DARIEN, Georgia – A man has been charged with starting a fire that destroyed a nearly century-old home on the site of a coastal Georgia rice plantation linked to the largest slave auction in U.S. history, authorities said Friday.
Firefighters rushed to Huston House in McIntosh County on Wednesday after smoke was seen coming from the spacious white farmhouse. But the flames completely destroyed the house, built in 1927 by former New York Yankees co-owner T. L. Huston.
Witnesses described a man they saw leaving the home after the fire broke out, and a sheriff’s deputy detained a suspect who fit that description, McIntosh County Sheriff’s Lt. Mike Ward said in a news release Friday. fair. He said the 33-year-old had items taken from the home and was charged with arson, robbery and other crimes after being questioned by investigators.
Long before Huston built a house there, the site had been a rice plantation for decades before the Civil War. In 1859, owner Pierce Mease Butler took more than 400 slaves to Savannah and sold them in what is considered the largest slave auction in United States history. Held in the midst of torrential rain, the sale became known as Hora do Choro.
At the time of the fire, the Huston House and surrounding property were owned by the Georgia Department of Natural Resources. The house was unoccupied and in a poor state of repair.
The Georgia Trust for Historic Preservation included the house on its 2019 list of Georgia’s Most Endangered Historic Sites.
“Despite the site’s association with a difficult period in our state’s history, the property is nevertheless an important historic resource that allows us to tell Georgia’s full and complete story,” said W. Wright Mitchell, president and CEO of the Georgia Trust, in a press release. “Unfortunately, when historic buildings sit empty and neglected for long periods of time, fire is not uncommon.”
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