In the latter part of the nineteenth century a group of people of the Baptist faith obtained permission from Mrs. Baggett to hold church services directly across the road in front of the house in an oak grove. A new house has recently been built in the midst of the oak grove. In a very short time after they began holding services at the bush arbor, they concluded that they should organize a Baptist Church of their faith and order. In 1903 the group, along with Ordained Ministers and Deacons, organized Zion Baptist Church. The Zion Baptist Church building was built on an acre of land donated by Mrs. Baggett's son, Joseph Baggett. The Church is located directly behind Elizabeth Baggett's house on the top of a hill on another road that enters the main road.
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The Joseph Brown Baggett home was probably built before Zion Baptist Church was built in 1903. Joe gave the land that the church is built. His niece Auda Thompson's baby died a few years after the church was built and her Uncle Joe told her she could bury the baby there, but she decided to bury the baby at a Methodist Church nearby. If she had decided to bury there, the cemetery would probably be almost twice as large as it is now because it was in the 1950s that the first grave was dug there. Joe had a sawmill at the time the church was built and sawed the lumber for the church. He also had a gristmill and a shingle mill. He also owned several hundred acres of land. He married Miss Cappie Beall. He was the second son of Allen Jacob Baggett. Joe and Cappie had no children. The Joe Baggett house is still standing as shown in the photo above.
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The picture here is the only picture available of the Stephen Baggett Home Place. It was taken when the Baggett reunion was held at Steve and Ellen's home in the early 1930's. Stephen Baggett, eldest son of Allen Jacob Baggett, owned two houses and several hundred acres of land. His first house was down off the main road a few hundred yards, just over the hill from the main road. This was a mountainous road that went all the way to Whitehead Creek, about two or three miles, and on to another road on the north side of the county. The house we are presenting here was on the main road south of his original house, a few hundred feet from his son Grady's home. After his son Grady died in 1959, who owned the land at the time, the original house and several hundred acres of timber and farm land were sold, and soon afterwards, the original house burned. The house on the main road where Steve lived when he died in 1938 burned on Christmas night in 1952. This house was also owned by his son Grady.

Steve had large barns at both of his home places, but the one belonging to the old house off the main road seemed to be the most interesting. Before the road began it decline down a hill, the old barn was built at this location and dug out on the side of the hill to make the loft of the barn level with the road at the top of the hill. A wall was poured with concrete to support the barn. The stalls and rest of the barn were located at the lower level, downstairs from the loft and road. Mules and wagons could be driven into the upper loft of the barn from the road. The barn at the newer home up on the main road was a big barn, along with a corncrib and other buildings there at the latter home. Both these home places and their buildings are now only a memory of the past.
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The Homer Cornelius Baggett home was located in the western part of Paulding County not very far from the Allgood Methodist Church and the Haralson County line in Georgia. The house has been restored in the past several years. We have a black and white photograph of it taken in the 1970s, and it looks nothing like it did at that time–run down and deserted looking then–although they had screened in the front porch. The screen is gone and the porch now corners and has been added along the complete eastside of the house, with an upper center gable added to the roof of the house. A driveway enters the eastside and has ample parking space for several vehicles. At the entrance, it has twin pillars of brick and fancy concrete with an emblem of some sort on front of each of the pillars. From the west pillar, a fence runs west and then corners and goes north and ends as it enters the eastern part of the house.

The wooden fence around the house has some sort of vine and small trees that need to be cleared away to enhance its appearance. Above the east of the house, there is about an acre fenced in with a wooden fence, and the ground is covered with grass. It may have been a small pasture at one time. When the new roof was added to the house, the present owner found an automobile tag with the date of 1921 attached underneath the old roof, so we know that the house existed at that time. Home and his first wife, Katie Wix, are buried in the Union Primitive Church Cemetery. Homer was a deacon of that Church.
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It is not known when the Oliver Alonzo Baggett home was built, but probably after the beginning of the twentieth century. It has not changed much since the 1930s, although it appears to have had either vinyl siding or wooden weather boarding put on the outside walls. It stands in the corner of the two roads. The main road passed the Rev. Jim Turner home, who lived there at the time of his death and is now owned by another Baggett family. The same road went down by the Homer Baggett home and on to Allgood Church. The other road ran north and south and now joins the State Highway 120 that goes from Dallas to Buchanan. The north end of the road went down to the Hiram Buchanan home about a quarter of a mile and then wound it way through the county continuing north. Ollie Baggett's wife Ella Brown, died in  1985; lived to be nearly 100 years old, but Ollie died in 1951. They had two daughters; one is deceased. They are buried in the Union Primitive Baptist Church Cemetery.
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The home of James Grady Baggett and Mollie Mae Duncan built a new home in 1928 in the Hay Community and resided there until his death in 1959. He owned both of his father's homes at one time, along with several other homes on his 500-acre estate. Grady and Mollie had lived in a three-room house since their marriage in 1916 near where the new house was built. After the new house was built, the old house was torn down. Grady and Mollie moved into the new Grady Baggett Home that year and the next year Mollie died with pneumonia. Grady was left with two sons. Mollie's brother Senoia Duncan and his family took the infant son and kept him for a year until Grady married his second wife Della Williams.  A General Merchandise Store was built just above where the old house stood. After Grady discontinued to operate the Store, he converted the building into a car shed. All the old buildings are now gone, but the newer house, barn, and corncrib are still standing.

In 1941 the State of Georgia built State Highway 120 from Dallas to Buchanan, Georgia. Before that there was no electricity or any way to travel except by dirt roads. Grady had built his house between a fork in the dirt roads. One road, which was considered the main road, went towards Zion Church and past the Joe Baggett place, where Joe was Postmaster of Hay, Georgia Post Office. Grady built the house facing the main road. The other road below the house and above the old barn went down past where Harmony Grove Baptist Church now stands and on to Embry's Store and the Embry Post Office.

Before the highway was built, Grady had to tear down the old barn because the right-of-way went too close to it. The dirt road below the house was done away with and Grady's backside of the house became the front. He then built the new barn and corncrib just above the new highway. Not many months after the new highway was built, electricity was supplied to the community.

Artists seem to love to paint old buildings like this one. An Oil Painting by Joyce Walraven of the barn is shown as it appeared in 1981. She created a wagon across the drive from the barn. She wrote on the back: "Painting in oil of Baggett Barn on Buchanan Highway." She signed her name and date: "Joyce Walraven - August 1981." The New Barn and Crib in the 1990s is shown here after being restored.

Things really began to make a very different life in the 1930s and 1940s in America and for the world. In this nation almost all people lived on farms consisting of from forty to one hundred acres of land. The nation had not yet become an industrial nation. One thing that began to make a great difference was the gasoline and diesel engine. In the 1930s the greatest number of people still used the horses and mules to farm the crops. On thing that made a tremendous difference in farming was the Farm Tractor. Grady owned one of these tractors in the 1930s. The diesel engine tractor could plow a field in one-quarter the time that it took for two mules. Later came the gasoline tractors, and they really changed the world. Some of them are shown behind the old tractor in the background.
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A Baggett home was built in 1956 in the Hay Community in Paulding County behind a lake. Several people commented that it was the most attractive home on Georgia Highway 120 from Marietta to Buchanan. At first it was only a four-room house with one bathroom. The dining room and kitchen were both located in the same room. In 1977 it was remodeled. The roof was removed and replaced with a new look. There were several rooms added at that time, and another bathroom was added. The house was sold in 1997 and remodeled again by the new owners. The photo shown on this page was made while the Baggett family was still living at the home in the early 1990s.
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Another place that was built in about 1952 was the addition of a home added to an old store building. This home was also in Paulding County, Georgia. A family of Baggetts owned the building beginning in the 1950s. It was owned by the Baggett family for about seven years. Others operated the business until some time in the mid-1970s when the building was sold, and the owner converted the part that was once a store as a part of the dwelling house. A family lived in the old building for several years, but one night something caused a fire and the complete building was destroyed. The site is now a vacant lot, with only the well and the little shed built over it with a rope and bucket as it stood in the 1950s.
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A historic place in the High Shoals community is the High Shoals Falls. The history of High Shoals Falls and High Shoals Church goes far back in the nineteenth century, even before the Civil War. There are cemeteries located on each side of the present church building at High Shoals. In the old cemetery on the hill above the Falls are several tombs of those who were co-founders of the Church in 1841, and the tombs have the date that the High Shoals Primitive Baptist Church was organized inscribed on them. High Shoals Falls pool at its bottom has been used for the Church Baptistery since the Primitive Baptist Church of High Shoals was organized in 1841.

The first church building was a log building, and during the Civil War Union soldiers tore down the first church building to use the logs for some purpose. The building was rebuilt soon thereafter and continued as a Primitive Baptist Church until 1913, when it was reorganized as a Missionary Baptist Church. Elder Burrell Marion Camp, a Primitive Baptist Minister, was pastor of High Shoals Primitive Baptist Church for forty-five years and was moderator of the Marietta Old School Baptist Association for twenty years. He is a connection by marriage to the Baggett family through his great granddaughter.
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One historic place in Georgia is the school in Paulding County known as Hay Elementary School. The school was named from the Hay Post Office. Joe Baggett was Postmaster of the Post Office at Hay. It was located in his General Merchandise Store at his home. As you already know, a picture of the old Joe Baggett home is shown above. Years ago the house was a well built house and, as you can see, was very beautiful. The Hay School Building was located about one and one-half miles east of the Post Office on a hill called Pea Ridge. The names of the students are shown on a link of the picture of the Hay School Building and its students.
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William Allgood and his three sons, John Young, Patric Henry, and William Allgood II established Allgood Methodist Church in the western part of Paulding County in 1832. Before the church was established, this portion of Paulding County had been part of a Cherokee Indian Reservation. Allgood Methodist Church had services once each month until 1939 when regular services were discontinued, but it did continue to have annual Homecoming Services until some time in the 1970s when it again began regular services with alternate visiting ministers presiding over the services each month.

The church and its members are not related in any way to the Baggett family, but because of the early existence of the church building, possibly the first to be constituted and constructed in Paulding County, Georgia, we thought it should be presented in this section. The construction of the building appears to be of the same architectural style used in all country churches in the early existence of Georgia.

The Allgood Methodist Church has a plaque outside in the center of the building between the two doors stating the date if its organization. It emphasizes the founders, the Indian Reservation, the time it stopped having regular services, and relates to the burial of many of the earlier Allgood founders, members, and others who are buried there. Its cemetery is rather large to be a small country church.
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There was an old Baggett Store Building located in Wiggins, Mississippi. Mark Baggett sent this picture that deserves to be shown in this section. The photo was taken about 1918, according to what he told me. This is written on the page of the picture itself. Charlie Baggett, Sr., born in Wiggins, Mississippi and his wife Sallie Hayman, born in Harrison County, Mississippi was Mark Baggett's great-grandparents.

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