I’m Frank Wynne and I am so pleased to share my home. Together with my sister Martha we are offering the property as a place for private celebrations. Wynnewood Grove is pleasantly positioned within the Appalachian foothill country at the eastern edge of the greater Athens, Georgia Community.
The restoration of Cardinal Hall and Wynnewood Grove is a passion project unfolding. Initiated by chance, I acquired the property at Christmas in 2020. After 3 decades hosting events for my role in the exploding Atlanta arena in-town’s real estate business, Covid brought new rhythms in our everyday life and outlook for the future. Our family tradition at Christmas starts with venturing into the country to cut down a unique Christmas tree. My three adult children joined my wife and me in nearby Morgan County at Jack’s Creek farm for our annual tree hunt. As a veteran Realtor, I checked Zillow to survey nearby historic homes on the market. I began to imagine a country home as a family nest for refuge in a Covid weary world. This tired old place we discovered in Oglethorpe County offered a bucolic pastoral setting just minutes from the best part of nearby Athens and University of Georgia. This ancient home and acreage had handsomely endured years of benign neglect affording enduring patina. For me this was sweet soil for a diamond hunter.
Alas, we’d set out to find the perfect Christmas tree and we bought the farm.
The subsequent months offered an introduction to an enchanting community in Lexington, a population less than 200 strong. Remarkably, I also unearthed a crossover connection with my Wynne family lore. From erstwhile forgotten ancestry studies, I recalled the early American Wynne family had migrated from British held Colonial Virginia to a frontier in newly available upcountry Georgia near Fort Washington near to the Broad River in Wilkes County. I discovered Oglethorpe County was partitioned off from originally formed western Wilkes County near Will Wynne Road (coincidentally my eldest child is Will). Then, I met a distant Wynne cousin residing in a Wynne farmhouse he inherited on 100 acres still owned by the Wynne family. Unwittingly I suppose I returned to the land of my earliest Georgia bloodline. Fate is seemed lead me back and I felt a familial urge fueling my restoration exercise unfolding.