William Root House Museum And Garden

History

The Root House was built circa 1845 for Hannah and William Root, early settlers of Marietta. Mr. Root was one of Marietta’s earliest merchants and its first druggist. Born in Philadelphia in 1815, Mr. Root moved to Marietta in August 1839 to open a drug/grocery store. A year later, Root married Hannah Remer Simpson, and in 1844 the couple purchased a lot for their house on the corner of present-day Church and Lemon streets in downtown Marietta. During the 1850s, eleven members of the Root family lived in the home along with two enslaved men and two enslaved women (learn more about urban slavery).

As the Union Army approached Atlanta in 1864, the family left Marietta and fled to Washington, Georgia. They returned in July 1865 to find their house had survived Sherman’s Atlanta Campaign. The house was sold in 1886, and William Root continued to run various drug and mercantile businesses in Marietta until his death in 1891. In 1893, the original house lot was divided in half and a library was built facing Church Street, which required moving the house down the hill to face Lemon Street.

The house was a single-family residence until the 1940s when it was subdivided into apartments. By the late 1980s, the Root house had fallen into disrepair and was slated for demolition. After the house was documented as one of Marietta’s oldest buildings, preservation efforts began, and in 1989, Cobb Landmarks and Historical Society acquired the house and moved it to its present location.

After it was moved in 1990, the house was restored to its c. 1845 appearance through architectural analysis. Furnished with period furniture in the fashion of the 1850s, each room shows evidence of middle class life. Great effort has been made to bring only authentic pieces to the house. Outside, visitors can see the recreated kitchen and working 1850s cookstove, and can walk among the flower beds and vegetable plots planted with plants that were available in Cobb County before 1860.