Bonar Hall
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Bonar Hall | |
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| Location | 962 Dixie Avenue Madison, Georgia 30650 |
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| Coordinates | 33°35′15″N 83°28′54″W / 33.5875°N 83.4817°W |
| Area | 10 acres (4.0 ha) |
| Built | 1839 |
| Architectural style | Late Georgian |
| MPS | Madison Historic District |
| NRHP reference No. | 72000388[1] |
| Added to NRHP | January 20, 1972 |
Bonar Hall is an 1839–40 Georgian-style house in Madison, Georgia, one of the first of the grand-style homes built during the town's cotton-boom heyday, 1840–60. It was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1972.
The two-story brick townhouse was built by John Byne Walker, an early Morgan county pioneer, and his heiress bride, Eliza Fannin, half-sister of a war hero, James W. Fannin, Jr., the famous commander at the Goliad Massacre during the Texas Revolution after whom counties in Georgia[2] and Texas[3] are named. Their home sat on a large tract of land that she inherited from her father, Isham Fannin, one of the founders of Madison and Morgan County, he being on the first board of county officials who were, in turn, responsible for founding the town.[4]
The first bricks, made on John Byne's plantations, were laid on February 25, 1839, starting with the brick kitchen; all of the brickwork was finished by early July. They moved into their new home 10 months later.[5] Designed by an unknown professional architect, the main house, known then as the John Byne Walker Townhouse, was originally a four-over-four traditional Georgian manor house with rooms 20’x 20’, eight fireplaces, 18"-thick walls, silver doorknobs and 13' ceilings.[6] The Georgian-style house featured a small one-story portico with four white columns,[7] with small brick "summer houses" on either side (now a tea house and an orangery) and, in back, a three-room brick kitchen flanked on either side by matching his and her brick “necessaries”. Today, the 13-acre (53,000 m2) estate includes, in addition, a two-room cabin originally from downtown Madison and one of the oldest buildings in the town (c. 1810–1815), a slave cabin (c. 1830), a tenant house (c. 1900), a classic 1880s Victorian carriage house, a 1920s log smoke house, and a working well. Of particular note is the classic formal boxwood garden dating from around 1850 and described in numerous books on historic gardens of the South.[8]
A cotton-growing magnate, John Byne Walker was one of the wealthiest men in Morgan County at the time of the Civil War,[9] owning over 200 slaves and some 4,000 acres (16 km2) of land in Morgan County, Georgia and 6,000 in Wharton County, Texas, to which he traveled yearly between 1846 and 1862.[5] One of the original backers of the Georgia Railroad, he was the city's leading benefactor of the Baptist Church, donating among other things all the brick to the construction of the Madison First Baptist Church (1858).[10] Walker brick were also used in the construction of the train depot (1840), the Presbyterian church (1842), and the Baptist College (1849), renamed the Georgia Female College.
The war years
All of the Walkers' sons joined the Panola Guards, and one was mortally wounded at the Battle of Gettysburg. Because of Mr. Walker's strong ties to Texas, throughout the war they opened up their home to wounded soldiers of the Texas Rangers.[11] After the Battle of Chickamauga in 1863, the house became a makeshift hospital for the better part of a year, with up to 20 Rangers at a time being cared for. The chaplain and Texas war correspondent, Rev. Robert F. Bunting, who visited there a number of times, made their home the Texas Depot for mail, where all letters from Texas families were sent for forwarding to the regiment.[12] Walker was ruined by the war and died a pauper.
In 1880, the house was purchased by the prominent Broughton family, the house being a wedding present by John Broughton for his newly married son, William A. Broughton. The Broughtons made significant changes; the major ones that remain include the elaborate Victorian veranda which replaced the front portico, the stencilled ceilings in the double parlor, and the Victorian carriage house. Mr. Broughton died in 1902 and a decade later Mrs. Broughton sold the house and left for Mobile to be with her newly married daughter and other relatives there.