The Georgia Trust Foundation has released its annual report on properties statewide it deems “in peril,” and two properties in the CSRA made the list for 2024.
The historic First Baptist Church on Greene Street made the list, as well as an Antebellum home, called Cedar Grove, located at 4227 Columbia Road in Martinez.
While the history of First Baptist is well-documented, Cedar Grove, which is now owned by Our Savior Episcopal Church, has always been shrouded in mystery.
Cedar Grove was built in 1851. The home was named after all of the Cedar trees that were planted around the house and is one of, if not the, oldest houses in Columbia County.
Travis Foust, a life-long parishioner of Our Savior Episcopal Church, says that he would attend youth “lock-ins” as a teenager at the house, and the kids would recite many of the legends surrounding the old home.
“It was a spooky place, but in a fun way,” Foust said.
One legend is that in 1854 the two-year-old son of the original owner, Benjamin Berry, fell off of the balcony and died. The grief-stricken and distraught father was then said to have hung himself on the grand staircase.
While the child, Edgar Berry, is buried on the property, the father’s grave is lost to time.
“The whole hanging thing is probably a myth, and other sources seem to indicate that the child died of typhoid fever, but it still makes for fun ghost stories,” Foust said.
According to a history compiled in the mid-20th Century by parishioner Claude Hill, Benjamin Berry was dead by the onset of the Civil War, and the house “began to disintegrate like a ship without a rudder.”
Hill states that Berry’s widow, Emily, showed the courage of Scarlett O’Hara in keeping the plantation running, and she also joined other women in volunteering by helping tend to war wounded. During this time, Emily Berry met and caught the fancy of Confederate General George W. Evans.
It appears that Berry had found her Rhett Butler, but the real-life general was not the fictional scoundrel portrayed in “Gone with the Wind.”
Evans was a former mayor of Augusta prior to the war, and he wed the Widow Berry after the war was over. According to Hill, Evans was so well liked that the post office was named in his honor, and the enclave of Evans keeps that name to this day.
It was the custom of the time for a new husband to inherit a widow’s property, but the marriage contract specifically stated the house would remain in the Berry family, and it would be Emily’s children who would inherit the house.
Emily Berry’s surviving daughter, Mary would go on to marry William Walton, a descendant of the family of George Walton, signer of the Declaration of Independence.
The property changed hands over the years and was deeded to the Episcopal Church in 1964, where it became Columbia County’s first kindergarten.
Keeping such an old home in good shape is a costly endeavor, which has led to the home being listed as imperiled.
“The recent discovery of mold, along with the ongoing costs of maintenance, threaten the continued use of the building, as the needs and capacity of the congregation have changed,” states the report by the Georgia Trust Foundation.
According to Foust, the church has been able to keep up with some of the maintenance needs, such as replacing worn flooring and painting the upstairs rooms; but inflation of the cost of building materials and other financial factors makes it impossible to totally renovate the structure.
Foust says that he and others would like to see the building become a cultural and special events center like Sacred Heart.
“We really want to save the building, even if it needs to be moved to a new location,” Foust said.
Scott Hudson is the Senior Investigative Reporter and Editorial Page Editor for The Augusta Press. Reach him at scott@theaugustapress.com
