THOMASVILLE — Emily “Paddy” Vanderbilt Wade recently purchased 4,000-plus acres of Greenwood Plantation in Thomasville to include the Big Woods, a large tract of old-growth forest.

Wade paid a little more than $22 million for the property.

The Big Woods, a 1,000-acre stand, is the last and largest old-growth long-leaf pine forest in the country.

The land is a portion of Greenwood Plantation, the longtime home of the late John Hay Whitney, former U.S. ambassador to Britain and owner of the New York Herald Tribune, and his late wife, Betsey Cushing Whitney.

The plantation, which had been in Whitney’s family since 1899, was listed several years ago.

Whitney was among financiers of the film Gone with the Wind. The first showing of the movie — prior to its premiere in Atlanta in 1939 — was at the former Melrose Plantation off U.S. 319 South in Thomas County.

According to Jon Kohler of Jon Kohler & Associates at Lamont, Fla., the Greenwood property did not have a formal asking price. “It’s hard to value something like that,” he said.

Wade and her family created a nonprofit, the Greenwood Research Foundation, to purchase and manage the land. She plans to put a conservation easement on the parcel, which will be used for research on the ecology of long-leaf yellow pine forests.

Wade also owns Arcadia Plantation off Metcalfe Road in Thomas County, which contains the Wade Tract Preserve, a 200-acre swath of old-growth forest that was conserved by her late husband, Jeptha H. Wade, in 1979 for research purposes.

Arcadia is the site of the second-oldest, old-growth, long-leaf pine forest in the country, Kohler said.

“The long-leaf pines are only in America,” Kohler explained.

Rare wiregrass grows on the floors of both forests. Kohler said wiregrass contains the highest concentration of native species of insects, flora and fauna important to the health of soil in the long-leaf stands.

“You’ve got an entire ecosystem right there,” he said.

The Greenwood main house, built in the 1840s, and surrounding 235 acres remain on the market.

Kohler said his company is negotiating with “a conservation-minded buyer” for the Greenwood main house and adjoining acreage.

“We expect to have a contract shortly on that,” Kohler told the Times-Enterprise.

Many famous people were guests of the Whitneys at the Greenwood main house — U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Fred Astaire, U.S. Cabinet members and the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, among others.

An April 1993 fire damaged the house extensively. The exterior was repaired, but the interior remains charred from the blaze.

Wade’s purchase includes seven tenant houses and a horse barn. The tenant houses were built in the late 1800s and early 1900s to house plantation employees.

The seller was the Greentree Foundation, a Whitney family philanthropic organization. Richard Schaffer, president of the Greentree Foundation, said the group decided to sell Greenwood to focus on its core mission of advancing peace, human rights and cooperation among nations.

Schaffer said the foundation wanted to ensure it found the right buyer. “(Mrs.) Wade was an absolutely ideal buyer,” he added, because of her “lifelong commitment to conservation.”

Senior reporter Patti Dozier can be reached at (229) 226-2400, ext. 1820.