Benet House

Stephen Vincent Benet, author, Pulitzer Prize winner, poet, short story writer and novelist writing such things as the book length narrative poem, John Brown’s Body and the short story, The Devil and Daniel Webster also has a Georgia connection.

A building that now houses the admissions office for Augusta State University is known as the Benet House, and the reason is simple enough.

Benet lived there.

Though Benet hailed from Pennsylvania he ended up in Augusta, Georgia from 1911-1915 and wrote his first book, Five Men and Pompey while living in the home in 1915 to much acclaim.

Benet’s arrived in Augusta in 1911 when his father, Colonel J. Walker Benet took command of the United States arsenal located there, and Stephen was promptly enrolled in Summerville Academy. The Benet family took up residence in the Commandant’s House where Stephen Vincent Benet remained during his formative years until he went to Yale University in 1915.

The home was placed on the National Historic Register in 1971.

You can find out more here.