Tullie Smith Farm

A plantation-plain house built in the 1840s by the Robert Smith family, Tullie Smith Farm 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 farm complex was moved to the Atlanta History Center's campus in 1969 and serves as a tangible reminder 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, as well as traditional vegetable, herb, and flower gardens. Costumed interpreters lead tours of the house and some days perform activities typical of 19th-century rural Georgia, including open-hearth cooking, animal care, blacksmithing, basket weaving, candle making, quilting, spinning and weaving.

The Atlanta History Center would like to thank the Poppy Garden Club for their donation of the Gulf Coast Native Sheep to the Tullie Smith Farm. Come down and meet our new ram, ewes, and the baby lambs.