25. The HUFF HOUSE

(private), 70 Huff Rd., NW., one of Atlanta's oldest buildings, was erected in 1855 upon the foundations of a former dwelling built in 1830. A small clapboard structure with a double front gable and brick end chimneys, the cottage stands inconspicuously upon a hill overlooking the Inman railroad yards. Although the house has caught fire twice, its appearance has remained virtually unchanged. 

The house is still (1942) occupied by Miss Sarah Huff, who has lived here all her life except for the four months in 1864 when she was a war refugee. In her booklet My Eighty Years In Atlanta she recounts her childhood experiences during that stirring summer when General Sherman's Federal troops were forcing the Confederate defense lines to fall back to Atlanta. At that time her father, Jeremiah Huff, a courier for Stonewall Jackson, was fighting in Virginia, and his wife and children had no protection against Confederate marauders who forcibly took their supplies. At last the family was forced to take flight with other refugees.

While the retreating army was massing for a last stand, the house became headquarters for Major Charles T. Hotchkiss, and the Confederate flag was raised over its roof. "When the Union troops advanced, General George H. Thomas, commander of the Army of the Cumberland, established his headquarters here under the United States flag. When Sherman's men began to set fire to the city, George Edwards, a resourceful Scotch neighbor, saved the house by saying it belonged to an Englishwoman and running up the Union Jack. Thus the Huff House became known as the House of Three Flags.

When the family returned just before Christmas of 1864, they found the place abandoned except for hordes of hungry cats howling dolefully. Until the cottage could be made habitable again, Mrs. Huff and her children took shelter in the kitchen, which stood separate from the house. Here the indomitable woman not only set up her own household but dispensed hospitality to itinerant refugees who were trying to reach their own homes.

Contents