Georgia Cottage

Augusta Jane Evans was born in Columbus, Georgia on May 8, 1835. Her parents, Matt and Sara Howard Evans, moved the family to Mobile, Alabama in 1849, where Matt Evans became a cotton factor. In 1857, Matt Evans purchased the Georgia Cottage from Alfred Batre, a trustee for William A. Hardaway and his wife, Mary Jane Hardaway. The Georgia Cottage had been built in 1840 by John Murrell for his daughter, Mary Jane.

The Evans family used the proceeds Augusta made from the publishing of her second book, Beulah, to purchase the cottage. Beulah was published in 1859 when Augusta was eighteen years old, and it sold over 22,000 copies in its first year of publication – an astonishing accomplishment that established Augusta as Alabama’s first professional writer. 

Augusta Evans lived in the Georgia Cottage from 1857 until her marriage in 1868. During the time she lived in the cottage, Augusta wrote three novels: Macaria, St. Elmo, and Vashti. The wing on the right side of the cottage served as her study, and she was married in the front parlor of the home to Confederate veteran Colonel Lorenzo Madison Wilson on December 2, 1868. 

Augusta Evans Wilson’s career as a writer spanned more than half a century. Her first novel, Inez: A Tale of the Alamo, was published in 1855, when Augusta was only fifteen, and her last book, Devota, came out in 1907, two years before her death. She was one of the most popular American authors of her day, and at least three of her books became all-time best sellers. One of her most popular books, Macaria, written during the Civil War, was published with a Confederate copyright and was dedicated to Confederate soldiers as Wilson was a staunch supporter of secession. Although efforts were made to keep this pro-secession work from reaching Northern audiences, copies were smuggled through the lines and it was well-received by some readers in the North.

Augusta Evans Wilson died on May 9, 1909 from a heart attack, and she was interred in Mobile’s Magnolia Cemetery. Given her support for the Confederate States of America from the perspective of a white Southerner, and her literary activities during the American Civil War, Augusta Wilson was a significant figure in shaping the identity and culture of some Southerners in the nineteenth century and she was inducted into the Alabama Women's Hall of Fame in 1977. 

Homestead, Melissa J., "The Publishing History of Augusta Jane Evans's Confederate Novel Macaria: Unwriting Some Lost Cause Myths" (2005). Faculty Publications -- Department of English. 73. 

Georgia Cottage, National Register of Historic Places. Accessed December 11th 2020. https://catalog.archives.gov/id/77837077.