Patricia Carter Deveau grew up hunting and fishing along the ...

Patricia Carter Deveau
Patricia Carter Deveau grew up hunting and fishing along the Mississippi River in the
midwestern home of John Deere and International Harvester. She majored in history
and English at Vanderbilt University, graduating cum laude, and earned a master’s
degree in American history from the University of Wisconsin with a minor in museum
studies and historic preservation. Her graduate research contributed to the development
of Old World Wisconsin and cataloging papers of one of the founders of Kimberly-Clark.
She participated in post-graduate studies at Colonial Williamsburg and Winterthur.
Following college, Deveau worked with the Parks and Historic Sites Division of the
Georgia Department of Natural Resources as an Historical Interpretive Specialist and
later as Chief of Interpretive Programs. For ten years, she helped park superintendents
and historic site curators develop visitor programs and exhibits. She was responsible for
opening to the public three Georgia Heritage Trust sites (Jarrell Plantation, Wormsloe,
and Hofwyl-Broadfield Plantation). Additionally, she oversaw the Georgia Historical
Marker program and the state artifacts conservation laboratory. As a DNR
representative to the Ga. Dept of Industry and Trade, she worked closely with Georgia’s
tourism industry to market the state’s natural and cultural resources through the travel
industry and the media. She is a founding member of the Georgia Association of
Museums and Galleries.
In 1986 Deveau retired to raise two sons and to lead a variety of volunteer activities in
Atlanta including developing wrap-up events for Time Travelers, an arts and cultural
program for K-5 th grade at the Atlanta Public Schools; President of Theatrical Outfit and
POCO! For the Atlanta Opera, and Director of Georgia’s second largest youth soccer
tournament.
Deveau returned to her professional roots a few years ago when she volunteered with
the Georgia Conservancy at Sandfly, an historic African American community in

Savannah near the Isle of Hope. Established by former slaves who worked at
Wormsloe, Sandfly was threatened by big box development and transportation
construction projects. The Georgia Conservancy helped the community meet these
challenges with a planning program entitled Blueprints for a Successful Community.For
the next five years, Deveau helped the community preserve their heritage through oral
histories and by researching and writing a history of the five generations of the
community for a nomination to the National Register of Historic Places.Deveau also
opened an archive for Sandfly family records at the UGA Richard B. Russell Library in
Athens so that their story would be preserved alongside the records of the Jones-
DeRenne family who had owned and hired their ancestors. Next she facilitated a
Blueprints project for Pinpoint, the birth home of Justice Clarence Thomas and the
mainland community established by freed slaves and families from Ossabaw Island.
The final report, which Deveau wrote, is posted at
http://www.georgiaconservancy.org/uploads/Blueprints/PinPointReportFinal.pdf.
In 2010 she began a renewed effort to restore the last African American schoolhouse on
St. Simons Island. Through the Friends of Harrington School, she brought state and
national attention to this project (listed as a 2011 Places in Peril by the Georgia Trust for
Historic Preservation) and she is leading the effort with local organizations to raise
funds and partners so the St. Simons African American Heritage Coalition will have a
place to save and to share the island’s rich Gullah Geechee heritage.
A strong advocate for coastal Georgia, Deveau serves on the boards of The Trust for
Public Land, T.E.R.N. (The Environmental Resources Network), The Georgia Trust for
Historic Preservation, and the Coastal Georgia Historical Society. Most recently Patty
and her husband Todd Deveau, a patent attorney, live in Atlanta’s Brookhaven
neighborhood. They also own an historic home on St. Simons Island.