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Sutton House
This house was built in August of 1887 for Mrs. Anna Lull. A couple of years later it was bought by Mrs. Emma C. Sutton. She was the mother of Mrs. Silas McBee, who died very young. Silas McBee was an architect of Walsh-Ellet Hall. Mrs. Sutton’s other daughter Mrs. Carter had also died young and left her daughter, Emma Sutton Carter, in her grandmother’s care. She and her husband were killed in a car accident.
In 1930 the house caught fire and was rebuilt by its owner at the time J.F Gilbert. It is currently owned by the University and rented by various theologians.
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Sutton House (1887)
This house was built in August of 1887 for Mrs. Anna Lull. A couple of years later it was bought by Mrs. Emma C. Sutton. She was the mother of Mrs. Silas McBee, who died very young. Silas McBee was an architect of Walsh-Ellet Hall. Mrs. Sutton’s other daughter Mrs. Carter had also died young and left her daughter, Emma Sutton Carter, in her grandmother’s care. She and her husband were killed in a car accident.
In 1930 the house caught fire and was rebuilt by its owner at the time J.F Gilbert. It is currently owned by the University and rented by various theologians.
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John Elliott's House (torn down)
This house was built by Dr. John Barnwell Elliott in 1874. Dr. Elliott was the second son of Bishop Stephen Elliott and came to Sewanee in 1869 at the age of 28 to be the resident physician and instructor in chemistry. Since the University had been struggling at that time and his underpaid father had left him little money, he designed the house to fit ten student boarders. As a small boy he had ridden up the mountain on the original cornerstone in 1860 when it was pulled up by "two yolk of oxen and 32 borrowed from neighbors" (Purple Sewanee, page 16). Dr. Elliott stayed until 1885 when he resigned to go to Tulane where he had been teaching during his winter vacations. He was very popular with the students as well as the faculty and his departure was much regretted. In 1887 the University gave him an honorary Ph.D. degree.
Various people rented the house after Dr. Elliot’s departure. Mr. Colmore's family lived in it for a few years and then it was bought by deaconess Graham. She lived there with her sister until she died. The next resident was Dr. Yerkes, who lived there when he taught at St. Luke's. Dr. Loaring Clark purchased the house in 1924. He and his family lived in it for some years. When he accepted a church in Jackson, Tennessee, he sold the house to the University. The University demolished the house in 1959 when the Varnell house was built.
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The Redwood House
This house was built across the road from the Sewanee Military Academy by a Dr. Vaughan of Mississippi. It was on the lot where Mrs. Jackson's house is now. Dr. Vaughan sold it in 1869 to a Mr. W. P. Redwood. From then on it was known as the Redwood House, despite his only living there for a short amount of time. General Gorgas, Dr. Shoup, and Professor Dabney and his large family were some of the people who lived in it.
“Mrs. Dabney is a large, handsome, loud voiced, kind-hearted, tactless, managing woman... Professor Dabney, a dear, delightful, abstracted, over run, learned, entertaining, over-worked man, delicate, refined, and venerable looking, although only 38.” – Sarah Barnwell Elliot to her brother.
Dr. Dabney died there in 1876. The University Record says in May, 1875, "Professor Dabney and family have moved into the Redwood House."
This house was noteworthy for being the place where Sewanee's first ghost was seen or rather felt. Two eligible bachelors, Major E.A. Green, Commandant of the Battalion and Charles Beckwith, Headmaster of the Grammar School, later Bishop of Alabama, used to walk to Proctor's Hall in the evening and they claimed that before they reached Redwood House an unseen companion would join them and walk along with them but would leave them always at Redwood Gate. It became known as the ghost of the Professor, the professor being of course Professor Dabney. He was the first member of the faculty to die on the Mountain, buried in the Sewanee Cemetery.
Mr. Harry Easter wrote that Redwood was abandoned and dilapidated by 1877. It later on burned.