The community of Meigs straddles both Mitchell and Thomas Counties, 4 miles south of Pelham and 28 north of Thomasville along the Historic Dixie Highway Scenic Byway. The community was chartered in 1889 and named for Col Montgomery Meigs, a Union officer during the Civil War.

The J.N. Carter home is a monument to Mr. J.N. Carter, who in an editorial in the Albany Herald at the time of his death declared him the “Father of Meigs.” He undoubtedly was the leader in all the commercial, industrial, and financial activities of this agrarian community, as well as the early adapting technologies for community consumption and providing public and cultural education. He owned and developed much of the town’s real estate, and donated tracts of land for the public school building. His merchandize business offered local and imported groceries; dry goods materials for clothing and home furnishings, as well as name brand suits of men’s clothing; hardware, paints, caskets and undertaking services. He owned a cotton gin, fertilizer plant, cold storage, and wood manufacturing plant. He was an investor in two large sawmills, one adjacent to Meigs, and the other three miles south at Hansel, that were served by its own rail-way connecting them and extending eastward into Colquitt County. He was a director of the Bank of Meigs from its inception. He was president of the School Board for eleven years, his private library was larger than that of the High School. He was the guarantor of the annual spring Chautauqua, an adult education movement that brought entertainment and culture for the whole community, with speakers, teachers, musicians, entertainers, preachers and specialists of the day throughout rural America until the mid-1920s. It stopped in Meigs for a week during the Spring. The creation of the Dixie Highway led to great prosperity for this rural agrarian community through the 1950’s.