The Furman Civic Club is
sponsoring a one day event on Saturday, April 12, 2003 in which historical
homes, churches, and sites in the Furman area will be open for tour. The
tour will start at 9:00 AM and conclude at 6:00 PM.
Tour headquarters will be the Furman Community Center (old school)
located on Highway 59. The price
will be $10 for adults and $5 for students, and lunch will be available at
the school. Funds raised from
the event will be used to maintain the Community Center and fund National
Historic District signs to be placed on Highway 21.
Homes scheduled to be on
tour include “Wakefield”, the classic steamboat gothic house featured in
Silent in the Land, Patience Plantation, the Purifoy/Lipscomb home
featured in Kathryn Tucker Windham’s Thirteen Ghosts and Jeffrey, “Fox
Hill”, recently restored by Don and Katrina Bell, the Stabler Home, the
Palmer-Barlow-Britt Home, and several other homes not previously on tour.
In addition, Bethsaida Baptist Church, Furman Methodist Church,
Palmer Cemetery, Old Snow Hill Cemetery, and Snow Hill Cemetery will be
available for tour.
Furman was designated a
National Historic District in 1999 and has many antebellum homes and
structures still standing. The
town has a fascinating history beginning circa 1802 when the first settlers
came to the area from South Carolina. Most
of the Wilcox County towns were settled by Scotch and English settlers, and
Furman also to some degree. However,
many of the early settlers of Furman came from the South Carolina low
country and were of French ancestry. The
Snow family settled on the high hill now the site of Old Snow Hill Cemetery
around this date, and thus the present day Furman community was known as
Snow Hill. It was renamed Furman
at a later date, and a new community was founded a few miles to the west -
Snow Hill. Furman Academy was a
popular school in the late 1800's and is the predecessor of present day
Huntingdon College in Montgomery.
Some fascinating persons
came from this small town, including Elkanah Burson, an attache’ to
General Robert E. Lee. Mr.
Burson, a original member of the Wilcox True Blues company and later to
serve in the Alabama House of Representatives, delivered the Confederacy
surrender papers to General Ulysses Grant at Appomattox.
He then returned home to Furman.
(His great granddaughter is now the owner of Wakefield.)
Some direct descendants of these original settlers still own homes
and property in Furman, and will be hosts at the pilgrimage.
If you would like more information on this event,
please contact Don Donald at 334-682-9825 days or e-mail him at grsouth@frontiernet.net.
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