Tullie Smith House

Approx. Time: 2 hours
Activity Level: Easy to Moderate

A plantation-plain house built in the 1840s by the Robert Smith family, the Tullie Smith House is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Originally located east of Atlanta, outside the city limits, the house survived the near-total destruction of Atlanta in 1864. Robert Smith was a yeoman farmer who owned eleven slaves and about 800 acres of land in present-day DeKalb County, Georgia. The Smith family cultivated approximately 200 acres of their land, while their cattle and hogs ranged freely nearby. Contrary to popular belief, yeoman farms were more common in Georgia than the large plantations many people associate with the "deep south."

The house, detached kitchen, and related outbuildings were moved to the Atlanta History Center in 1969.

The farm complex serves as tangible evidence of the rural past in a metropolitan area where agriculture has essentially disappeared. Tullie Smith House is surrounded by a separate open-hearth kitchen, blacksmith shop, smokehouse, double corncrib, pioneer log cabin, and barn complete with animals, as well as traditional vegetable, herb, and flower gardens. Costumed interpreters lead tours of the house and perform everyday activities typical of nineteenth-century rural Georgia, including open-hearth cooking, animal care, blacksmithing, basket weaving, candle making, quilting, spinning, weaving, and other craft demonstrations.