After enough time goes by, rumors have a way of turning into facts.
The vast majority of antebellum homes in Georgia claim some type of burn scars attributed to Sherman’s scorched-earth march to Savannah.
The Pace House in Vinings is one such example. The story goes that the old home used today for weddings and gatherings was once a 17-room house built by one of Vinings’ founders, Hardy Pace. When Pace escaped to Milledgeville during the war, his estate was used as a hospital as well as a headquarters where Sherman planned his siege of Atlanta. Then it was burned.
At least that’s the story everyone’s accepted. Now, a team from the Vinings Historic Preservation Society is hoping to start digging in the dirt for the truth.
When Hardy’s son, Solomon Pace, and his wife, Penelopy, returned to the site between 1865 and 1874, they rebuilt the three-room house that stands today over the old home’s rubble foundation. Those rocks are shifting and are unable to continue supporting the northwest corner of the building, said Michael Smith, president of Momentum Construction who will work on rebuilding the base of the house.
“It could fail tomorrow – it could last another two years, possibly,” Smith said. “But I could go under there and easily pull blocks out of the foundation of that corner.”
VHPS sees the repairs as urgent and plans to earmark some of the money from its January Vegas in Vinings fundraiser to get the project under way, even if it’s not enough to complete it.
But the mostly volunteer-run group is really looking at these major repairs as an opportunity to learn more about the home’s history. They’ve begun working with archeologist Garrett Silliman of Terminus Archeological Research on a plan to parlay the foundation repairs into an investigation into the past. Silliman will start various tests and digs early next year.
“There’s a lot of public memory about this house; a lot of folklore,” Silliman said. “The artifact pattern will be able to tell us if it was really a hospital, even if it was only a hospital for a few weeks.”
What lies beneath the house and in the rear yard could give clues as to whether soldiers really died and convalesced within the walls, and even if the rumors about the burning are true.
“We could find ether bottles, syringes, possibly even limbs, which would verify the house was in fact used as a hospital,” said Karen De Ruyter, president of the VHPS.
When the crew gets up under the house, they’ll be able to tell whether the wood and other materials were burned at some point and even be able to see how vast the 17-room spread really was.
“We have no pictures of Hardy and no pictures of the house,” said Gillian Greer, VHPS executive director. “When our archeologist examines the yard, he can tell us the layout of the house.”
The home was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2009, but it does not receive any special funding for that designation. Cash reserves may not be as high as they should be, and the foundation of the cherished Vinings historic site is crumbling, but the group is focused on getting to the bottom of the home’s history.
“As we come up on the 150th anniversary, now is the perfect time to revisit those old stories,” Silliman said. “It’s an ideal opportunity to reassess how we see the Civil War and how it ties into our cultural identity.”
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