Muscogee County GaArchives Photo Person.....Ridenhour, Charlotte Virginia 
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Christine Thacker http://www.genrecords.net/emailregistry/vols/00033.html#0008100 May 9, 2007, 1:49 pm

Source:             Sesquicentennial Supplement III, Ledger - Enquirer
Name:               Charlotte Virginia Ridenhour
Photo can be seen at:
http://www.usgwarchives.net/ga/muscogee/photos/ridenhou12792gph.jpg
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                       Ridenhour Home
                 House is Older Than Occupants
                       By Beverly Barnhart
                       Enquirer Staff Writer

  Renewed interest in rennovating the historic section of Columbus isn't what 
brought Charlotte Virginia Ridenhour to that area.
  She never really left.
  "My people have lived in this house for 107 years," she said. referring to 
her antique-filled home. Mrs. Ridenhour added that she was born in that house.
  "My family moved in here in 1871. I wasn't in the 'land of the living' then. 
My parents had four children when they moved here, and then three more." Mrs. 
Ridenhour is the youngest of the seven.
  She has lived in Columbus for most of her 94 years. "The furniture has always 
been here in the house. I've been away some though." 
  Gardens surround the Ridenhour home. "Everything here has a memory and a 
history," Mrs. Ridenhour observed.
  She indicated a Ginkgo tree in the front yard. "That tree is the second 
largest of its, kind in Georgia.The largest is near Augusta. The Ginkgo, you 
know is the earliest form of tree life extant," she said.
 "When my parents came, here, my father moved the tree. He moved it again when 
we added onto the house again." She says visitors often stop to see, the tree 
in November when the leaves turn yellow. "But I think it's just as lovely in 
spring when it comes out with  tiny little fanlike leaves,"  she said. 
  ''The holly tree in the front yard is the daughter of a holly tree on the 
Southside. It lived about 100 years and kept sprouting." she said.
  A crepe myrtle tree in the yard is the largest tree Georgia, according to 
Mrs. Ridenhour. "It's as old as the house. It's quite 100 years old. It still 
blooms 'way up in the top." 
  Many of the plants in the yard are native to Georgia. Several varieties of 
wildflowers and a wild azalea are blooming now.
  "Someone came by once and told me, 'Oh, I want to come back when everything's 
in bloom.''' Mrs. Ridenhour said.  She explained to her guest that there is 
never a time when everything is in bloom at once.
  "It changes," she said. The spry Mrs. Ridenhour enjoys watching the changes, 
and says she

See RIDENHOUR, S-15
Continued From Page S-l4

spends "every minute I can" in the garden.  But the, gardens are not the only 
part of the I Ridenhour home with a story. Inside, the house contains many 
antiques whose histories Mrs. Ridenhour likes to relate.
  There's an antique chest once owned by Dr. William Kirkley Schley, Mrs. 
Ridenhour's great uncle. 
  "The chest was made by the Columbus Ironworks, who made armaments for  the 
Confederacy," she said. "It's made without a nail or screw except for the 
handle and lock. And it's walnut and. Pine.”
  The house itself has changed through the years.
  "The house was first two big rooms-a bedroom and a living room-dining room," 
she said. "My father said the grate in the living room was doubtless the first 
in town." Mrs. Ridenhour is particularly interested in tracing her ancestry. "I 
think everyone ought to know about his family," she said.
  Her great grandfather, William Schley was governor of Georgia from 1835-1837. 
Under him,  Mrs. Ridenhour said, the first office of natural resources was 
instituted. "It was, what we would now consider, I imagine the organization of 
conservation," she said.
   Maybe the tendency to conserve runs in the family.
   “ I  preserve if I can,” Mrs. Ridenhour explained.
  The antiques, the gardens, the memories-they are all carefully tended by a 
lady who remembers-and enjoys.

 Special Sesquicentennial Supplement III
Ledger- Enquirer, Sunday, April 30, 1978, pg S-14,15.
    

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