On March 17th, the Episcopal Churchwomen of Christ Church Frederica will welcome visitors to St. Simons and Sea Islands for their 65th Annual Tour of Homes. Eight private homes, four on Sea Island and four on St. Simons Island, and six historical stops comprise this year’s tour. As always, tour proceeds are devoted to area charities, primarily those geared to women and children in need.
Tour headquarters will be located in the Parish House adjacent to Christ Church, designated as Tour Stop #8, where visitors can enjoy music, and light refreshments made from recipes in Christ Church’s popular cookbook. The church itself and the Wesley Memorial Gardens are Tour Stop #9. “Christ Church is one of the most historic parishes in the state of Georgia,” said Rev. Tom Purdy, Rector of Christ Church Frederica. “Our roots trace to the Wesley brothers, who offered Anglican prayers here in the new colony when General Oglethorpe established an English fort next to where the church stands today.”
Tour hours will be from 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., except for Musgrove Retreat and Conference Center, which will only be accessible until 1:00p.m. Transportation to the Sea Island homes will be by bus from Gascoigne Bluff (according to designated ticket times) only. The last bus will leave Gascoigne at 3:00 p.m.
Golden Isles TV prepared a special promotion for this year’s tour, entitled “Touring Through the Ages: Early Days & Modern Ways,” which can be found on YouTube. In that video, Longtime ECW members Angie Burns and ZoAnn Covington discussed their experience working the tour since its initial years, when it came to life as a home and garden tour. ZoAnn participated as a youth group member in high school at the very first tour in 1953. She recalls acting as a guide and sitting in the backseat of the car and directing people to the homes. ZoAnn left for college, but when she returned in 1960, she returned as a volunteer on the tour, working at various homes and tour stops such as Musgrove, which has been on the tour since its inception. Angie moved to St. Simons Island in 1954 and began working on the tour approximately a year after marrying ZoAnn’s brother in 1955. Angie says although the tour was much smaller in those days, being made up of mostly locals, it was still a very exciting time because during those years there wasn’t all the entertainment around that there is now. Because they knew most people that came on the tour, it was a major social event.
Angie recalls how everyone from the church participated as volunteers, with most husbands taking on parking duties, in order to make the tour happen. While Christ Church was much smaller in those days, Avery Brooks shares that more than 400 volunteers are involved with the tour today. It truly takes a village! Angie says, “We were helping, and all the money, even back then, went to charities, and so it was a really good thing for our church to do. It made you really proud to be a part of it.”
The tour has certainly evolved from those early days when they sold boxed lunches for $4 on the Parish House lawn, but the mission to give back to the community remains the same. This year, some history has been added to the tour as well, with the inclusion of Cassina Garden Club’s tabby slave cabins located at Gascoigne Bluff (Tour Stop #10) and the recently restored historic Harrington School House (Tour Stop #6).
Of the long row of cabins built near the Hamilton Plantation main house during the early 1830s, only two of the tabby buildings that likely housed slave families remain today. Cassina Garden Club was deeded the property by the county in 1950 and has just completed a historically correct restoration of the cabins, one as it was in the early 1830s when it was constructed and the other as it was during the “Mill Days” of the 1870s to the 1920s. Not surprisingly, this beautiful property was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1988 by the U.S. Department of the Interior.
The Historic Harrington School House, formerly known as the Harrington Graded School, was built in the 1920s and served as the main educational structure for three African American communities on St. Simons Island and was also an important community gathering place. It hosted grades 1-7 until desegregation in the 1960s when students left to attend St. Simons Elementary.. In 1968 it was converted to a day care center and used for this purpose until 1970. It was largely abandoned after that and sat unused for decades. To preserve the one-room historic Harrington School House, Mrs. Isadore Hunter donated her portion of heirs property land to the St. Simons Land Trust and Glynn County in 2004. Since 2004 the St. Simons African American Heritage Coalition, in partnership with The St. Simons Land Trust, has been active in the fundraising, restoration planning, management and operations of the School. The actual restoration of the School began in 2010 with an overall restoration cost of $325,000. The School officially re-opened with a ribbon cutting in August of 2017.
These historic stops also include St. Ignatius Church (Tour Stop #1), a Church built by Anson Dodge in 1886, as a Mission of Christ Church, Frederica, for the African-Americans living on Saint Simons Island; Musgrove Retreat and Conference Center (Tour Stop #7), a picturesque hidden sanctuary, under the stewardship of The Brenn Foundation, located on the banks of Village Creek, and is rich with history from its construction in 1938 by Nancy Reynolds Bagley, daughter and heiress to the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco fortune to President Carter’s first pre-inaugural cabinet meeting; and Christ Church, the Parish Hall, and Wesley Memorial Gardens.
Private home tour stops on St. Simons Island this year include a gorgeous oceanfront home that is making its second appearance on the tour, two homes—the “Enchanted Cottage” featuring nautical themes and some splash artwork, and a recently finished contemporary home with Asian touches throughout the décor—on East Beach, and the new guest house of a Sea Palms West home overlooking Dunbar Creek that has previously been featured on the tour twice. There are also three breathtaking homes on Sea Island and one in Ocean Forest. Impeccable design, unique details, and fabulous views are hallmarks of all and every one is a must-see!
Tickets will be available at the Christ Church Parish House and Gascoigne Bluff on Tour Day for $50 and can be purchased in advance for $40 at the following local outlets beginning March 1: Antiques, Etc., Christ Church, Cloister Collection, H & H Lifestyles, Jekyll Realty, Maggie's Boutique, Ned Cash & Associates Jewelers, Roberta's, St. Simons Drug Co., The Tabby House, and Viola's Market, or on the website at christchurchtourofhomes.org. Tour of Homes sponsors are Deloach Sotheby’s International Realty, Golden Isles TV, and The Coastal Bank of Georgia – Synovus.
Join the tour that has been enchanting locals and visitors alike since 1953 and see why this wonderful community event continues to thrive through the ages. For more information, about the tour and detailed tour stop descriptions, visit christchurchtourofhomes.org.
