On Wednesday, The Dispatch ran an article on the Gilmer block in downtown, which is one of Columbus’ most historic city blocks. While the article provided some good basic history of the block, there are stories that make the block’s history come alive.

Block 1 North of Main (the Gilmer block) was a center of life in early Columbus. That block was occupied by 1819, when Gideon Lincecum built the first wood frame house in Columbus there and Thomas Sampson was living in a “double cabin” on the west end of the block. At that time, Columbus’ principal street was the original 1817 Military Road, which is now Second Avenue North and is the street along the north side of the Gilmer block.

The Columbus Post Office was established on March 6, 1820, and Lincecum was appointed postmaster. By January 1821, his house was serving as the Columbus Post Office. On the east end of the block, where the Gilmer would later be built, Richard Barry opened a hotel possibly as early as 1819.

Rev. George Shaeffer, who moved to Columbus in 1822, wrote a description of the town as it appeared when he arrived. He described the Gilmer block as, “on the north side of Main Street, west end there was a one-story store kept by Capt. Kewen. The next building was a small retail whiskey shop; the next, Barry’s Tavern, a two-story house of pretty large dimension, a frame but unfinished; it stood on the corner where the Gilmer Hotel is kept.”

The earliest Columbus map I have found is an 1820s map of the Gilmer block. It shows the Eagle Hotel on the east side and the Kewen property on the west side. Interestingly, it shows a 20-foot alley running east and west through the middle of the block.

An 1839 city map again shows the Eagle Hotel on the east, but it has been joined by the Bell Tavern about where the present Elks Club building now stands. In 1837, Mccluer and Humphries opened a clothing store two doors west of the Hotel. A livery stable was opened at the Hotel in 1837 and in 1838 the Columbus Bath House opened on Military Street behind the hotel. It advertised warm and cold baths and could even provide salt baths.

In 1839, the hotel advertised that the specialty of its table was oysters, that the bar was supplied with the best of liquors and that families would be provided with private rooms. The stage office for the Northern, Southern, Tuscaloosa and Pontotoc Line of stages was located at the Eagle Hotel.

By 1849, there were five buildings on the block facing Main Street. The Eagle Hotel remained on the east; going west from the hotel were the post office, Thompson’s, an unidentified building and W.H. Stevenson’s residence. But the location of the buildings is not what brings history to life. It is their stories.

The stories out of the history of Block 1 North of Main are fascinating. They are the story of life on the western frontier of the early 1800s.

National news was made in 1821 when on March 25 doctors Henderson and Barry successfully performed surgery on 63-year-old “Tisee Mingo Chief Speaker of the Chickasaw Nation.” The operation was to remove gall or kidney stones and was performed at the doctors’ office, which was located at the site of the present the Varsity building. “Tisee Mingo” recovered across the street at the Eagle Hotel.

In the Billups-Garth Archives at the Columbus-Lowndes Public Library is an interesting document related to the Kewen property. It reflects commercial life in the then-frontier town of Columbus. The document from 1829 concerns the purchase of hides (probably deer) from a Chickasaw by the name of Underwood.

Capt E. Kewin
There is due to the bearer Underwood a Chickasaw on account of hides 1.06 1/4
June 14, 1829
Tho. B. Mullen

Mullen was active in the Indian trade in northeast Mississippi and Kewin owned a store located near the present Elk’s Club building. The $1.6 1/4 due reflects the use of Spanish or Mexican silver coins for payment. In Spanish coins six and one-fourth cents is half a bit, which was called a “picayune.” A bit was 12 1/2 cents, making 2 bits 25 cents.

A horrible murder and robbery occurred near the Black Creek crossing of the Military Road in 1839. The Columbus Democrat reported a C. White, of Russellville, Alabama, “was waylaid and shot dead” on the Military Road north of town. In response there was a meeting at Bell & Conner’s Tavern where a $1,210 reward was raised, and two posses were assembled to head off in pursuit of the culprit.

In May 1839, Sam Houston, former president of the Republic of Texas, visited Columbus. He attended a dinner given by the Columbus Riflemen on May 21. He was then on May 22 invited to a dinner to be held on May 25 at the Eagle Hotel. He declined the invitation.

Apparently around that time, he had given a temperance speech but attended a party afterward at which he became so intoxicated he caught his coat on fire. After that he disappeared from the social scene and the newspapers until May 28, when he caught the northbound stage leaving the Eagle Hotel for Nashville.

About 1860, John Gilmer began construction of a brick, four-story, 70-room hotel at the former site of the Eagle Hotel. On April 17,1861, Thomas Brown, a prominent Columbus businessman, was found murdered near the northwest corner of the unfinished hotel. Brown had been struck on the head by a short one by three pine timber with three nails in it. The timber had been removed from a brick mason’s scaffold at the hotel. Neither the murderer nor a motive was ever found.

It is stories that bring history to life. Unfortunately, the Gilmer block has far more stories to tell than there is room in a newspaper column to include. Thanks to Carolyn Kaye for helping uncover some of these stories.

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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