Given an opportunity to enter the old house, Trevor Beemon jumped at the chance. He brought with him an engineer, a tape measure and a deep-seated desire to see where so much history, some of it purportedly bloody, had unfolded.
A real estate agent let them in. They walked floors covered with carpet; under it were heart-pine planks laid around 1840. In one upstairs bedroom, Beemon slowed and stared at the floor covering. Local lore maintains that it hides a stain left by a bleeding soldier as the Civil War burned its way toward Atlanta.
He crawled under the house and eyed its joists. They were as solid as the long-ago day carpenters hammered wooden pegs into them. Some still had their pine bark.
As he left the house, Beemon, the executive director of Cobb Landmarks & Historical Society, had no doubt. The old structure at the crossroads of Barrett Parkway and Bells Ferry Road ought to be saved.
On that, everyone agrees.
But should it be moved? Left in place? And what about the car wash that’s proposed for the site? If the house and business shared the same site, how would the car wash be designed?
On a recent morning, Beemon ticked off those questions. He sighed. “Our interest is not in fighting over the house,” he said. “Our interest is fighting for the house.”
It’s not a new fight.
In Cobb, and elsewhere in metro Atlanta, relentless growth often collides with brick-and-mortar remnants of the past. The house that Eliza and Robert McAfee built nearly two centuries ago is just the latest example.
But some history buffs are particularly interested in the fate of the McAfee house because many structures in the area were destroyed during the war. Fifteen miles north, the village of Acworth was left “a heap of ruins,” Union Maj. James A. Connolly wrote in his diary.
“I succeeded in saving a few houses, occupied by ‘war widows’ and their families, but all the rest of the town went up in smoke,” he wrote on Nov. 13, 1864.
“When we reached Marietta we found that all the business part of the town was burned,” Connolly wrote the following day.
Credit: Miguel Martinez
Credit: Miguel Martinez
Some of the houses were pressed into service, as the McAfee house was. It served as a Union general’s headquarters.
That history has Cobb residents debating whether the McAfee house should be moved or stay where it is. Meanwhile, the potential buyer, a car wash chain, just wants to get the deal done – with or without the house on site.
Since Beemon toured the house four years ago, he and the nonprofit that he heads have been trying, with no luck, to find someone willing to buy the house and move it.
Blood-stained floor?
It’s easy to miss the historic marker in the tumult of cars and trucks and SUVs and minivans where the two big roadways intersect. The plaque, erected by the Georgia Historical Commission in 1954, explains why it’s worth a moment of your time to learn a bit of history while looking out the window of your ride – perhaps while waiting for the traffic light to change?
A federal cavalry unit, led by Union Brig. Gen. Kenner Garrard, was in “daily conflict” with Confederate Maj. Gen’s Joseph Wheeler’s forces in and around the region in June 1864, the marker notes. The Robert McAfee house was Garrard’s headquarters during a portion of this period, the sign says.
Those few words hardly convey the extent of the conflict.
Union and Confederate forces had been fighting from Tennessee into Georgia from late 1863 into the warm months of 1864, knocking each other down before jumping back up to have at it again. The skirmishes and battles popped up in forest and field.
As the confrontations neared Noonday Creek in Cobb County, Garrard chose McAfee’s unassuming, two-story house to plan his moves. Confederate forces may have used it, too. The house reportedly served as a field hospital.
It survived the assault with a reputed reminder of the occupation — a blood-stained floor. Did a private from Illinois shed blood there? A corporal from Ohio? Maybe some unfortunate infantryman from Georgia? Or is that merely myth?
Beemon laughed. “That’s the local legend,” he said.
Over the years, the land where the McAfees once farmed proved equally fertile for industry and commerce. Today, the house is ringed by an array of businesses and faces Bells Ferry Elementary School.
The house, despite its historic marker, does not enjoy protection from development. Cobb has a historic preservation ordinance allowing for the designation of local historic districts and landmarks. The McAfee House is not a designated structure, Cobb officials say.
Credit: Miguel Martinez
Credit: Miguel Martinez
‘Moving parts’
The house went under contract in mid-December to Northgate Tommy’s Express, a car wash chain with 14 locations in Georgia and Florida. The seller is the Medford Family Limited Partnership, a Blairsville corporation that owns the structure.
The contract marked the third time the house has had a serious potential buyer, said Guerry Overcash, a broker with Drake Realty who’s handling the proposed sale. He declined to name the price.
Overcash anticipates he’ll soon close on the property, which he first saw more than seven years ago when he took over the site from another agent. “And (the other agent) had had it for 10 years.”
Why has the property been on the market so long? Some interested buyers didn’t pony up enough cash, he said. Others who wanted to move the house and make it their home were stymied because they couldn’t find a suitable tract for relocation, he said.
The sale hinges on whether the Cobb Planning Commission recommends rezoning the site to allow a car wash, followed by the Cobb County Board of Commissioners’ approval of that recommendation.
“This is my first, and hopefully my last” sale of a historic property, Overcash said. “It has too many moving parts.”
The issue is not simple, agreed JoAnn Birrell, the Cobb commissioner whose district includes the house. The hope is a buyer will want to restore and maintain the structure, she said.
“We all want to save historic structures. The hard part is finding an entity,” she said. “It needs a lot of love.”
The house’s role in the 1864 fighting is reason enough to leave it where it is, said Carol Brown. She’s a co-founder of Canton Road Neighbors, a nonprofit that keeps a close eye on zoning issues. Brown thinks it would make a perfect museum.
“It would be a real mistake to relocate the house and put it in the hands of a private buyer,” she said. “Think of all the school kids who could visit the house.”
‘A problem’
Damian Maher understands – to a point. The vice president of development for Northgate Tommy’s Express, he wants to make the McAfee site the company’s 15th. The 2-acre tract – with passing traffic, businesses nearby, easy access in and out of the site – would be perfect, he said.
The company is willing to let the house remain, building a car wash behind and to the side of it. But it does not want to be responsible for the structure. “We all want to save the house, but what if no one wants to pay for it?” Maher asked. “Then we’ve got a problem.”
It’s a problem best solved by moving the house, said Beverly McAfee of Marietta. If anyone has a vested interest in the old structure, she does. Her late husband, Don McAfee, counted Robert McAfee as one of his great-grandfathers. A fifth-generation Cobb resident, Beverly McAfee has spent decades helping preserve history in her native county. She is 84.
McAfee, who has no connection with the partnership that owns the house, recognizes the home’s historic worth. At the same time, McAfee, who took an active role with her husband in their construction business, appreciates the site’s value.
“We don’t need car washes, and things like that, but I also believe people have a right to sell their land,” she said. “We’ve been pretty bad in Cobb County about tearing down things. I think it probably needs to be moved.”
Credit: Courtesy
Credit: Courtesy
Beemon feels the same way. But at this point, he’s willing to listen to any proposal to save an old house where a soldier may have bled.
“I understand that people want to preserve this house in the original setting,” he said. “But if the original site is destroyed, what’s the point?”
The planning commission is scheduled to discuss the matter on June 6.
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