According to Erik Blackburn Oliver’s Cornerstone and Grove, Phi Gamma was the first literary and fraternal society at Emory College. Their meeting and debate hall, which anchors the northwest corner of the quad, was completed in 1851 and is the oldest surviving academic structure on the Oxford campus. It has been beautifully restored in recent years and is a textbook example of Greek Revival architecture, to my mind a landmark of the form. It also served as a temporary hospital during the Civil War.
Oxford Historic District, National Register of Historic Places
Built to replace the Old Church, the sprawling Young J. Allen Memorial Methodist Episcopal Church, South, was dedicated in 1910. Its namesake was quite famous in church circles.
Young John Allen (1836-1907), or Young J. Allen as more often written, was born in Burke County, to a father who died before his birth and a mother who died soon afterward, according to Findagrave. He was raised by a maternal aunt in the Primitive Baptist tradition of his family but converted to Methodism at the age of 17. An 1858 honor graduate of Emory College, he married Mary Houston (1838-1927), a native of Coweta, a day after commencement. In 1859, Young sold his land and slaves and sailed for Shanghai with his wife and infant daughter. While taking numerous jobs to support his family during the early years in China, he engaged in missionary work, translated many religious texts, established newspapers and periodicals, and founded several school. He made many trips back to the United States to report on his mission work but would never make a permanent return.
Alexander F. N. Everett, a prominent Atlanta architect, was responsible for the eclectic Beaux Arts design.
Oxford Historic District, National Register of Historic Places
Oxford was established by the Methodists and at the center of the community was the Oxford Methodist Episcopal (M.E.) Church. The cornerstone was laid in 1841 and from 1843 until the construction of the Young J. Allen Memorial Methodist Church in 1910, served as Commencement Hall for Emory College. In 1864, it served as a temporary hospital for casualties of the Battle of Atlanta. It’s the oldest extant non-residential building in Oxford. [A similar church, architecturally, is the Dorchester Presbyterian Church in Liberty County].
The wings visible at both sides were added in 1878 and give the church its cruciform shape. After the New Church opened in 1910, the Old Church was allowed to deteriorate, so much so that in 1948, the town of Oxford took bids for its demolition. Luckily, it was saved and stands today a symbol of both school and community. No longer a church, it is occasionally used for events and private gatherings.
Oxford Historic District, National Register of Historic Places
Cottage of Kitty Andrew, Circa 1844, Old Church, Oxford
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
In Cornerstone and Grove: A Portrait in Architecture and Landscape of Emory’s Birthplace in Oxford, Georgia, Erik Blackburn Oliver notes: The original part of this plain-style Greek Revival house is thought to have been built in the mid- to late 1840s; however, “there are records of a dwelling on these grounds in 1850 owned by the widow of Professor George W. Lane.” Lane, a clergyman, had been the classics teacher of the Manual Labor School, served as secretary to the board of trustees, and became the first professor of ancient languages of Emory College, so if indeed this was his first home in Oxford, it might date to the late 1830s.
It was later the home of Isaac Stiles Hopkins, hence the name. Hopkins was a professor and later the ninth president of Oxford (1884-1889).
Oxford Historic District, National Register of Historic Places
This was built as a plain-style Greek Revival cottage by the first president of Emory College, Ignatius Few, and has been home to most of the school’s chief executives. The two projecting front wings were added during the presidency of Augustus Baldwin Longstreet, and the Victorian details during the late 1800s. Longstreet’s daughter Virginia married Emory graduate Lucius Quintus Cincinnatus Lamar in the home. Lamar would go on to serve as a congressman, senator, Secretary of the Interior in the first Cleveland administration, and Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court. He was also the namesake of Lamar County, in central Georgia.
Young L. G. Harris [namesake of Young Harris College] purchased the home in 1899 and presented it to the Emory trustees for use as a home for the school’s presidents, which it remains today.
Oxford Historic District, National Register of Historic Places
Built by a Mrs. Williams in the mid-1840s, this Greek Revival townhouse was purchased by the Branham family in 1855. They owned it for 130 years, willing it to Emory University in the 1980s. The home was purchased by Claude and Eva Sitton in 1990 and they have extensively restored it.
Oxford Historic District, National Register of Historic Places
Edward Lloyd Thomas, who surveyed the town site of Oxford, was paid with four lots by the trustees of Emory College. Thomas built this house, circa 1837-1838. He sold it to George W. W. Stone, Sr., in 1851. Stone was a member of the first graduating class at Emory, and members of his family remained in the house for much of the 20th century. Jack and Jane Atkinson restored it in the 1970s, importantly removing a wider Victorian porch and replacing it with the architecturally correct pedimented entry seen today. The Eady family are the current owners and not only have strong ties to Oxford College, but to the Stone family, as well.
Oxford Historic District, National Register of Historic Places
William H. Mell is believed to be the first owner of this home, more commonly known today as the Capers Dickson House, for the next owner, William Glen Capers “Judge” Dickson (1845-1914). Dickson was a private in Company 1, Cobb’s Legion, Infantry Batallion. Dickson served as a city judge in the courts of Newton County and was a law professor at Emory College.
The facade of the house is very reminiscent of the Milledgeville Federal style, though the overall floor plan is L-shaped.
Oxford Historic District, National Register of Historic Places
This antebellum cottage was built by Dr. Henry Gaither but is most associated with a young woman purported to be a spy for the Confederacy, Izora “Zora” Fair, and is even referred to as the Zora Fair Cottage based upon this history. The history itself may be apocryphal or embellished, however. It posits that while Zora was a refugee from war-ravaged South Carolina, she disguised herself as a mulatto with crushed walnut hulls, sneaked into General Sherman’s headquarters, and overheard his plans for the March to Sea. When she tried to pass this information to Confederate General Joseph E. Johnston, it was intercepted by Union soldiers, and she hid out in the attic of this house.
Considering that the most recent sources for this information were published in the 1910s, they must be held to some scrutiny, especially since they were published by partisan historians. There must be something to the story; perhaps a more objective modern researcher can put it all together.
Oxford Historic District, National Register of Historic Places
