Burke County
Walker Grove Baptist Church-Keysville, Georgia
Tag Archives: Burke County
Keysville Evangelistic Church and Cemetery, Georgia
Keysville, Burke County, Georgia
Located across from the post office in Keysville, Georgia is this small church with a mausoleum for Reverend Quillar Vertery Russell (1889-1959) and family. My friend Brian and I had just stopped when a nice Keysville native stopped to chat.
He asked if we were kin to the Russells, and we said no. He said that the Reverend was the church’s founder and owned the lumber mill in Keysville. He told us to go inside.
In diving into the ancestry records, Reverend Russell was a farmer and mill owner. I suspect he founded this church as the Keysville Baptist Church.
Over the years, it changed names to the Keysville Evangelistic Church and finally to the New House of Worship before it closed for good.
Keys Grove Baptist Church-Keysville, Georgia
Burke County
Located on a dirt road in Burke County, I’ve not found much on the church.
Girard Elementary School-Girard, Georgia
Burke County
The Girard Elementary School, an equalization school, in Burke County, Georgia was recently put on the National Register of Historic Places. It was one of six schools built to continue segregation in the county, while replacing one and two room schools that were spread throughout the county. This building includes four classrooms, a library, and a cafeteria. It opened in 1955.
Boggs Academy-Keysville, Georgia
Burke County
Boggs Academy, now the Boggs Rural Life Center, is a former boarding school that served the Black community of Keysville, Georgia. Founded in 1906 by the Board of Missions for Freedman, Presbyterian Church, it educated students in the grades 9 through 12. The reputation of the school grew, and it educated Black students from all over the country. Closing in 1984, it was the last remaining boarding school built for the education of Black youth.
The campus is quite large and some parts are being restored. These photos show only a few of the buildings in existence.
Abandoned Church-Gough, Georgia
