Mott House - Columbus, GA
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Lat34North
N 32° 28.380 W 084° 59.675
16S E 688459 N 3594637
The Mott House is located along the Chattahoochee River Walk at 14th Street in Columbus, GA.
Waymark Code: WM827X
Location: Georgia, United States
Date Posted: 01/13/2010
Views: 5
This house never went out of the Union" is a Columbus tradition. When Union General James H. Wilson needed a headquarters after the battle of Columbus, the owner of this dwelling is reported to have said that the Union (and not the Confederate flag) had always flown in his heart. So, Wilson accepted the hospitality of Randolph Lawler Mott, whose son John was adjutant on the staff of Gen. Henry L. Benning, giving credence to the claim that many families had members who fought on opposite sides of the war.
Believed to have been built in 1844, the three-story plus cupola brick house was originally the residence of Mrs. James S. Calhoun, nee Nancy Howard. Later the residence of Daniel Griffin, president of the Southern Telegraph Line, the house was sold by Griffin to Mott in 1856.
Griffin had beautified the grounds, adding a wall along 14th Street with towers at each end. Among the flowers that he probably imported was a camellia (the best known of a genus of ten to eighty species being the camellia japonica of East Asis) that in the twentieth century became known as the "Lindsay Neill". The ornamental shrub (with blossoms that are widely ranging in variety from almost solid red to splashed with white) was named for the textile executive who propagated it while employed at the Muscogee Manufacturing Company."
Fieldcrest Mills purchased the property and used the ante-bellum house as its local administrative office. The surrounding mill buildings around and attached to the Mott House were removed and The Mott House stabilized during the 1998 construction of the TSYS Campus. The interior of the house has not been restored, and the structure is not open to the public; exterior viewing only.
Source: Historic Columbus Foundation (
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