{"id":136936,"date":"2024-02-19T18:28:50","date_gmt":"2024-02-20T00:28:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/?p=136936"},"modified":"2024-02-19T19:45:11","modified_gmt":"2024-02-20T01:45:11","slug":"city-of-oxford-to-consider-resolution-to-sell-historic-antebellum-home-cedar-oaks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/city-of-oxford-to-consider-resolution-to-sell-historic-antebellum-home-cedar-oaks\/","title":{"rendered":"City of Oxford to Consider Resolution to Sell Historic Antebellum Home Cedar Oaks"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

by JOE ATKINS<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

OXFORD \u2013 The year was 1864, and Union General Ulysses S. Grant<\/strong>\u2019s soldiers invaded Oxford<\/strong> for the second time.  Two years earlier, Union troops took over what is today known as the Cedar Oaks Heritage Home<\/strong>, then just off the Oxford Square, and held Confederate prisoners in the basement. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This time Grant\u2019s troops threatened to burn the house down just they like they did much of the rest of the city. Two women–Molly Turner Orr<\/strong>, whose father built the home in 1857, with help from Sara Isom<\/strong>\u2014stood in the way of that conflagration and convinced Grant to keep his torches away from the home.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Today, a group of local women under the banner of the Cedar Oaks Guild<\/strong> are continuing the tradition. They have vowed to save the house from a current effort that would allow the city to sell it to private individuals, investors, or enterprises. The Guild oversees operations of the house, where tours, pilgrimages, weddings and various social events regularly take place. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

On Tuesday evening (February 20, 2024), the Oxford Board of Aldermen<\/strong> will consider a resolution to seek \u201clocal and private legislation\u201d that would allow the city to sell the home if it deemed it was necessary. The Cedar Oaks Guild had no prior idea the resolution was on the agenda.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe were not informed at all about the meeting and did not have time to request to be on this week\u2019s agenda,\u201d Cedar Oaks Guild President Keri Dibrell <\/strong>said. \u201cWe are not on the meeting agenda.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The resolution prompted a sharp response from Lillian Susan Walker Smith Sahag<\/strong>, whose parents Walker Hassell<\/strong> and Jane Smith<\/strong> donated Cedar Oaks to the Centennial, Cosmopolitan and Reader\u2019s Guild Women\u2019s Clubs in 1963. That organization turned the property over to the city of Oxford in 2010.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI was born in the home,\u201d Sahag wrote in a February 19 letter to Mayor Robyn Tannehill<\/strong> and the Board of Aldermen. \u201cIt was with GREAT EFFORT (her emphasis) and great sacrifice that this home was given to the people of Oxford. \u201c<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Citing the home\u2019s long history\u2014its builder, William Turner<\/strong>, also built the Lyceum on the University of Mississippi<\/strong> campus, Sahag continued, \u201cThis home and the land was NOT GIVEN for the city to profit from the sale of this house! We could have easily accomplished this on our own. NO! This home was donated in love to the citizens of Oxford!!!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cedar Oaks has been a survivor indeed. In 1963, the home had literarily to be sliced in half so it could be moved from its original location just off Oxford\u2019s fabled Square to its current location on Murray Street<\/strong>. Its removal was required to provide space for a new hotel and accommodate growth and development around the Square.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a lengthy response to the letter, Mayor Tannehill insisted the city has no existing plans to sell the home. \u201cCedar Oaks is a Mississippi Historic Landmark. Alterations to the building have to be approved by the Mississippi Department of Archives and History. The house will be protected.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, Tannehill wrote, the resolution would allow the city to sell the house and its surrounding property \u201cif the Board decided that the expenses associated with Cedar Oaks were outweighing the benefit of public use of the property.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Oxford is a growing city, Tannehill wrote. \u201cA town with 28,000 tax payers that sees approximately 60,000 people in town on any given weekday and as many as 250,000 on an SEC home football weekend has to be creative in exploring possibilities for our growing city.\u201d Such possibilities could include \u201cselling the home to someone who may preserve and live in the home,\u201d Tannehill wrote.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sahag stands firm, however. \u201cOnce again, CEDAR OAKS is fighting for her life. Stand tall to save this home! Stand, as William Turner\u2019s daughter did and saved this home from the fire, as my family and Oxford residents did and saved it by gifting it to the people of Oxford.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Joe Atkins is a veteran journalist and professor emeritus of journalism at the University of Mississippi who has lived in Oxford since 1990. He can be reached at <\/em>jbatkins3@gmail.com<\/em><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Moving Cedar Oaks from North Lamar in 1963. Read more about the moving here.<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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See also: “John Cofield\u2019s Photo of the Week: ‘Cedar Oaks'”<\/a><\/h3>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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