Visit historic Kitty’s Cottage and Old Church in Oxford Georgia.
About Kitty's Cottage and the Methodist Civil War
Tour the 1841 church, which was the first chapel of Emory University. Kitty’s Cottage was the home of a freed slave who did not want to return to Africa.
Birthplace of Emory University. Chartered in 1836. Less than a mile from the center of the Oxford College campus, down quiet, two-lane Wesley Street, a 150-plus-year-old, two-room, white clapboard cottage stands empty.
The house's plain and unassuming appearance belies the remarkable fact that it was the home of the woman who became the center of a controversy that ripped the Methodist Church apart over the issue of slavery in 1844. The painful schism lasted nearly a century.
Known locally as Kitty's Cottage, the house is named for its first occupant, Kitty Andrew. In 1834, through the bequest of a Mrs. Powers of Augusta, Kitty, a twelve-year-old slave, became the property of James O. Andrew, a Methodist Episcopal Church bishop and Oxford resident. Andrew was the first chairman of the Emory Board of Trustees.
According to the terms of Powers's will, when Kitty turned nineteen in 1841, she was to be given the option of going to Liberia, an African colony established for freed slaves. If she decided to stay...Georgia laws did not permit her emancipation.
When the time came, Kitty chose to remain in Georgia. According to the papers of then-Emory President Augustus Baldwin Longstreet, she explained her decision by saying, "I don't want to go to that country. I know nobody there. It is a long ways and I might die before I get there."
Because state law prevented Andrew from simply freeing her, he erected the cottage near his own home so that she could live on his property.
In 1844, when Andrew traveled to New York for the annual general conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, Kitty's decision to remain with his family would become the focal point of the conflict that split the church until 1939.
During the gathering at New York's Greene Street Methodist Church that spring, the 151 delegates fell into two camps over Andrew's status as a slaveholder. The bishop subsequently had inherited a slave from his mother-in-law and had acquired by marriage several more who belonged to his second wife.
Some northern delegates maintained that a bishop "connected with slavery" was unacceptable. Andrew's defenders, many of whom were Emory faculty and trustees, spoke of Kitty's decision, arguing that Andrew was an "unwilling" slave owner and thus not culpable. Eventually, 136 delegates voted for a plan of separation, and fifteen voted against it.
Far away from the tumult in New York, Kitty Andrew lived quietly in her cottage in Oxford. She eventually left her home on the bishop's property when she married a free man named Nathan Shell. The couple had two sons and a daughter before Kitty's death sometime in the 1850s.
What became known as "The Methodist Civil War" was not resolved until May 10, 1939, at a conference in Kansas City, Missouri. There the two branches reunited, completing a process of negotiation that had begun in 1866.
Meanwhile, Kitty's Cottage remained in its original spot, some fifty yards northwest of where it now sits, for almost a century.
In 1938, it was moved to Salem Campground, a historic church camp-meeting grounds in Newton County. It remained there for fifty-six years, serving as a museum and storage building. In 1994, the town of Oxford financed the return of the cottage to within city limits, roughly fifteen paces behind Oxford's Old Church.
--Allison O. Adams
Continuing Education and Participation
A sense of history is an important gift worth offering all residents of a place, particularly the children. Fifth grade classes in the Newton County Public Schools enjoy an annual schedule of field trips to Old Church for an introduction to the study of Georgia history.
These walls have witnessed countless community and college celebrations, concerts, plays, lectures, and weddings. The fact that the building has survived at all is a miracle that continues to unfold.
The Historical Society welcomes your participation. Annual membership is $10 for an individual, $15 for a family. Tax-deductible contributions support special projects and continual maintenance for this fragile treasure.
Amenities - Parking and Party Facilities. Call Ahead for $4 tours.Phone: 770-787-3868 or toll-free 800-616-8626 - Address: Wesley St, Oxford Georgia 30054
Birthplace of Emory University. Chartered in 1836. Less than a mile from the center of the Oxford College campus, down quiet, two-lane Wesley Street, a 150-plus-year-old, two-room, white clapboard cottage stands empty.
In 1844, when Andrew traveled to New York for the annual general conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, Kitty's decision to remain with his family would become the focal point of the conflict that split the church until 1939. 
What became known as "The Methodist Civil War" was not resolved until May 10, 1939, at a conference in Kansas City, Missouri. There the two branches reunited, completing a process of negotiation that had begun in 1866. 