Fair Forest Plantation / Emslie Nicholson House
Fair Forest Plantation
Fair Forest, named for nearby Fair Forest Creek, was the plantation of Col. Thomas Fletchall (d.1789), prominent militia officer before the Revolution and Loyalist during it. Captured in 1775 and briefly jailed, Fletchall moved to Charleston in 1780, then to Jamaica when the war ended; he died there in 1789. After the Revolution his plantation was confiscated and sold at auction.
Emslie Nicholson House
Col. Thomas Brandon (1741-1802), who bought Fair Forest about 1785, had been a Patriot militia officer and was a longtime state representative and state senator. The Tudor Revival house built in 1923 near the site of the plantation house was designed by Robert & Co. of Atlanta. It was built for Emslie Nicholson (1863-1939), president of textile mills in Union, Lockhart, and Monarch.
Marker is on Cross Keys Highway (State Highway 49) ½ mile west of Riley Road, on the right when traveling west.
Courtesy hmdb.org
