[A letter to the Editor, published in The Morgan County Citizen, Madison, GA, 23 August 2007.]
I have only scraps of memory left of Grandmother's house. It sat on a small lot on McDonough Street, right at the end of Church Street, in the town of Rutledge, Georgia. If you looked directly down Church Street, you could see it all the way from Main Street. I remember one of the ceilings in an upstairs bedroom that I slept in as a child at least once -- it was made of beaded wooden slats, the way they used to do it. I remember our family visits to her house in the fifties, the smell of mothballs, and leaving after dark on a cool evening, the warm lights inside and on the big front porch. I remember that porch in the summertime, shaded by the huge tree in the front yard, the screen door, the old-fashioned swing and the heavy wooden porch railings with white paint chipping off, and on the roof of the porch, in front of the center upstairs window, an iron railing that made it look like a balcony -- but wasn't. I remember the outhouse, still there even in the fifties, and that she got her water from a well. But what I remember most from the house is the red-brick chimney, on the driveway side of the house. I remember being in the side yard and looking up at the chimney, and when I saw it about 45 years later, it all looked so familiar to me -- brought back a lot of memories.
But, beyond all that, I clearly remember the lady who once lived there. Everyone who knew her loved her, and they all share with me the memory that Nettie Baugh Copelan was the sweetest, gentlest person we've ever known.
She died in 1969 and the house had fallen in disrepair since she sold it in 1961, and some time between March and the middle of August 2007 it was torn down. When I discovered it in August some small scraps of debris were still there, and I got part of a red chimney brick and a piece of wood. All that now remains with the family are these scraps of memory from my grandmother's house.
Ken Doggett [Harry Kenneth Doggett]
Rutledge
PICTURES
[1] Google Earth. Rutledge, GA. The house is at the top center, bright white walls, grayish roof; it sits on McDonough Road and the end of Church Street; at bottom left, in a reverse "Z" pattern, also with bright white walls, is Annette Copelan Wiley's house, on Church Street, which she still owns.
![[1]](http://assets0.geni.com/photos/p2/4824/2042/4f372449dd567a69/fet32zuy_original.jpg){kind=link}
[2] The house a few years before it was torn down in 2007. It was later fixed up a bit, missing boards replaced, painted, and by 2003 it looked better, but was never restored. (photo courtesy of William Marion Copelan, Jr.).
![[2]](http://assets1.geni.com/photos/p2/4824/2042/4ebd1d93942c2db6/ben73nuv_original.jpg){kind=link}
As of this update, the lot remains vacant.
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Page last updated 30 April 2008.