Waverley stands between Columbus and West Point on the west bank of the Tombigbee River, a four-story Greek Revival house with a sixty-five-foot domed foyer, four circular staircases and a tall octagonal cupola. Colonel George Hampton Young, a lawyer from Georgia, bought the land in 1835. His family arrived in 1836 with twenty-five enslaved people. By about 1852, when the house was finished, Young held more than two thousand acres and had enslaved more than 117 people.
The estate had its own cotton gin, brick kiln, mills, tannery and ice house, gardens, kennels and a private pool, and cabins where the enslaved people lived. The Youngs were secessionists, and all six sons fought for the Confederacy. The mansion stood remote enough to come through the war without damage, and it sheltered displaced people from elsewhere.
After Young died in 1880, the house stayed in the family until 1913, when his last surviving son died. It then sat empty for about fifty years. Squatters used it, and a beehive filled the cupola. In 1962 Robert and Donna Snow of Philadelphia, Mississippi, bought the house and spent three decades restoring it room by room. It was listed on the National Register in 1973 and named a National Historic Landmark the same year. The house has been open for tours, so confirm before you drive out. The enslaved people who lived and worked here are the other half of its history.
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