Echo from the past
Historic Bryan County home remains a family affair

By Stephen Prudhomme 

udy Mingledorff visited Glen Echo when she was 4 years old. She doesn’t remember much about the home, which dates back to the 1770s and has a connection to King George III and General Sherman, but recalls a live oak tree in the front yard. 

The tree and home are still there and so is Mingledorff, who has a much clearer picture of the abode than on her first visit after moving into it with her husband in 2020 and doing an extensive renovation. 

Mingledorff inherited the Bryan County home and property of just under 2,000 acres from her second cousin Edward Everett, who passed away in 2020. The home had been vacant since 1987, when another second cousin, Pauline Morgan, died after living in the pre-Revolutionary War place for a number of years.

Mingledorff and her husband, McRay Caudell, moved from Dawsonville to Glen Echo. Although Everett had done his best to provide some nominal upkeep for the home and property, he lived elsewhere and had to rely on outside help. Mingledorff and Caudell had their work cut out for them as far as making the family home habitable.

“It’s quite a bit of work to do,” said Mingledorff, who owned a 5-acre horse farm in Dawsonville with her husband. “We removed all the furniture and rotten wood, put in new wood floors, tongue and groove wood walls, kitchen cabinets and counters, and redid the plumbing and wiring. Outside, we pushed back the overgrowth and restored the grounds, where a number of trees had fallen.”

Calling on their experience of owning a horse farm, Mingledorff said she and her husband are working on having horses, cattle and ducks. In the meantime, they’re deriving income from the harvesting of pine trees on their property and doing whatever it takes to keep Glen Echo up and running.

“My husband owns an equipment business,” Mingledorff said. “I work several part time jobs. We have to keep working; they earn additional income by renting out for parties a 40x40 pavilion they built near their home.

The home was built in the early Plantation Plane architectural style and featured a large living room and second room downstairs, a winding staircase that had a cabinet at its base and a small room at the top of the stairs and a larger room over the living room that was used as a sleeping area. Mingledorff said an extension was added to the split level, “shotgun house” in the 1800s that included two rooms, a kitchen and porch.

Other than visiting Glen Echo as a child, Mingledorff said she didn't know much about its history until moving into the home. She’s learned it’s a storied one, made all the more special due to the family connection. The story of the historic place and the families who called it home are found, ironically, at vanishingeorgia.com. Still plainly visible although changed from its original appearance, Glen Echo is the oldest house in Bryan County and one of the oldest in Georgia. It’s part of a 400-acre grant made by King George III to Abraham and Israel Bird and Hugh Bryan on Jan. 1, 1771. Speculation is Burgund Bird started construction on the house in 1773 and passed it down to his two sons, Sylvanus and Abraham.

The Birds were millers and likely chose the land based on its proximity to two creeks, one of which was known as Birds Mill Creek and is now Mill Creek; the other is Black Creek. Mingledorff noted there’s a mill two miles from the home and there are intact dams. By 1802, records show, Andrew Bird, Sr., owned the home and had three sons and one daughter, Isabel, who married Salzburger descendant Joshua Smith in 1824. 

The couple’s son, Albert Glenn Smith, inherited the house and property from his mother’s bachelor uncles and moved in after his marriage to Elizabeth Van Brackle in 1858. With Smith taking residence, the place became known as Glen Echo. The Mingledorffs entered the scene in the early 1890s, after Ophelia Smith married Victor Mingledorff.

Seven years later, the country was divided by the start of the Civil War. Smith was a captain of the Bryan Independent Riflemen, 1st Company, 25th Georgia Volunteer Infantry and trained soldiers at Fort McAllister. Breastwork (trenches) were built on the property and along the nearby road and used by Confederate troops. That didn’t prevent General Sherman from seizing Glen Echo toward the end of the war and threatening to burn the property down during his March to the Sea. 

“He told my great-great grandmother, Mabel-Bird Smith, to put everything she could fit into the house,” Mingledorff said. “That included family, livestock, crops… He burned the property and buildings but spared the house. It was toward the end of the war, and my great-great grandfather, Albert Glen Smith, was an officer in the Confederate Army; orders mandated that only unoccupied houses be burned. Sherman burned a storehouse, smokehouse, corncrib and barn among five buildings, all of which were rebuilt after the Civil War.

The Civil War revolved around the issue of slavery, and Mingledorff said her family, as plantation owners who grew tobacco and cotton and raised livestock, owned slaves. At the onset of the Civil War, records show, A.G. Smith owned 17 slaves. Ironically, descendants of those slaves attend a Baptist church near Glen Echo. “We look out for one another,” said Mingledorff, noting they donated an acre of their property to church, which has held purchased baptisms in a nearby creek. “We’re good neighbors.”

One neighbor wasn’t so good. According to Mingledorff,  the man routinely moved property lines at Glen Echo and neighboring homes in the 1960s so he could cut timber. Everett took the man to court and, according to Mingledorff’s aunt, Gayle Mingledorff, was involved with legal proceedings for two years before finally emerging victorious.

“Ed fought for two years and we believe was the only person to win against that individual,” said Gayle, who spent summers as a child at Glen Echo. “He loved Glen Echo and said he wasn’t going to let this man continue to cut timber on his land. He was a formidable person. We’ve very glad he did it.”

Gayle said Everett was equally passionate when it came to the subject of slavery and his family. “He said they treated them well,” Gayle said. “He was very adamant about that.” She noted that Ed Murchison, known as the Mayor of Ellabell, was likely a descendant of slaves from Glen Echo and cared for the property when Edward Everett lived and worked outside of town. “He was just a gentleman,” Gayle said.

During summer visits, Gayle recalls, she watched her paternal grandmother churning butter in the kitchen. Also living there at the time was a cousin, Miss Pauline, a longtime teacher in Bryan County who was a strict disciplinarian in the classroom, and her grandmother’s sister, Mamie. 

Features taken for granted in modern homes were not part of Glen Echo’s early years. “There was no kitchen,” Gayle said. “There were two chimneys and fireplaces everywhere. That was their heat and where they did the cooking.”

Gayle has fond memories of her time spent at Glen Echo. “It was a wonderful place to go to visit my dad’s family,” Gayle said. “It was a wonderful farm. I saw horses, cows, chickens, hogs and lots of cats. It seemed like there were hundreds them. I remember the live oak tree Judy mentioned seeing as a girl and a limb close to the ground. I used it as a swing.”

Glen Echo was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1978; Hwy. 204 originally ran through the property but was rerouted in the 1970s. Judy and her husband are committed to preserving that history and ensuring the home remains in the family while enjoying the bucolic setting and the feeling of being part of a continuing legacy going back to a time before this country gained its independence from the country that made Glen Echo possible.

“There’s a real feeling of comfort here,” Judy said. “I feel like we belong here and are with family. It’s awesome. There are tons of natural light. It’s a real privilege knowing so many generations have lived here before us. Sitting on the porch and taking care of the critters… It’s a living history out here.”

There’s a cemetery outside the front gate with graves belonging to several families. Some date back to the Civil War. There have been stories of paranormal activity in and around the home. Judy discounts these ghost tales. 

“There’s new paint on the house,” she said. “It’s not haunted. There’s nothing paranormal.”

One thing is for sure, however - the house will remain in the family. “Ed wanted to keep the land in the family and restore and preserve the house,” Gayle said. “He never wanted it sold or have the land developed. We (she and Judy) feel this is a solemn trust.”