Historic Traveler's Rest, 1976

II. THE HOUSE
Since that time, restoration work and research have progressed steadily. Today visitors can see Traveler's Rest as it was in the mid-nineteenth-century - the stagecoach inn and plantation house of an enterprising northeast Georgia planter and businessman.
Architectural studies have revealed that the house was built in two or three stages between 1815 and 1840. Over those years it was adapted from its original two-over-two construction into a large rambling structure with eight rooms below and five above. The doors and hallways were arranged to provide convenient access to travelers without totally depriving the Jarrett family of privacy. Visitors can examine the stages of building through special exhibits which reveal the hand-hewn and sawn corner posts.
Inside the house visitors can see original pieces of Jarrett furniture. These include outstanding pieces by a Franklin County craftsman named Caleb T. Shaw who spent summers with the Jarretts between 1850 and 1860.
Traveler's Rest is a registered National Historic Landmark.

GENERAL INFORMATION

Telephone: (404) 886-2256

Hours:

Tuesday- Saturday, 9:00a.m.- 5:00p.m. Sunday, 2:00p.m. - 5:30p.m. Closed Mondays, Christmas and Thanksgiving

Location: Traveler's Rest is located on U. S. 123, six miles east of Toccoa. The mailing address is Route 3, Toccoa, Georgia 30577.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Earle, Alice, Stage-Coach and Tavern Days. Dover Publications, New York, New York 1969.
Trogdon, Kathryn C., The History of Stephens County, Georgia. Toccoa Womans Club, Inc. Publishers, Toccoa, Ga. 1973.

ADMINISTRATION

The Parks and Historic Sites Division of the Georgia Department of Natural Resources administers Traveler's Rest. This Department is the State's principal conservation agency and has basic responsibilities for fish, wildlife, minerals, water, air, recreation, park and historical resources.

The Department of Natural Resources is an equal opportunity employer and makes all employment decisions without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, physical or mental handicap, or other non-merit factors.

For more information about Georgia State Parks and Historic Sites, contact:

Georgia Department of Natural Resources Office of Information and Education
270 Washington Street, SW Atlanta, Georgia 30334 (404) 656-3530

Cost: $298

I. THE HISTORY
Traveler's Rest is located in the Tugaloo Valley which was formerly inhabited by the Cherokee Indians. This site was included in land granted to Major Jesse Walton in 1785. Walton was a Revolutionary War veteran who had fought at King's Mountain and a frontiersman who came to the Tugaloo Valley from Nort h Carolina where he had been a settlement leader and a member of the State's Executive Council.
Although the Cherokees had withdrawn from the valley before Walton arrived , the Creeks to the south tried to resist the spread of settlements in northeast Georgia. Year after year, marauding Creeks forced the pioneers to gather in small fort s or blockhouses and to urgently and "humbly" appeal to the governor of Georgia for "a Relief of men and ammunition ." But the governor could not provide them with these needs, and he recommended that they t urn, not to the State for help, but to other frontiersmen such as Walton's friend, General Elijah Clark.
Despite continued Indian attacks, the Tugaloo settlers farmed and established homes. During this troubled period, the Creeks mortally wounded Walton in the vicinity of Traveler's Rest. Indian Agent Joseph Martin wrote to Virginia Governor Patrick Henry from "Tugaloo in Georgia, July 2, 1789" that the Indians "made an attack on this quarter, killed and wounded several, among which was Major Walton, who is at my elbow ... I expect will expire in a few moments from this time."
After his death , Walton's property passed on to his wife and children, one of whom was probably the first to build a dwelling at the site of the present Traveler's Rest. Mary Walton , his widow , died in 1800, and within the next decade his children began to leave the valley in pursuit of cheaper lands in the west'. In 1813 they relinquished their claim on the land to Joseph Martin, Walton's son-in-law and perhaps the nephew of the Indian agent. Martin began the structure which was expanded later and is known today as Traveler's Rest.
As stagecoach and riverboat traffic increased in the Tugaloo Valley, the site gained considerable financial status as a
crossroads. In 1818 Martin sold the site for $2000 to James R. Wyly. As a builder of the Unicoi turnpike and a commissioner to improve navigation on the Tugaloo River, Wyly must have recognized the value of the land. He enlarged Martin's house and probably opened it as an inn to accommodate the growing number of travelers to northeast Georgia.
In 1833 for $6000, Wyly sold several pieces of land, including the crossroads inn, to his neighbor Devereaux Jarrett. The son of Revolutionary War veteran of the same name, Jarrett was raised in Oconee County, South Carolina, and moved t o the Georgia side of t he Tugaloo in the early 1800's. A man of great enterprise, he operated a country store, a tavern, a post office, a blacksmithy, a tanyard, a cotton gin, a sawmill, a grist mill, and a toll bridge, as well as a large plantation.

Over the years, J arrett accumulated thousands of acres of farm land and was known as "the richest man in the Tugaloo Valley." During this time, his house became known as Traveler's Rest . Although Traveler's Rest was primarily a home for J arrett and his family, and t he center of a large thriving plantation , J arrett completed expansion of t he struct ure with a comfort able inn in mind. English t raveler G. W. Featherstonhaugh's description of his stay at Traveler's Rest in 1837 reveals t hat Jarrett succeeded -
" ... I got an excellent breakfast of coffee, ham, chicken, good bread and butter, honey and plenty of good new milk for a quarter of a dollar. The landlord cultivated an extensive farm , and there was a fine bottom of good land near t he house. He was a quiet, intelligent, well-behaved man , a great admirer of Mr. C. (Calhoun), and seemed anxious to do what was obliging and proper, more from good feeling than for the poor return he chose to take for his good fare. What charming country this would be to t ravel in, if one was sure of meeting with such nice clean quarters once a day."

Among J arrett's other illustrious guests were John C. Calhoun and Georgia's Confederate Governor Joseph E . Brown who spent his wedding night in one of the upstairs rooms.
Before Devereaux Jarrett died in 1852, he divided his land and slaves among his four children who established prosperous plantations and fine houses along the Tugaloo. The youngest son, Charles Kennedy, inherited Traveler's Rest and maintained it as a home and an inn through the Civil War and until his death in 1877. The Jarretts lost much of their land during and following Reconstruction. Economic conditions and shifting tides of settlement, coupled with rail lines supplanting older roadways, curtailed the travelers who once sustained the inn.
Early in the twentieth century, the J arretts began referring to the site as Jarrett Manor. It remained in the family until July 1955 when Mary Jarrett White, the daughter of Charles Kennedy Jarrett, sold the structure and 2.995 acres of land to the State of Georgia and the Jarrett Manor Foundation.