LOOK, LISTEN, AND LEARN ABOUT ISLE OF HOPE
This is a history of the early years of Noble Jones’ Wormsloe Plantation, tracing its first use as a military outpost to its later service as a country residence and farm. All is set in colonial Georgia from the 1730s until the beginnings of the American revolution, with Noble Jones and his son, Noble Wimberly Jones, at odds over the question of independence for the colonies.
Mungo Jerry’s song “In the Summertime” provides the music for thumbing through a scrapbook of old photographs of Isle of Hope families in the early 1900s.
At the celebration of the 275th anniversary of Isle of Hope, Carson Hucks visited the “Memory Corner” and told stories about his life at Isle of Hope. Hucks’ childhood pre-dated Wymberley, Parkersburg, and Paxton Heights. He remembers farms on the island with chickens and horses, Beckman’s kindergarten, 4-digit telephone numbers, the last trolley ride, a carousel on the Bluff, and moonshine stills being blown up by revenuers.
Ann Whitfield Dodridge talks about a simple life at Isle of Hope when she was a child. There were few cars, her family had one of the only telephones in the neighborhood, and there was no garbage service, only a dump at the back of the island.
As Isle of Hope reached its 275th birthday, its residents took a nostalgic look through the years by using old photographs to stroll down Bluff Drive. They take a tour of Brady’s Boat Works and the Isle of Hope Marina, the Great Savannah Races Automobile Course, and the world-famous Barbee & Son’s Restaurant, Pavilion and Diamondback Terrapin Farm.
Tomboys and twin sisters Jean and Joan Cope fondly recall growing up as free-range children at the Pierpont cottage and at 67 Bluff Drive. During their childhood outside in the 1940s and 50s, Wymberley and Parkersburg were forests to explore, and their front yard was the Skidaway River, where they swam and skied. The girls shared a second story bedroom “at the top of the oaks” with river breezes fluttering the curtains of their open windows.
Gertrude Barbee Magee, daughter of Willie Barbee, the “Son” in Barbee & Son’s Restaurant and Pavilion, talks about her childhood at Isle of Hope when she lived upstairs at the Pavilion with her family. She recalls the visit to the Pavilion by Joseph Mitchell, a writer for the New Yorker magazine, who wrote a story about her parents and their terrapin farm entitled, “Better than Monkey Glands.”
Tina Norris, a longtime Isle of Hope resident, tells why the island was “a heavenly place to grow up.”