Isom Place/ Carothers-Isom
- Jay Brothers
- May 2
- 2 min read
1003 Jefferson Ave. Oxford, MS
Circa 1843. 2-story planter style, Greek Revival
Samuel Carothers, a local planter, built a three-room log cabin which became the original portions of this home in 1843. It was constructed at 1003 Jefferson Ave. as a 2 story planter style. Carothers died in 1845.
Two years later, in 1847, Dr. Thomas Dudley Isom (?-1902) purchased the property. Isom was from Tennessee. About 1836, working as a young trading post clerk, he evidently offered the name of Oxford (from Oxford, England) for settlement. He wed Sarah McGehee from South Carolina. He used the home as a home, office and apothecary for about a 60 year career. As a young clerk in the area and an early settler in 1835, Isom suggested the town be named Oxford, like Oxford University in England, in hopes to be chosen as the site of the first university in the state. In 1841, his suggestion came true. Isom was the nephew of Craig who made the trade deal with the local Chickasaw for the land that became Oxford.
Dr. Isom’s daughter Sarah "Sallie" McGehee Isom (1854-1905)was the first woman on the University of Mississippi faculty (1885, oratory) as well as any coeducational southern university. Her sisters attended the Athenaeum in Columbia, TN; Sallie went another direction by attending Augusta Seminary in Virgina among other institutions. She resided at Isom Place all her life. In 1929, a dormitory at Ole Miss was named for her, and nearly fifty years later, in 1981, the University of Mississippi created the Sarah Isom Center for Women and Gender Studies, in her honor.
According to local lore, local historians and Hotty Toddy, "the charter of the University of Mississippi as signed in its dining room."
By 1960, Dr. Haley Dewey Worthy (1897-1964) and Opal Pauline Miller Worthy (1904-2001) owed the property and restored the home.
The early 1990s saw Susan Barksdale owning the place. Susan Barksdale Howarth, repurposed the home into a Bed and Breakfast. In the 2000s, Jim and Sally Barksdale ?? gavie the property to the University of Mississippi, and Ole Miss turned the home into the Barksdale Reading Institute. It promoted literary skills in children through the third grade. In 20290, SRM Properties bought the property and has operated it as an event venue. NR 1975
Sources: walking tour Oxford
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