Sarah Hillhouse Home State
Historical Marker
Located on East Robert Toombs Ave., Washington,
Ga.
(Text)
HOME OF SARAH
HILLHOUSE
This Federal style house was
begun in 1814, by Sarah Porter Hillhouse who came to Washington
in 1786, from Connecticut with her husband David. In 1801, David
purchased the town's first newspaper The Monitor, and
when he died in 1803, Sarah became the first woman in Georgia
to edit and publish a newspaper which she continued to run for
more than a decade, along with the print shop her husband had
established. Here she also printed the official records of the
state legislature. Articles in The Monitor, which generally
had a circulation of 700 to 800, give a vivid account of events
of interest to the people of Washington in the early 1800's.
Mrs. Hillhouse's other business interests included trading in
land and commerce. Her letters provide an interesting insight
to life in early Washington. She was a successful businesswoman
at a time when women were seldom active outside the home, and
she helped to build a frontier village into a thriving community.
Her home was enlarged to its
present form in 1869, when Gabriel Toombs acquired the property,
and moved the end rooms from the Toombs Plantation on log rollers
and added them to the house. Toombs and his descendants lived
here for more than a century.
157-32 GEORGIA HISTORIC
MARKER 1995
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