I spent yesterday afternoon wandering through Southern antebellum houses and chatting with costumed hosts and hostesses of all ages on the Columbus Spring Pilgrimage’s first home tour of the year.
Three hours, three houses.
An afternoon of antebellum architecture, 19th century costumes and more tall tales and family anecdotes than you would believe.
Having never experienced Columbus Pilgrimage before, I was not sure what to expect.
But I was raised in the South, so I know Southerners love to tell stories. So I wasn’t surprised when Gene Boggess met me on the front porch of Whitehall, where his brother Joe lives, and immediately regaled me with stories not only of the Harris family, who built and lived in the house in the 1800s, but of his own childhood there at Whitehall when it was home to six Boggess siblings and three cousins.
I also got stories about carpetbaggers burning the old stables after the Civil War and how when Harris’ son Bud returned home after being captured by Federal troops, he was so ragged-looking only the family dog recognized him. Boggess’ favorite story was the one about Mrs. Harris healing a soldier wounded in the Battle of Shiloh by feeding him pumpkin pie — a truly impressive feat considering the battle took place in April and pumpkins are harvested in the fall. Boggess said Mrs. Harris had to find pumpkins in a root cellar and made the pies with honey since sugar was not available in the South during the war.
The only thing that rivaled the stories was the furniture.
I’ve never been much interested in antiques or architecture, but I was impressed by bed posts footed with ox hooves to keep out termites; a tiny sink just for brushing teeth; a treble clef carved at the bottom of the stair bannister; and at least two or three desks that were once musical instruments. My favorite had to have been the chaperone bench, a small sofa with room enough for three people — a single man on one side, a young lady on the other and a chaperone in the middle. The middle section of the bench did my have a back, as it wouldn’t do for the chaperone to fall asleep and leave the courting couple to their own devices.
The next stop on the tour was the Amzi Love House, another treasure trove of stories and artifacts. A tour home that’s been reviewed in Fodor’s Travel Guide and the New York Times Travel Magazine, the house has been in the same family for eight generations. According to Sidney Caradine, who lives there now, it’s been on every Pilgrimage tour since 1951.
The house is filled with dresses, paintings, sewing tables, wedding china from Amzi Love’s nuptials and more. The stories about Love’s five daughters were even better. No pining after rich husbands for these five sisters. They were too busy teaching music, designing cottages and paying off Guardians Bonds so Union soldiers who remained in Columbus after the Civil War could not take the house. When electricity was first available in Columbus, the sisters installed it in the home themselves, rather than pay an electrician.
Rosewood Manor and Gardens was the biggest of the homes, and it was all about the decor: rugs from Persia and Istanbuul, china from China, vases and centerpieces from Germany, furniture from England and more.
My afternoon ended in an intimate chapel on the Rosewood Manor grounds.
The chapel had not always been on the property – Mrs. Hicks had found it in bad shape, brought it back to Rosewood and restored it. Now it sits by the gardens, a quiet, comfortable addition holding an elaborate cross-stitching clearly inspired by Da Vinci’s The Last Supper as well as a 300-year-old Bible sitting atop the altar.
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