Westover Plantation

Westover Plantation - now Westover Cemetery and the Augusta National Golf Course was the home of Southern author Augustus Baldwin Longstreet, uncle of Confederate General, James Longstreet. With the antebellum period came development of a water-powered gristmill on Rae's Creek at the location of today's dam and 11th green of Amen Corner.

James was born across the river in Edgefield County just off Martintown Rd. and recounts in his memoirs crossing the river at the rapids (now the I-20 bridge) each morning on his way to Richmond Academy. If the river or Rae's Creek was high he had to go down the Carolina side to cross at Sand Bar Ferry, then walk the 5 miles back up to the Academy.

James' family moved to Gainesville, GA when he was 9, but James remained with his uncle in order to get his education. In 1837, Augustus attempted to obtain an appointment for James to the United States Military Academy, but the vacancy for his congressional district had already been filled, so James was appointed in 1838 by a relative, Reuben Chapman, who represented the First District of Alabama, where his mother Mary Longstreet had moved following his father's death in 1833.

"Uncle" Augustus is most remembered for his "Georgia Scenes", but before the war he was an ardent secessionist and publisher of the Augusta State Rights Sentinel. He lived on the plantation in the 1830s. There are the remains of a grist mill in Rae's Creek near the Augusta National hole #11 and Amen Corner. The mill was built in 1799-1800 by George Walker as part of a 2,000-acre plantation reaching as far southeast as today's Augusta State University. The mill was operated in the 1810s and 1820s by Augusta Mayor Nicholas Ware, whose Telfair Street home is occupied today by the Gertrude Herbert Institute of Art.

During the early 19th century, a cotton gin was installed in the mill so two mills operated under one roof. Longstreet did not operate the mill however, apparently, no one did after the early 1830s.

References:

White, Michael. Down Rae's Creek
http://excursia.com/destinations/USA/GA/augusta/stories/19991201/gol_augnatl.shtml