Last week at a Regional Foundation for Mental Health meeting I heard a most interesting story. It was a 100-year-old love story that survives on a glass window pane. The conversation was with Jackie Edwards and Clay Terrell. Jackie lives in the West Point house that had once belonged to Clay’s grandmother.
Jackie’s house is listed on the National Register of Historic Places as the Moses Jordan House. Jordan built the Greek Revival house about 1852 on the old Columbus-to-Houston road between what later became Main Street and East Jordan Avenue Extended in West Point. At that time he was working on the development of the Mobile and Ohio Railroad and a new town named West Point.
His plan was for the new railroad to run through his property, and to form the center of his new town he gave the railroad land on which to construct a depot. Jordan was a friend of Waverley Mansion builder George Hampton Young, and it is said that Jordan employed some of the same craftsmen who worked on Waverley to work on his house.
During the Civil War Confederate General N.B. Forrest made the house his headquarters while camped in West Point. Mrs. Martha Ann Westbrook Dugan was a guest at the house at that time and recalled an interesting incident. Some of Forrest’s soldiers were camped nearby and tore down some of Jordan’s fences to use the rails for fire wood. As soon as Forrest learned what his men had done, he made them cut new rails and replace the fence.
Jordan sold the house to Thomas Bonner. In 1887 Ella Bonner and Bory Moseley were married at the home. The Clay County Leader described the setting of the May wedding. “The lowering clouds which during the afternoon obscured the sunshine dispersed in the early evening and at eight o’clock, the appointed hour for the nuptial ceremony, countless stars were sparkling like angel’s eyes upon a happy culmination of ‘Love’s Young Dream’. The genial moonlight made resplendent the grand old grove and invested it with a charm which enhanced the violet scented breath of spring, seemed almost romantic.”
In 1895 the Bonner family sold the house to the Presbyterian Synod who established the Southern Female College. The house was used as the college president’s residence. Around 1903, about the time the college moved to Nashville, Tennessee, the house was moved two blocks south to Broad street where it now sits.
Though the house was the home of the college president, he allowed the parlor to be used by the college girls to receive male “callers.” A silver plaque stating “Parlor” remains on the room’s door. It was in that room that a most interesting story took place.
In the early 1950’s Mrs. H.C. Terrell was living in the house. An elderly lady from New Jersey arrived, knocked on the door and asked if she could come in. She wanted to reminisce about college days and see if her name was still there. She told of being at student at the Southern Female College and having courted and then becoming engaged in the parlor. She had taken her diamond engagement ring and scratched her name and the date on a parlor window pane. Mrs. Terrell had not noticed them but the lady went to the window and they were still there.
“Mary A.
June 1872”
The name and date remain on the parlor window, a surviving remnant of a 100-year-old romance. But the date of 1872 creates a question. The house did not become part of the college until 1895. Maybe there is another story here?
Might the lady have become engaged in the parlor but, wanting to first make sure the diamond was real before saying yes, scratched her name and birth date on the window pane?
The Terrells purchased the house from Catholic priest, Father C.A. Oliver, who had purchased it from the college. That leads to another interesting story of marriage. The first Mrs. Henry Clay Terrell to live in the Jordan house was Anna Young, the granddaughter of George Hampton Young. Mrs. Terrell and her cousin Mrs. R.C. Betts, both Young family daughters, had a double wedding at Waverley. That wedding was said to have been the last formal Young family wedding held at Waverley. It was from the Terrell family that the Edwards purchased the Jordan house. The stories that wonderful old houses tell are always interesting and often full of surprises.
Rufus Ward is a Columbus native a local historian. E-mail your questions about local history to Rufus at [email protected].
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