This saddlebag cottage was originally located a few lots away behind the home of James Osgood Andrew, a Methodist bishop in Oxford, and has been moved four times prior to finally landing at Old Church. It was the dwelling of an enslaved woman named Kitty, who was inherited by the bishop around the time he entered the episcopacy, and survives as a tangible symbol of the Missional Split (Schism) of 1844 that occurred between Northern and Southern Methodists, since the ownership of Kitty was at the center of the controversy. According to her cenotaph at Salem Campground, Kitty was a slave girl bequeathed to Bishop James O. Andrew by a Mrs. Powers of Augusta, Georgia, in her will when Kitty was 12 years of age, with the stipulation that when she was 19 years of age, she was to be given her freedom and sent to Liberia.

Northern clergyman insisted that bishops could not own slaves and demanded Andrew’s resignation. Augustus Baldwin Longstreet, Emory’s president at the time and an enslaver himself, supported Bishop Andrew. The story put forth is that Longstreet and Professor George W. Lane interviewed Kitty and gave her the option of emancipation, which she refused, unwilling to be sent to Liberia. The bishop had this cottage built for her and pledged that she would thereafter live “as free as I am”. Andrew was known for ministering to slaves but even this and his commitment to allowing Kitty to live free was met with suspicion by Northern clergy.

Upon the death of his first wife, Bishop Andrew inherited a young enslaved boy. He then married a widow who owned over a dozen slaves. With all this in mind, and unwilling to compromise, the southern churches split from their northern peers in 1845 and formed the Methodist Episcopal Church, South.

Kitty later married a man named Nathan Shell and left the cottage but little else is known about her later life. Findagrave records her date of birth as 1822, though her date of death or even whereabouts remain unknown or unconfirmed.

Oxford Historic District, National Register of Historic Places