304 East Jefferson Street (House), Americus

Source document Quoted word for word from HABS GA,131-AMER,9-. Not written, edited or summarised by this site.

Example of shotgun-type house typical of the area ca. Description: The gable of this shotgun house faces the. street with a shed porch across the front. It is one room wide and originally two rooms deep. A fireplace is between the two rooms. A bath has been added in the second room and a room has been added at the rear with a lower gable roof. AU roofs are metal standing seam and the lapped wood siding remains exposed. The front door is on the left with a 9/9 window next to it. Some bead boards walls and ceilings remain. The chimney has cotbelling at the top. The house is at grade at the front and the lot falls to the rear Some brick piers remain. History: This lot, formerly 411 E. Jefferson under the old numbering system in the City of Americus, was willed to E.T.

Chamblee executor of the estate of Moran. Moran acquired the estate from Katherine Kerr Ship in 314 E. Jefferson was bought, sold or conveyed through the years until heirs of Paul Thomas Sr. sold the lot to the City of Americus persuant to the Jefferson/Ashby Urban Redevelopment Project. This house was located in the McCoy Hill neighborhood, encompassing Academy, McCoy, Poplar, Winn, Jefferson, and Ashby streets. It was originally the residential property of a prominent antebellum attorney and Confederate general, Henry Kent McCay. The modem misspelling results from the name's pronunciation not matching its own spelling. During the Reconstruction Era in the the site was used for public executions even as freedmen were establishing a black residential neighborhood in the immediate vicinity.

After the destruction of the old McCay home in the early s, the site became the location of the city's first public school for blacks, McCoy Hill School, built in With the earlier addition of Mt. Olive Baptist Church in the neighborhood boasted the residences of many of the black community's professional class. For example, two of the city's preeminent black educators, Professors George Philips and Alfred S. Staley, were homeowners there. For almost 130 years, the McCoy Hill neighborhood has nurtured generations of Americus' black citizenry.