“The Throne”: The Carriage Stone from 1323 Broad St. In Augusta, Georgia
June 16, 2015
JF and Sarah McAndrew Armstrong’s carriage stone from 1323 Broad St. in Augusta, GA now sits at the home of their great-great ganddaughter, Marie Van Sant Hudson
The home of John Francis and Sarah McAndrew Armstrong at 1323 Broad St. in Augusta was torn down around 1901. Although there are no known photos of the house, it is depicted on the 1890 Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps as a two-story wood frame domestic structure with three small one-story buildings sitting behind it.
During the Great Depression of the 1930s, my mother and her siblings grew up at 1259 Ellis St. near Sacred Heart Catholic Church. 1259 Ellis St. was the home of their maternal grandmother, May Armstrong Casey Morrison, who was JF and Sarah’s oldest child.
In the backyard at 1259, near the fig tree by the fence, sat “the throne”, a semi-circular piece of stone with a step cut into it. None of the kids knew what it was or where it had come from but, in their estimation, it was the perfect size for a throne. Hence the name.
Decades later, when my mother and father had a houseful of kids of their own, a former neighbor from Ellis St. asked if he and his wife could have the throne for their yard.
My mother recently told me that only then did she find out that the throne was, in fact, the carriage stone from her great-grandparents’ house on Broad St. The thought, she said, of giving it away sent her Aunt Frankie “up in smoke”.
Eventually, Uncle Bill, my mother’s older brother, moved the stone to his house in North Augusta, where it stayed until his daughter, Marie, inherited it.
Today, JF and Sarah’s carriage stone sits in the garden in front of Marie’s home in South Carolina.
Frances Armstrong Casey (1893-1988), early 1970s, with the carriage stone from JF and Sarah McAndrew Armstrong’s residence at 1323 Broad St. in Augusta, Georgia, Aunt Frankie was JF and Sarah’s oldest grandchild
Images
The images above were provided courtesy of Marie Van Sant Hudson.