A story at every stop on Winterville tour

Photograph by Tricia Spaulding


By Jennifer L. Johnson | news@onlineathens.com | Story updated at 12:31 am on 9/5/2009

WINTERVILLE - When trains carrying soldiers to a Civil War hospital in Union Point stopped at a station like the one in Winterville, they sometimes left the dead behind to make more room for the living.

John Schroeder was left behind.

Though the Confederate Army made an effort to return dead solders to their families, Schroeder is buried between four unmarked graves and an air-conditioning unit behind Winterville United Methodist Church on the town square. The graves aren't visible from the church parking lot or the road, and there are no signs letting visitors know they even exist.

Mary Quinn can't wait to show people where they are.

"There's a story everywhere you turn here," said the longtime Wintervillian.

Quinn would know - she's learned the depth of the city's history through research and interviews with the families who call Winterville home.

"The facts that you can find are real limited," she said. "It's the stories you got to get from people."

Quinn will share the stories she's learned when she leads a tour of Winterville's historic district Sunday.

The tour is part of a series organized by the Athens-Clarke Heritage Foundation to celebrate Athens' designation by the National Trust for Historic Preservation as one of its 2009 Dozen Distinctive Destinations.

"We really needed to come up with something great to celebrate this," said Amy Kissane, the executive director of the foundation. The tour series continues through this summer and autumn as part of the foundations' Athens Heritage Walk campaign.

"Walking tours to me are the best way to get to know an area because you're with a small group of people, with someone who obviously loves the area," said foundation trustee Amy Andrews.

Andrews helped organize the schedule and works with the amateur historians who are conducting the tours of places like the Gospel Pilgrim Cemetery, the Milledge Circle historic district and the University of Georgia's Hargrett Rare Book and Manuscript Library.

"With this focus, we wanted to look at some unique aspects of Athens-Clarke County," she said. "Places like Winterville that are a little bit off the beaten path."

Quinn welcomes the opportunity to share stories of her childhood home, she said, and is glad the heritage foundation included Winterville in the historical tours.

"We see it as a perfect opportunity to introduce others to our quaint community," she said.

Andrews wasn't very familiar with Winterville, even though she had attended the city's celebrated Marigold Festival, which was held from 1971 to 2002 and revived this year.

"I didn't even know how it got its name until I started to talk to Mary Quinn," said Andrews.

Georgia Railroad station manager John Winter volunteered his family name when it came time to title the one-mile radius around the wood-and-water stop six miles east of Athens.

When the tour participants gather in the recently renovated train depot to start their tour at 2 p.m. Sunday, they'll hear how Winter and his brothers immigrated from Germany and settled in the railroad town.

Though no descendants of the German immigrant live in the city today, four former Winter family homes will be stops on the tour.

The tour begins in the train depot, and will include a blacksmith shop, the Carter-Coile Doctors Museum, Pittard Park, the Hunnicutt Hotel and several architecturally significant houses in the area that are included in the National Register of Historic Places.

The walking tour also will stop at the city's newest acquisition, the old Winterville High School and its 450-seat opera-style auditorium.

The school has sat dilapidated for about five years, said Quinn. Though they won't get to go inside, tour participants will peek in windows and step over the dedication stone from the graduating classes of 1926 and 1927.

The tour will pass parts of the abandoned railroad that runs parallel to Main Street. The right-of-way is part of a proposed rails-to-trails project to convert 38 miles of abandoned railway into a walking and cycling trail from Athens to Union Point.

"This is a railroad town, where everyday people worked and where they lived," said Quinn.

Tour spaces still are available for Sunday and for a reprise of the same tour, scheduled for 10 a.m. Oct. 10. Registration is $12 for Athens Clarke Heritage Foundation members and $15 for non-members. Registration forms, tour details and schedules can be found online at www.achfonline.org.

Though space is limited, there may be room for last-minute participants who arrive at the train depot on Main Street in downtown Winterville before 2 p.m. For more information, call the ACHF at (706) 353-1801.