BY ANN CIPPERLY
FOR THE OBSERVER
OPELIKA — Steep gables and porch columns adorned with lattice and icicle-like trim on the eaves create a storybook look for the picturesque Gingerbread House on South 9th Street in Opelika. While it stood for decades as a reminder of the early days in the town’s history, in the 1970s the unique structure began to fade and deteriorate, becoming in danger of being lost.
The Gingerbread House had been intriguing since childhood when my family would drive past it. As a young journalist, I finally mustered up enough courage to knock on the door one sultry July afternoon.
Sarah Lula Bean opened the door and stared at the nervous reporter carrying a heavy camera bag. I told her I was the niece of a lady she knew, and she graciously invited me inside. As we sat at her kitchen table, Bean began telling her family’s story of her great-grandparents, John Calhoun and Sara Jane Griffin Edwards, who built the house.
When questions were asked, she presented an old family Bible with the exact dates of her great-grandparents’ births, marriage and deaths, along with other family information.
Bean explained that her great-grandmother and grandmother lived to reach their 90s, and the story of moving into the house was told over and over.
Her great-grandparents built the house to resemble the William Penn Yonge house at Spring Villa. According to family history, the house was finished in September 1865.
Bean’s story began with the end of the Civil War in April 1865, and, like other Southerners, the Edwards were beginning to rebuild their lives. They had spent the Civil War years at plantations located 12 miles to the east of Opelika, not far from the Yonge house.
With similarities between the Edwards’ home and the house at Spring Villa, many wondered if the same carpenter built both houses. Horace King, master bridge builder and former slave, was known to have built the Yonge house in 1850 for the daughter of his former owner, with whom he had a lasting friendship.
Family records indicate the builder of the Gingerbread House was most likely John Edwards, as he was a master carpenter and built other houses in Opelika.
Bean said she believed the Edwards moved into the house on a Saturday afternoon in September 1865 with a two-year-old son and an infant daughter. One son died before they moved to this house. Her great-grandmother was 24 years old, and her great-grandfather was 27.
Bean had been told that since the Civil War was over, the Edwards brought a young black couple and their two children with them to the house. Later, the Edwards had four more children, two sons and two daughters. The black couple had 10 children born in the house.
Originally, the property the house occupies extended from 9th Street at Avenue C back to 10th Street. The Edwards also owned the triangle-shaped property across the street, where they grew strawberries.
Some of the furniture the Edwards moved to their new home from the plantation was still in the house. Bean had two beds, which were wedding gifts to the Edwards, and washstands.
Bean was her parents’ only child. They divorced when she was five years old. Her grandfather, Dr. Samuel Henry Saul, was a veterinarian in Montgomery. Bean’s grandmother lived in the house with her mother after Saul died.
Although Bean had little to say about her great-great-grandfather, Loxla Edwards, the Rev. F.L. Cherry wrote about him in the early history of Opelika, as well as J. Newell Floyd, who had a family connection. John Calhoun’s father, Loxla, was a prominent early settler.
Loxla was born April 4, 1800, in Jones County, Georgia. He married Olivia Brown in Jones County on March 1, 1824. He first moved to Talbot County and then to Russell County, Alabama, about a mile and a half from Opelika in 1834. He had a small store and traded with the Indians.
Three months later he moved near what is now known as Spring Villa, where he built cabins and opened a plantation on a small creek called Edwards Creek.
Loxla quickly prospered and built another home in 1847 where his daughters were married and his sons given a marriage festival. John and Sara Jane Griffin were married at her father’s home. Sara’s father, Andrew Bonapart Griffin, was also a prominent early settler and state senator.
“All of these occasions were enjoyed by his neighbors, sons and daughters without distinction,” Cherry wrote. “He was democratic in all things, as well as politics. At this late day, I remember those fetes with other pleasurable associations of my early manhood.”
Cherry wrote in detail of the flare-ups Edwards encountered with Native Americans, who killed his brother, and the attacks on his family.
There was an incident with a squad of six stragglers of Wilson’s Raiders who intruded on Loxla and his family, hanging him until he was nearly strangled and stealing from his home. Cherry records they would have left him hanging if not for the pleas of three of his faithful servants.
Loxla moved to Opelika in 1867, while his two sons John and Polk had moved there two years earlier, according to Cherry. Loxla traveled between his plantation and town until 1873, when he settled in Opelika.
Loxla was mayor of Opelika for three successive terms, 1875, 1876 and 1877. Cherry wrote, “It is on record to his credit, and the credit of those who elevated him to office, that those three years are among the few years of great peace, quietude and prosperity in the municipal history of the city.”
According to J. Newell Floyd, two of John and Sara Jane’s sons and one son-in-law, Dr. Samuel H. Saul, were veterinarians, graduating from college in Washington, D.C.
The Edwards’ daughter, Lula Victoria, married George Nelson Hodge and lived next door to her parents on South 9th Street. Another daughter, Wilhelmina, and her husband Dr. Saul had a daughter named after her mother who married Samuel Calhoun Bean.
The Bean’s daughter’s, Miss Sarah Lula Bean, was the last to live in the Gingerbread House.
As the house continued to deteriorate, some feared the unique house would be lost. When Bean was asked if anyone had wanted to purchase the house to restore it, she said, “No one has wanted to buy it, not in a long time. I couldn’t sell it even if I wanted to; my uncle in Miami and cousin in Montgomery are part owners.”
Bean, who was nearly an invalid, said she wasn’t able to move any place else.
Another owner of the house was I. J. Scott Sr. of Opelika, who owned 20 percent. “My interest in buying it was to have it restored,” Scott said in 1979. “I thought it was one of the most unusual houses, and I think it should be preserved.”
After he learned of the estate situation he was unable to purchase the house. He offered his share of the house free twice to organizations.
“It looks like an impossible situation as far as I can see,” Scott said. “If something isn’t done to preserve it at an early date, it will be beyond repair.”
After Bean passed away, the Carpenter Gothic house was vacant for 25 years before it was purchased by the Opelika Historic Preservation Society (OHPS).
Peter Weiss, associate professor of the McWhorter School of Building Science at Auburn University and a former president of the OHPS, removed everything rotten and stabilized the house. He enlisted the help of architecture students.
The OHPS sold the house to John Marsh, who put a for sale sign in the front yard.
In 2006, John Hendricks had been looking for a new location for his Auburn clock shop and museum after losing the lease. Former Opelika Mayor Barbara Patton called Hendricks to see if he would consider an Opelika location and gave him a tour.
When he could not find anything suitable, Hendricks sat in his car on 9th Street near the railroad tracks and said he realized what was wrong. He said, “Lord, I have been doing this wrong, and I pray that you will find the best location.”
He drove down 9th Street and was getting ready to turn onto Avenue B to return to Auburn. Since there was a long line of cars, he decided to drive through the intersec-tion and found himself in an area he had never been. “I said, ‘Lord where are we going?’”
Then suddenly he said he saw the Gingerbread House and said, “That is it!” Seeing the house brought back a memory from 1976, he said, when he had seen a photo of the house in the newspaper and was smitten with it. He placed the paper on a bedside table and had forgotten about it.
He talked to Marsh about buying the house. Marsh would do the restoration. Hendricks and Margaret closed on the house in January 2007.
The house had deteriorated so badly that there were times Hendricks said he had his doubts. At the end of November 2007, the Hendricks began displaying 400 antique clocks. The shop and museum opened in June 2008 with no exterior changes.
“It was a challenge and a labor of love,” said Hendricks. “We are glad we did it.”
The Gingerbread House began a new life as the Old Timers and Chimers Clock Shop and Museum. After a few years, it closed during Covid.
The Gingerbread House is listed on the National Register of Historic Places as part of the Geneva Street Historic District. It is also registered as one of three gingerbread houses in America.