Tabby State Historical Marker - Jekyll Island, Georgia
Posted by: 
macleod1
N 31° 06.086 W 081° 24.861
17R E 460485 N 3440917
Located on Horton Rd. at the Horton House, Jekyll Island, Ga.
Waymark Code: WM3V9B
Location: Georgia, United States
Date Posted: 05/20/2008
Views: 47
Information below from website: (
visit link)
TABBY
Tabby was the building material for walls, floors, and roofs
widely used throughout coastal Georgia during the Military and
Plantation Eras. It was composed of equal parts of sand,
lime, oyster shell and water mixed into a mortar and poured
into forms.
The limed used in tabby was made by burning oyster shell taken
from Indian Shell Mounds, the trash piles of the Indians.
The word tabby is African in origin, with an Arabic back-
ground, and means "a wall made of earth or masonry." This
method of building was brought to America by the Spaniards.
When the Coquina (shell rock) quarries near St. Augustine were
opened, hewn stone superseded tabby for wall construction
there. Coastal Georgia has no coquina, so tabby continued to
be used here even as late as the 1890's.
063-16 GEORGIA HISTORICAL COMMISSION 1956