This was identified as Georgia’s first brewery when the property was nominated for the National Register of Historic Places in 1971, but like many of Georgia’s tabby ruins, it has an ambiguous history. Signage at the Horton House Historic Site identifies it as the ruins of a warehouse. If it is the brewery ruins, it’s one of Georgia’s first industrial sites. Major Horton’s Brewery fueled the troops at nearby Fort Frederica throughout the late 1730s.
Specific dates for the brewery and/or warehouse are as difficult to pin down as they are for the house, but considering the connection to Fort Frederica and its likely need for alcohol from the outset, it was likely operational before 1740. Taylor Davis, who wrote his masters thesis on tabby in Georgia, also identifies the ruins as the brewery ruins.
Dates on these ruins range from circa 1736 to 1742. Built by Major William Horton, General James Oglethorpe’s second-in-command, the structure employed the preferred building material of Coastal Georgia, tabby. It is the oldest surviving domestic structure in Georgia. While Oglethorpe was at Fort Frederica, Horton kept a small military outpost on Jekyll. The vast fields around the house were planted with rye, barley and hops for use in Horton’s brewery, and the area around the house was originally known as Rye Patch. Beer was the only alcoholic beverage allowed in the colony at the time and Horton’s brewery supplied the soldiers at Fort Frederica. In 1742, after the Battle of Bloody Marsh on nearby St. Simons, Spanish troops burned the house. Upon Oglethorpe’s return to England in 1743, Horton became commander of military forces in the colony. He died in Savannah in 1748.
Fleeing the French Revolution in 1791, Le Sieur Christophe Poulain de la Houssaye duBignon and family purchased Jekyll Island and restored this house, adding wooden wings. The duBignons raised Sea Island cotton and indigo, but the Civil War brought their economic model to an end. Union soldiers destroyed most of the house, as well.
Upon their purchase of the island in 1888, the Jekyll Island Club reinforced the ruins of the Horton-duBignon House and placed a wall around the old duBignon Cemetery. Taylor Davis notes that a 2004 stabilization has resulted in the “splotchy” appearance of the structure. Like many of Georgia’s tabby ruins, the Horton-duBignon House has had multiple identities over time. As late as the 1940s, tourist postcards were identifying it as the site of an “old Spanish mission”. This was apparently a widely held belief about most such ruins on the coast until modern scholarship confirmed historic identities in the last half of the 20th century.
James Gordon and his two brothers came to Chickamauga, then known as Crawfish Springs, from Gwinnett County in 1836. In 1840, James began construction of this home [employing slave labor and using bricks made on site] to serve as the centerpiece of his 2500-acre plantation. The site was of local importance, as the Cherokee Courthouse was located on the grounds prior to displacement. [It was originally executed in the Greek Revival style; the addition of the massive portico and entablature in a 1900 remodel gave it its present Neoclassical appearance].
Gordon’s son Clark was elected commanding officer of Company D, First Georgia Volunteer Infantry, organized in 1862. During the Battle of Chickamauga the home served as temporary headquarters of Union Major General William Rosecrans, Army of the Cumberland [16-19 September 1863]. It also served as a field hospital [18-20 September 1863] under the command of Medical Surgeon R. G. Bogue, treating both Union and Confederate casualties. In 1889, 14,000 veterans of the battle held a reunion on the grounds known as the Blue-Gray Barbeque. The idea to establish the Chickamauga-Chattanooga National Military Park had its origins at the barbeque, significantly the first Civil War park in the United States to be protected through preservation.
Upon the death of James and Sarah Gordon, the home passed to their daughter, Elizabeth, and her husband, James Lee. The next owner was their son, Gordon Lee, a United States Congressman [1904-1927], and his wife, Olive. Lee stipulated in his will that if no family member took on the property for twenty years that it would become the property of the City of Chickamauga and this happened in 1947. It was sold to Dr. Frank Green in 1974. Dr. Green restored the house and grounds with great attention to historical accuracy. In 2007 it was purchased by the City of Chickamauga, which now operates a museum on the site.
This saddlebag house is the last surviving of six slave dwellings on the property. Brick saddlebags are a very rare vernacular form in Georgia.
Even if you don’t have the time to visit all the Civil War sites in the area, take the time to walk the wonderful grounds of the Gordon-Lee Mansion. Operated by the Friends of the Gordon-Lee Mansion in conjunction with the City of Chickamauga, it’s a wonderful green space and historic site.
Designed by Spencer Stewart Marsh (1799-1875) around the time of LaFayette’s founding, this was home to his family and their descendants until 1989. It’s also referred to as the Marsh-Warthen House. Spencer Marsh was born in Chatham County, North Carolina, and married Ruth (Rutha) Terrell Brantley in 1824. They first migrated to Covington, Georgia, around 1833, and then to Walker County. He was a justice of the Inferior Court and a state senator and Walker County’s wealthiest and most prominent citizen with farming and real estate interests all over the area. He was also, along with Andrew P. Allgood and and William K. Briers, a founder of the Trion Factory [in Chattooga County], said to be the first cotton mill in Northwest Georgia, in 1845. It was later known as Marsh & Allgood. During the Civil War, the Marshes sought refuge in Cassville.
Marsh’s daughter, Sarah Adaline, married Nathaniel Greene Warthen in 1859. Due to the large presence of Union troops in Northwest Georgia, the young couple relocated to the relatively safer Warthen homeplace in Warthen, Washington County at the height of the war. Afterwards they returned to LaFayette and also resided here with Sarah’s family.
To enhance the interpretation of the African-American experience at the Marsh House, a log cabin has been moved here and reconstructed to replicate what a slave dwelling would have looked like before the Civil War. This cabin is actually about a hundred years old and was an outbuilding located on another property. It was donated to the Marsh House by Breck Parker.
It’s a near certainty that Spencer Marsh’s slaves were responsible for the construction of the house. He owned 12 in 1850. One of them, 16-year-old Wiley Marsh, was Spencer’s son according to widely accepted oral history. [Interestingly, Wiley Marsh is mentioned on a Department of the Interior marker honoring the African-American presence on the property but it doesn’t note that he was Marsh’s son]. Built in the Greek Revival style popular by 1840, the house was expanded between 1895-10 by Marsh’s grandson, Spencer Marsh Warthen, who also added minimal Colonial Revival features, including the balustrade, around 1935. Almost every architectural element and update of the house has been extensively catalogued. Addie Augusta Wert, great-granddaughter of Spencer Marsh, was the last family member to reside here, removing to a nursing home in 1989. Patrick and Donna Clements bought the house from the estate in 1992 and sold it to the Walker County Historical Society in 2003. The Marsh House of LaFayette is now operated as a museum, with limited hours.
This is an abridged version of Dan H. Latham, Jr., and Beverly Foster’s excellent history of this house viewable on the National Register nomination form. It’s a fascinating read, especially in regards to some of the Civil War associations of the house and family, as well as the background on Wiley Marsh, Spencer’s “mulatto” son.
Built between 1822-23 and remodeled in 1883, the home of merchant Humphrey B. Gwathney is a residential gem of Broughton Street, known as Savannah’s “main street”. According to the Beehive Foundation, “Historical records and regional property history reveal that Gwathney was an antebellum merchant and prominent resident who commissioned the construction of the Humphrey B. Gwathney House at 401 East Broughton Street around 1822–1823. Like virtually all wealthy property owners in Savannah during this era, his wealth, business operations, and domestic household relied heavily on the labor of enslaved individuals.”
The house was restored in 1994-1995 by the nonprofit Beehive Foundation in 1994-95, which is one of Savannah’s greatest assets, publishing fine books about the history and culture of Georgia and the South. Founded by Mills Bee Lane IV as the Beehive Press in 1970, Beehive has been at the forefront of historic preservation for nearly five decades. Lane’s monumental 11-volume series, The Architecture of the Old South, has done more to bring attention to Southern architecture than any other source. And Lane wasn’t just a cultural observer, he was actively involved in saving and preserving landmarks throughout his life.
Savannah Historic District, National Historic Landmark
Representative of the transformation from Federal and Plantation Plain styles to the more formal Greek Revival, Nutwood is one of six extant homes designed and built by Collin (sometimes spelled Cullin or Cullen) Rogers (1791-1845) and his brother Henry. Just as Daniel Pratt’s houses are emblematic of Milledgeville, Rogers’s designs are icons of LaGrange. Nutwood is considered the most accomplished of his works. It should be noted that Rogers and his brother utilized a large number of enslaved people with great skills in carpentry to build their commissions.
Joel D. Newsom (1789-1864) was the first owner of the property and legend states that the plantation house derived its name from the fact that the first pecan tree grown in Troup County was planted here. Newsom served as judge of the Troup County Inferior Court from 1831-36. In 1937, it was purchased by Mr. & Mrs. Arthur E. Mallory who owned it until the 1970s.
This Federal gem on Warren Square was built by enslaved craftsmen between 1806-1809 for Dr. William Parker (1766-1838), who acquired the property through his 1804 marriage to the widow Louisa Guerard McAlister. Dr. Parker, whose grandparents arrived in Savannah with General Oglethorpe in 1733, was a founding member of the Georgia Medical Society.
Savannah Historic District, National Historic Landmark
One of just a handful of 18th-century houses remaining in Savannah, the Mongin House (known for a time as the Capital Dwelling House and now known as the Mongin-Carswell House) was relocated here from another lot on Warren Square and remodeled to its present condition in 1964. John David Mongin (1763-1833) set about building it, with the labor of enslaved individuals, as soon as he arrived in Savannah from Daufuskie Island SC. He was a successful merchant but records of his industry in Savannah are quite sparse.
The house also served as a hospital during the 1876 yellow fever outbreak and a rectory for Christ Church.
Savannah Historic District, National Historic Landmark
Built by James Eppinger (1790-1871) with the forced labor of enslaved craftsmen between 1821-23, this Federal style home was moved to its present location on Warren Square from West Perry Street and retains its original appearance, except for the replacement of a curved brick entry stairway. Eppinger later left Savannah for Pike County, in west central Georgia, and served as an attorney, Georgia legislator, and judge. He was the son of John P. Eppinger (1765-1823) and, per Carol Todd, the grandson of John Eppinger (1730-1776), a brickmaker and bricklayer who built what may have been the first brick house in Savannah (a public house at 110 Oglethorpe Avenue built before 1764).
Peter Meldrim (1848-1933), who later became a judge, lived in this house as a youth during the Civil War. Judge Meldrim was later the owner of the iconic Green-Meldrim House, which served as General Sherman’s Savannah headquarters.
Savannah Historic District, National Historic Landmark
The date of construction for this iconic courthouse is difficult to track down. In the nomination of the property to the National Register of Historic Places in 1980, it was said to have been begun in 1860 and completed in 1875. Brothers John and Samuel Pruitt were noted as the builders. More recent scholarship (I assume) by Elizabeth B. Cooksey in the New Georgia Encyclopedia notes: (the)first courthouse was built in 1863, reportedly with $6,600 in Confederate currency. Either date suggests that slave labor was likely integral to the construction; completion of public architecture during the Civil War seems extraordinary. Confusion aside, it’s one of the most beautiful courthouses in Georgia. Replaced by a modern courthouse on an adjacent lot in 1987, it now serves as a museum, with very limited hours.
