Most people seem to associate the history of Columbus and its old homes with the classic antebellum homes of the mid 1800s and the Civil War, but I think of a much earlier time. The founding of Columbus and the roots of its architecture go back to the Creek War phase of the War of 1812, the Choctaw Treaty of 1816, and the ensuing influx of settlers into former Choctaw Indian territory.
It is this developmental period that I find the most interesting period of Columbus history. The cast of characters is fascinating. William Cocke was a Revolutionary War veteran who had been a captain and one of the “Overmountain Men.” In Columbus he was president of the trustees of Franklin Academy and corresponded about the school with his old friend from Virginia Thomas Jefferson. Newspapers all over America carried reports of Cocke’s death in 1828.
John Pitchlynn was appointed United States Interpreter for the Choctaw Nation by George Washington. He moved to Plymouth Bluff in 1810 to facilitate the movement of goods and supplies down the Tombigbee. Spain was preventing U.S. military supplies and Choctaw factory goods from passing Mobile and going up the Tombigbee. Pitchlynn built a small fort with a log blockhouse at his residence in 1813. The fort was named Fort Smith. Gen. Coffee and the Tennessee militia who were heading south to reinforce Andrew Jackson stopped for supplies at Ft. Smith in October 1814. A week after Coffee left the fort, David Crockett arrived there looking for Coffee’s command. Crockett and Coffee’s other scouts had earlier missed their rendezvous with Coffee.
Silas McBee, who named Columbus, was a Revolutionary War veteran who fought at the Battle of Kings Mountain in a South Carolina regiment. Later in Kentucky he was a member of the posse that killed the famous “land pirate” Big Harp. He moved to a site on present day Magbee Creek (originally named McBee Creek) in east Columbus in 1817.
Though the site of Columbus was on former Choctaw Indian land, the relationship between the Anglo-American settlers and the Choctaw was one of friendship. Choctaws and Chickasaws traded in Columbus and there was widespread opposition in Columbus to Indian removal. Merchants in Columbus considered the Choctaws and Chickasaws not only good customers but also good friends.
In its early days there was a free Black community that greatly contributed to the town and area’s development. William Cooper was a “free man of color” working and trading along the Tombigbee River during the 1790s. Free Blacks in early Columbus were often carpenters and blacksmiths. James Scott who was supplying building materials in Columbus by 1824 and was a Black man. Isaac and Thomas Williams were two African American brothers who operated a Blacksmith and Wagon Repair Shop in Columbus in the 1840s.They built the Haven as their home. The 1820 census for Columbus showed 12 free Blacks and 24 enslaved out of a total population of 117.
The early architecture of Columbus shows the diversity of the people who settled here. The first building actually on the site of downtown Columbus was a log house built in the fall of 1817. It was described as a “small split log hut.” It was located about where the office of Visit Columbus is now located on Third Street South. Most pre-1821 structures were log, though there were a few frame structures.
The log houses were generally single pen or dog trot with a porch across the front. Many were later encased in a Greek Revival exterior. I know of at least five surviving examples of buried log homes. There are the Cedars circa 1818, Buttersworth circa 1820s, Hickory Sticks circa late 1820s-early 1830s, a dog trot circa 1820s in the 100 block of Third Ave South and a dog trot circa 1820s in the dog leg of Seventh Street South.
It was in the frame and brick structures that we see the evidence of a mixing of cultures and people. The first frame house in Columbus was built by Gideon Lincecum in 1819 behind the old Gilmer lot facing 2nd Ave North. The first brick house in Columbus was probably built by Silas McBee in the early 1820s just east of Franklin Academy.
The surviving very early frame and brick houses follow one of two architectural styles. There is the raised cottage which arrived from the Gulf Coast and the Low Country of South Carolina and Georgia and the Federal style which arrived from Tennessee and the East Coast.
One of the earliest styles of architecture in the South and the style of some of the oldest surviving houses in Columbus is the raised cottage. It is a style that was introduced into the south Atlantic coastal and Gulf coastal areas from the West Indies, probably in the early 1700s.
Surviving raised cottages in Columbus range from the vernacular Ole Homestead, circa 1825, which exhibits a Creole influence and resembles Madam John’s Legacy, a 1789 French house in New Orleans. There is the Haven, circa 1843 by the Williams brothers who were “free men of color,” which has a Carolina Low Country influence. The later high style Greek Revival is reflected in the Pratt Thomas home, circa 1847 This mixing of styles results from Columbus being an intersection of settlers moving here from the east with their Georgia or Carolina taste or coming up the Tombigbee from the Gulf with a Spanish or French heritage.
Within Columbus, the oldest surviving Federal Style house is the Cartney-Hunt House, which was constructed just outside of the original Columbus town limits in the mid 1820s. It was a two-story brick house that resembles an east coast Federal Style rowhouse such as those found in Old Town Alexandria, Virginia, or Georgetown, D.circa
Corner Cottage, which may have been built as early as 1830 at Fourth Avenue South and Third Street, is an excellent example of the transition from Federal Style to Greek Revival Style. Another Columbus house that shows the transition from Federal to Greek Revival style is Temple Heights which is a Carolina side-hall plan house constructed in the Federal Style about 1839. Around 1850 the present portico was added to give the house a Greek Revival appearance.
In the 1830s the high style of Greek Revival became popular but the mixed cultural influences in Columbus helped bring about a new style. Architectural historian, Ken P’Pool, has described a unique local mix of Greek, Gothic, Italianate and sometimes octagon styles as an “original design” which he calls “Columbus Eclecticirca” It’s a mixing of cultural heritage from the early days of its founding which has given Columbus such a rich and interesting cultural and architectural history.
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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