This house was constructed by Mr. C.W. Scofield in 1887, the same year he built the Truslow-Elliott house. The first residents, Mrs. Frances Sylva D’Arusmont Guthrie and her two sons, Kenneth and William Norman, lived in the house for one year. Mrs. Guthrie was the daughter of the famous feminist abolitionist Fannie Wright. The Guthries had lived abroad in Scotland until they came to Sewanee. Both sons, educated in Germany and France, became clergymen; in fact William Norman was a well-known rector of St. Mark's-in-the-Bowery in New York.
The next residents were Mrs. Elliott, her three daughters and two sons. Mrs. Elliott was the widow of Bishop Robert Elliott, the first bishop of West Texas. She and the children came to live in Sewanee and bought this house in 1888. Their house was a center of social life and activity until Mrs. Elliott’s death in 1894.
Lionel Colmore, an Englishman, was Commissary of the University when he bought this house in 1905. Although he and his family arrived in the area in 1895, they lived in other houses while his three sons went to Sewanee. Colmore was very popular with the students, who called him “General.” When he died in 1922, he left the house to his daughter Dora; both she and her sister Eva lived there. Dora, a well-known cook, built a flourishing catering business during the Guerry regime. Eva died in 1948 and Dora, an invalid for several years, died in 1963. The house was a summer rental for several years and was then purchased by Mrs. Jean Tallec in 1966. Mrs. Tallec, her daughter, Christi Ormsby, and the two Ormsby boys lived there until the home burned down on Dec. 16, 1971.
A modern home has since been built on the site by the Rev. Herbert Wentz.
Gailor, C. (1970). Old Sewanee Houses; The First Fifty-Years, 1860-1910. Unpublished manuscript, the University of the South, Sewanee.
SEWANEE, Tenn.--Fire Thursday night destryoed one of the famous private homes in this University of the South community, the three story frame and stone dwelling of Mrs. Jean merriman Tallec, her daughter, Mrs. Christie Ormsby, and two grandchildren.
They were reported at home at the time the blaze was discovered, about 8:15 p.m. CST, but escaped without injury. The home was completely destroyed and none of the contents were saved.
According to officials, the fire was believed to be of electrical origin. The Sewanee Volunteer Fire Department answered the call, but the old home, built about 1888, was burning out of control and could not be saved.The structure, located about a block west of the university's central quadrangle on North Carolina Avenue, was known for a half century as the Colmore house ...The dwelling was built in 1888 by Mrs. Kenneth Guthrie, mother of two famous scholars and daughter of of Fannie Wright, one of the early American Suffragettes, who started the utopian plantation, Nashoba, near Memphis in an effort at economic emancipation of slaves in the 1830's.
Chattanooga News-Free Press, Dec. 17, 1971