The Bacon-Fraser House
Hinesville, Liberty County, Georgia
Marker Inscription
The Bacon-Fraser House. The Bacon-Fraser House was built on a 23 acre tract situated on the eastern boundary of the town of Hinesville in 1839 by Mary Jane Bacon, widow of Major John Bacon. The house has been owned and lived in by their heirs until the present time. The architecture is "plantation plain style" and its workmanship reflects the work of the best craftsmen of the day. The front and two-story section remains virtually unchanged. However, the two shed rooms and kitchen to the rear were removed and additional rooms added in 1923. The 1923 section was removed in 1979-1980 and replaced by shed rooms, porch, dining room and kitchen on the original foundation in the architectural style and interior design of the 1839 era. A detachment of Sherman's army assaulted the plantation in December in 1864, pillaging, looting and burning. The house was spared the torch, but the barn and all outbuildings were burned by the Northern troops. ERECTED 1996 BY THE LIBERTY COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY
Erected by Liberty County Historical Society
The Story
Built in 1839 by Mary Jane Bacon, widow of Major John Bacon, this Hinesville home is a fine example of the "plantation plain" style, its two-story front section still much as it was raised by the region's best craftsmen. Kept in the same family for generations, it survived a harsh visit from Sherman's troops in December 1864, who pillaged and burned the barn and outbuildings but spared the house itself. Careful later restoration returned the rear rooms to their 1839 character.
Why it matters
The house is a rare surviving witness to coastal Georgia plantation life and to the destruction visited on the region during Sherman's March to the Sea.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
The Bacon-Fraser House was raised in 1839, when the Georgia coast was a world of plantations, tidewater fields, and small county towns like Hinesville that served the surrounding countryside. This was the era of the early republic maturing into the antebellum South — a settled, prosperous, and deeply unequal society whose wealth was built on the land and on enslaved labor.
The house was built on a modest tract at the eastern edge of town, in the "plantation plain" style that was common across the region: straightforward, well-proportioned, and solidly made by skilled craftsmen rather than showy in its ornament. Its two-story front section, still largely unchanged, speaks to the confidence and permanence such families hoped to build into their homes.
But the calm of that founding era would not last. Within a single generation, the coastal Georgia countryside would feel the full weight of the Civil War, and this quiet home on the edge of Hinesville would find itself directly in the path of one of the conflict's most famous marches.
People & events
The house owes its existence to Mary Jane Bacon, the widow of Major John Bacon, who built it in 1839 and passed it down through a family line that has held it across the generations since. That continuity is itself remarkable — a home lived in by the descendants of its builder, its front rooms carrying the character its first owner gave them.
The drama the marker records came in December 1864, when a detachment of Sherman's army reached the plantation during the campaign that swept across Georgia to the sea. The soldiers pillaged and looted, and they put the torch to the property's outbuildings — the barn and all the structures around the house were burned.
Yet the house itself was spared the flames. Why one building survives while others burn is often a matter of chance, circumstance, and the decisions of individual soldiers, and the marker wisely records only what is certain: the outbuildings destroyed, the home left standing. In the twentieth century the family carried the house forward with care, altering the rear rooms in 1923 and then, in 1979 and 1980, removing that addition and rebuilding on the original foundation in the architectural spirit of 1839.
Its place in the American story
This house is a rare, tangible witness to two chapters of the American story that usually reach us only through documents. As a well-preserved example of coastal Georgia's plantation-plain architecture, it shows how families in the antebellum South built and lived — the everyday form of a world that the war would sweep away.
It is also a survivor of Sherman's March to the Sea, one of the defining campaigns of the Civil War. That march was meant to break the Confederacy's will and capacity to fight by carrying the war directly to the countryside, and the burned barn and outbuildings here are the local, physical trace of that hard strategy. A home that endured while the structures around it burned makes the abstract idea of "total war" suddenly concrete.
The careful late-twentieth-century restoration adds a third layer of meaning: it reflects an American commitment to preserving such places honestly, returning the house to its original character rather than letting time erase it.
If you visit
Approach this house as a piece of living architecture. The front, two-story section is the part to study closely — it remains much as it was built in 1839, and in its plain, sturdy lines you can read the taste and craftsmanship of the coastal Georgia of that day. Knowing that the rear rooms were thoughtfully rebuilt to match the 1839 era adds a quiet lesson in how preservation is done well.
Let the marker's account of December 1864 shape what you picture. Where you see open ground around the home, imagine the barn and outbuildings that once stood there and were lost to fire, and the house itself standing through it. The contrast between the surviving home and the vanished structures is the heart of the story.
Hinesville and the surrounding Liberty County make natural stops on a coastal Georgia history route. Give the house its due as a survivor — a home that has sheltered the same family's line since before the Civil War, and that carries the memory of the march that passed this way.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
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Related people
- · Mary Jane Bacon
- · John Bacon
Related events
- · Sherman's March to the Sea
Themes & tags
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