolic setting on the Brewton-Parker campus. The site is available for students and visitors and provides an unique insight into Georgia’s past.