Aunt Fanny's Cabin To Relocate From Downtown Smyrna To Carroll County: Smyrna City Council

SMYRNA, GA — Three months after initially voting to demolish the crumbling Aunt Fanny's Cabin unless it was sold to someone else, Smyrna City Council members awarded a bid to a Carroll County beef farm to move the cabin to its property.

In December, city council members voted to tear down the cabin unless someone submitted an acceptable proposal to move the cabin off city-owned land by Feb. 1 — but as calls to save the cabin came just as the proposal deadline approached, council extended it until March 16.

Four proposals were submitted at the last minute, one of which came from Ashley Limousin Farms in Carroll County.

At Monday's city council meeting, council members voted 4-2 to award the bid to the beef farm, which vowed to move the cabin before July 1.

Council members Charles "Corkey" Welch and Susan Wilkinson voted against the measure, and they also voted against the initial decision to demolish the cabin.

Welch criticized the bid process, the Marietta Daily Journal reported, saying he would like more time to consider the options after only receiving them last Wednesday, even proposing interviewing the bidders.

Wilkinson mentioned wanting to keep the cabin where it is, which she has brought up in previous votes regarding the cabin.

In the vote, council added a stipulation that it would be allowed to reconsider other bids if the farm's removal plan doesn't work out, the MDJ reported.

The 19th century cabin, which once served as a sharecroppers' house and a famous Southern restaurant, hasn't been maintained since the city of Smyrna bought it in the 1990s. After years of little-to-no maintenance, the cabin is now in a crumbling state — so much so that the city closed it to the public in 2020 because it was deemed a safety hazard.

The cabin — which also garnered a reputation for using derogatory depictions of Black people to entertain restaurant guests — is named after Fanny Williams, a longtime servant of some of Smyrna's first settlers: the Campbell family, Patch previously reported. Williams, a Black woman, was a beloved figure in metro Atlanta, and is credited as an early civil rights advocate.

While city officials acknowledge the cabin is an important part of Smyrna's history, the majority voted for its demolition in December because of the high cost to rebuild or renovate. Cost estimates to renovate were between $500,000 and $600,000, and rebuilding it would've cost around $400,000, Patch previously reported.

Regardless of what happened to the cabin, Mayor Derek Norton and other council members have repeatedly committed to creating a proper memorial for Williams at the site of the existing cabin.

"No matter if you were for the cabin being saved or for it being demolished, or whatever you were for, everybody 100 percent was for memorializing Fanny Williams appropriately," Norton said in a February city council meeting.

Related:

• 4 Proposals Submitted To Save Aunt Fanny's Cabin: Report
• Smyrna, Coalition Still Divided On Aunt Fanny's Cabin: Report
• Smyrna Council Officially Extends Aunt Fanny's Cabin Deadline
  
• Aunt Fanny's Cabin Proposal Deadline Extended: Smyrna Council
• Future Of Aunt Fanny's Cabin Up For Discussion, Again: Report
• Calls To Save Aunt Fanny's Cabin Come As Deadline Looms
• Aunt Fanny's Cabin To Be Demolished Unless Sold: City Council
• Fate Of Aunt Fanny's Cabin To Be Decided By City Council Monday
• Aunt Fanny's Cabin Could Be Repaired, Demolished Or Preserved