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Rabun County
The Mountain Traveler • Fall 2013
Rabun Manor A history of hospitality
By TREVOR METCALFE, The Clayton Tribune
O
verlooking Dillard sits a White Manor House with gardens, a gazebo and a large front porch, much like the plantations of the Old South. Beneath its exterior lies something more: a history spanning decades and (quite literally) the length of Georgia. “When I tell people that it’s 176 years old, people look at me like ‘It can’t be,’” said Nancy Childress, current owner of Rabun Manor bed and breakfast. The key to the house’s long past is held by Allan White. The family of her husband, Bob, originally owned the house when it resided in Whitehall, just outside
From left, Nancy Childress, Allan White, Ginger Isom and Charles Maddrey talk on the porch of Rabun Manor. The house is almost two centuries old and holds multitudes of memories for White, who spent summers and holidays at the house beginning in the 1960s. Photo/Trevor Metcalfe
Athens. The original manor was created when the family merged three old mill houses into the single fourbedroom, two-bathroom house. The house was moved to the backyard when a newer brick house was constructed on the Athens property and used as a school. “My husband’s dad and his family went to school in that house in the backyard,” White said. In 1906, Bob’s grandfather decided Rabun Manor overlooks the town of Dillard. to move the propThe house is located just off Highway 441 at 205 erty up to its current Carolina St. Photo/Trevor Metcalfe
location in Rabun County as a summer home. The entire house was broken down, moved to Rabun by train and then completely reassembled. “It came from Athens to Mountain City by railroad and from there by ox cart to Dillard,” White said. “They disassembled it, they numbered the pieces and they put it back together.” White remembers her time at the house as a retreat from the hustle and bustle of everyday life. Starting in the 1960s, the couple would invite friends from near and far up to the manor for summers and holidays. The adults would hunt or sit out on the porch while the children played games in the yard or hunted for berries in the woods. “We spent a lot of time look-