The Phoebe Anne Community House

Phoebe Anne Community House

Halifax, Halifax Co, VA

The family of Silas Baker and Winnie (Haley) Carr lived in the Phoebe Anne Community House near outside of Halifax, VA. The house was owned by the Episcopal Church located down the road. The family was very active in the Episcopal Church and helped to run the community house. Notice the dog stretched out on the front porch? There always seems to be a dog somewhere in the family's pictures.

Elton Davis Carr, daughter of Baker and Winnie, wrote about the history of the this community house in her scrapbook. It reads as follows:

The Phoebe Anne Community House

A long time ago about 1840 or somewhere along there a poor widow with several daughters lived in a log cabin at this old place when the widow died and the daughters married and moved away. Mr Dabney Cosby bought this place and built a saw mill here and rented and finally sold it to Mr Milton Booth who built a small frame house here he married twice and lived there till the mill was blown up. He never finished paying for it and it Mr Dabney Cosby bought it back and sold it to his daughter Mrs Van Bluthuysen [?spelling] who built the present house when the old one was burned down. She painted it red. She sold it to Mr Henry Edmunds when she moved to Richmond. He painted it gray and had an orphan home made of it and named it after his mother "The Phoebe Ann House". Then he gave it to the church and called it the "The Phoebe Ann Community House". The big oak tree which stands out in the yard now at the mail box Mr Dabney Cosby cut it down for a post years ago and that is the reason it ________ and pretty now. Mr. Van [Bethuysen] came out here during the Civil War and meat up with Miss Cosby and married. He was the nephew of Jefferson Davis and that was his name.

By Elton Carr

Information from Mrs. M L C Edmundson

Both the Community House and the Episcopal Church still stand today. The church is today called the Emmanuel Episcopal Church. The Phoebe Anne Community House is a private residence and the intervening years have not been kind to it. The outbuildings are no longer there and the large building attached to the right side of the house is gone as well. I wonder if today's residents have any idea of the house's rich history.

Phoebe Anne Community House as it stands in 2010.

Emmanuel Episcopal Church 2010