Cedar Oaks (Hassel Smith Home)
- Jay Brothers
- 1 day ago
- 3 min read
601 Murray St. (orig. address 400 North Lamar) Oxford, MS
Circa 1859. 2-story Greek Revival home
At the eve of the Civil War, William G. Turner his home on North Lamar.
Turner was a local planter and builder. He is responsible for the Shegog home/ Rowan Oaks, the Compson House, Ammadell, The Magnolias and the Vineyard, among others. Turner also helped build several Ole Miss buildings. In 1842, he and others helped found First Baptist Church. The Turner family had a large orchard on the grounds: peach, apple, pear, quince, cherry and plum trees grew. A few years later, when Federal troops tried to burn the home, Turner’s sister, Molly Turner Orr, formed a fire brigade to save it. In 1866, Turner built a new 2 story home in the country north of Oxford.
The Barringer family, Paul Brandon Barringer (1809-1878) and R. Mary Pickens Barringer (1813-1880), bought the damaged Cedar Oaks home and resided from 1866-1881. They came from North Carolina. He was a cotton planter. She moved to Jackson, MS after her husband died. After Mary died, the family sold the plantation.
From 1888-1903, the Baird family resided there. Dr. William H. Baird and Addie Baird were the owners. They had moved from Louisiana to Oxford. In addition to a private practice, Dr. Baird was the Health Officer for LaFayette County for years - including during Yellow Fever epidemics.
The P. E. Mathews family from 1895-1920. He was Mayor of Oxford 1905-07.
From 1920-1954, Walker Lafayette Smith (1879-1944) and Myrtle Garmon Smith (1884-1954) owned the home. In Cofield’s Photo Collection, there is a photo from 1904 of the home, a group of men, and one of the first automobiles in Oxford. Over time, it became known as the Smith Home. Their son, (Walker) Hassell Smith (1911-1990) and Lola Alice Nason Smith (1914-1953) inherited the homestead just outside the Square. Oxford was growing, and Smith was interested in selling the lot to Holiday Inn for a Downtowner Hotel (later Oxford Inn) in the early 1960s. The University of Mississippi and the City of Oxford declined to purchase the landmark home for varied reasons.
Cedar Oaks sat at 400 N. Lamar and Jefferson until 1963.
In 1964, Mary Alice Tate and a group of women organized Oxford women’s clubs (Centennial Study Club, Cosmopolitan Club, and the Reader’s Guild) to save the home from commercial development. Mary Alice and the groups were able to arrange through complicated deals to save and move the historic home. The deal making included T.E. Avent donating land. And that was the beginning of the famed Oxford Pilgrimage in 1964. It was moved a few miles away to 601 Murray St. off Sisk Ave. It was the same site as Turner’s second house and the bricks from the basement were used for the new site. T. E. Avent donated cedars and oak trees at the new site in honor of his wife. It has been maintained by the Cedar Oaks Guild since 2011 and known as “the house that would not die.”
The Oxford Inn was developed on the N. Lamar site. In 2014, the property was redeveloped into the Graduate Oxford hotel - where my family stayed several times when our oldest child went to Ole Miss.
Sources:
Comments