The JF Armstrong Residence at 1323 Broad St. In Augusta, Georgia
June 15, 2015John Francis Armstrong (1845-1893) immigrated to Augusta, Georgia from County Sligo, Ireland in the summer of 1865, shortly before his twentieth birthday. In Augusta, he found work as a bookkeeper and met Sarah Theresa McAndrew, whom he married in 1868.
At the time of the 1870 U.S. census, JF, Sarah, and their one-month-old daughter were living in Augusta’s Ward 3 with eight members of their extended family and three servants. JF’s first cousin, Patrick Armstrong, who was married to Sarah’s older sister Mary Ann, was listed as the head of the household.
In 1878, JF and James Daly opened Daly and Armstrong, a dry-goods store at 224 Broad St. The business prospered and, by the 1880 U.S. census, JF, Sarah, and their three children were living in their own household at 1323 Broad Street.
Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps
JF Armstrong’s house at 1323 Broad Street on Sheet 29, 1890 Sanborn Fire Insurance Map for Augusta, Georgia, JF’s house is located on the 7th lot above 13th Street on the right-hand side of Broad Street, Image courtesy of the Digital Library of Georgia
The 1884 Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps of Augusta didn’t include the 1300 block of Broad St. but the 1890 edition did. Sheet 29 from the 1890 maps depicts 1323 Broad St. as a two-story wood frame residence with front and side porches and three small one-story buildings behind the house.
Close-up of 1323 Broad St. (at bottom) on Sheet 29 of the 1890 Augusta, Georgia Sanborn Fire Insurance Map, Image courtesy of the Digital Library of Georgia
Because the 1890 U.S. census was destroyed in a fire, there’s no census information on the residents who lived on the property that year. However, since Sarah McAndrew Armstrong had died in 1887, it’s likely that the household consisted of JF and his children May, Jimmy, John, and Joe, and possibly some servants.
1323 Broad St. remained JF’s residence until his death in 1893, although he spent most of 1891, 1892, and 1893 in Ireland. Not long after his return to Augusta in the late summer of 1893, he was declared mentally insane. He was admitted to the Georgia Lunatic Asylum in Milledgeville the last week in September and died there six weeks later.
In 1892, while JF was in Ireland, his daughter, May, married William Celestin “Dick” Casey. Dick was the managing editor at The Augusta Herald and had grown up three lots down from the Armstrongs at 1337 Broad St., where his mother was still living.
May and Dick lived at 1323 Broad St. with their children, Frankie, Joe, Sarah, and Gerald and May’s three younger brothers. After Dick died from appendicitis in September of 1896, May, her children, and siblings continued to live in the house.
At the time of the 1900 U.S. census, May along with her children, and her brothers, Jimmy and Joe, still resided in the house. Her brother, John, and his wife, Catherine Sheehan Armstrong, lived nearby at 1356 Broad St.
Augusta Sanborn Fire Insurance Map, Sheet 11, 1904, Close-up of the new house at 1323 Broad St. (2nd from right) built for May Armstrong Casey by contractor Henry Morrison. Image courtesy of the Georgia Digital Library.
The Sanborn maps were updated in 1904, by which time May had built a new house at 1323 with a stable in the back. A two-story wood-frame structure, the house had a one-story porch on the front and a two-story porch in the back. The notation “Br. 1st” on the map may indicate that the first story was brick, but this has not been verified.
In 1905, May married Henry C. Morrison, the contractor who had built her house, and they sold the property. The house was later torn down and the site is now a commercial property.
References
1870 U.S. census, City of Augusta, Richmond County, Georgia, population schedule, Ward 3, p. 70 (penned), dwelling 511, family 565, John F. Armstrong in household of Patrick Armstrong; digital image, Ancestry.com (https://www.ancestry.com : accessed 12 June 2015); NARA microfilm publication roll: M593_172; Page: 132B; Image: 288834; Family History Library Film: 545671.
1880 U.S. census, City of Augusta Ward 4, Richmond County, Georgia, population schedule, enumeration district (ED) part of 4th Ward, p. 23 (penned), dwelling 254, family 267, Jno Armstrong; digital image, Ancestry.com (https://www.ancestry.com : accessed 12 June 2015); NARA microfilm publication T9, roll 0163; Family History Film: 1254163; Page: 411C; Enumeration District: 101; Image: 0604.
1900 U.S. census, City of Augusta Ward 4, Richmond County, Georgia, population schedule, enumeration district (ED) 65, p. 117-A, dwelling 136, family 179, May Casey; digital image, Ancestry.com (https://www.ancestry.com : accessed 13 June 2015); NARA microfilm publication T623, roll 219.
“Augusta, Georgia Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps, 1890 & 1904.” Dlg.galileo.usg.edu. From Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps for Georgia Towns and Cities, 1884-1922 Collection at the Digital Library of Georgia. Accessed at http://dlg.galileo.usg.edu/sanborn/CityCounty/Augusta.html in June 2015.