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Imagine if you will that you have traveled back in time to the "1840s" and have entered a frontier country store (see close-up photos here) with it's petticoat counters, wooden cash registers, antique post office, grist mill, tobacco twister, velvet bean sheller and over 4,000 artifacts (many of which are the only surviving artifacts in the U.S. today, three dimensional documents of frontier life, all worn by human hands, all authentic and original. That's what you will experience when you visit Suttons Corners Frontier Country Store Museum.
From the 1840’s through the post-civil War South, the country store was an intimate and functional part of the social and economic lives of its customers. It was the hub of the local universe — market place, banking and credit source, recreation center, public forum, and news exchange.
Literally, everything from swaddling clothes to coffins, from plow shares to Christmas candy, from patent medicines to corsets was included in its inventory. The storekeeper was all things to his community, and if his credit practices sometimes smacked of usury, who would have advanced credit on shaky liens or promissory notes secured by unplanted crops of cotton and tobacco?
Through three generations, the Suttons did just that, commencing their fortunes selling off the back of a mule wagon.
This historical museum is far more than a nostalgic look at an almost vanished institution. It reveals the economic importance of the frontier country store to the southern economy, balancing its romance and color with the grim realties of surviving in the frontier days. |
| Hours of Operation |
| Call for hours. |
| Contact - Address & Website |
| Phone: 229-768-3178 - Address: 115 Washington St., Fort Gaines, GA - Sutton's Corner Frontier Museum Website |
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Check out more fun free things to do indoors in the Plantation Trace Region |
