The Bostwick-Fraser House

Our offices are on the second floor of the historic Bostwick-Fraser house, located at 199 Frasier Street, near the square in Marietta, Georgia. In addition, we have an accessible entrance, meeting room and restroom facilities on the first floor. There is reserved handicapped parking on the premises.

History of the building

The Bostwick-Fraser House is the second oldest house in Marietta, Georgia. In the book The First Hundred Years, a Short History of Marietta, author Sarah Gober Temple regarded the Bostwick-Fraser house as one of the two most historically interesting houses in Marietta, and it is one of two structures in Cobb County listed in the Historic American Buildings survey.

Margaret Mitchell, perhaps on Mrs. Temple’s recommendation, is said to have suggested it to David O. Selznick as a possible model for Tara, as it is an excellent representative of the Greek Revival in upcountry Georgia. Although it did not make Gone with the Wind, the house became the setting of Eugenia Price’s novel Beauty from Ashes, with its real life wartime owner as its heroine.

The house was built around 1844 by Marietta merchant Charles Bostwick. In the early 1850s the house was purchased by Ann Couper Fraser, daughter of John Couper, owner of the Cannon’s Point Plantation on St. Simon’s Island. One of Mrs. Fraser’s daughters, Fanny, was a nurse with the Confederate army and served also as a secret agent, supplying information about Federal troop movements and carrying dispatches. When Sherman’s army occupied Marietta in 1864, the lower floor and grounds of the Fraser house became a hospital for wounded soldiers, with the family confined to the upper floor. Until recently, the house and remaining grounds were owned and lived in by descendants of Ann Fraser.

Special thanks to Rob Coats for providing historical background information.