This home, designed for Robert and Missouri Garbutt by Ivey P. Crutchfield, is the grandest in Lyons. It is also known as “Twenty Columns”. Robert Musgrove Garbutt made a fortune in the timber business as the partner of H. M. Rountree in the late 19th century and served for a time as mayor of Swainsboro. Garbutt was first married to Missouri Coleman and upon her death married her sister, Sophronia Coleman. He moved to Lyons around 1894. In addition to his ongoing interest in the Rountree-Garbutt Lumber Company in Emanuel County, Garbutt owned or held interest in the Garbutt-Donovan Lumber Company in Lyons, Hartfelder-Garbutt Company of Savannah, Garbutt-Donovan Real Estate Company of Fitzgerald, and the Southern Foundry & Fitting Company of Savannah. He was also a major stockholder in the First National Bank of Fitzgerald and the First National Bank of Lyons. One of Fitzgerald’s most important commercial landmarks, the five-story Garbutt-Donovan Building, was also a venture.
Bobby Thomas Akins recalls: …when I was a boy, it had a second floor balcony around the three fourths of the house. My sister-in-law Ellen Akins and I were taken through the house by Mrs. Garbutt, a real southern aristocrat, but very friendly and kind. The little room on top of the house contained a copy of every newspaper ever produced by the Lyons Progress tied up neatly with string, stacked up around the walls of the room. [The house] had the most beautiful furniture I have ever seen.
National Register of Historic Places
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