In 1920, the house was purchased by a cotton plantation owner, Mrs. Josie Bacon, formerly the wife of Edward T. Newton who died in 1904. Her family had come down from Virginia to Greene County at the end of the 18th century, claiming the land granted to her great-great-grandfather, Douglas Watson, for his services in the American Revolutionary War. She was a relative of Eliza Fannin, Douglas Watson's great granddaughter, and had previously been living for by past 14 years at the nearby Carter-Newton House on Academy Street, where her children grew up. She brought with her from the Carter-Newton House all of the family furnishings which fill the house today, including one of the ornate floor-to-ceiling mirrors from Atlanta's historic Kimball House hotel as well as a fine table which Gen. William T. Sherman and his troops dined on while passing through Burke County where her aunt, Electa Carter, had a plantation.Perkerson, Medora F. White Columns in Georgia. Random House 1988. She named the house after one of her oldest relatives, Charles Bonar; the portrait (c. 1760) of his son, William Bonar, hangs in the sitting room along with that of her grandfather, Joseph Watson Varner. Miss Josie's husband, William T. Bacon, who grew up in nearby Lexington, Georgia, was the first editor-in-chief of the UGA student newspaper, The Red and Black,The UGA student yearbook Pandora, 1894. editor of The Madisonian newspaper for 50 years, and State Senator. In 1968, he was elected posthumously to the Georgia Newspaper Hall of Fame,http://www.grady.uga.edu/alumni.php?al1=Alumni&al2=Hall+of+Fame&al3=Newspaper&page=halloffame_newspaper.inc.php . and his portrait-like photograph hangs at the UGA's Grady College of Journalism next to Ralph McGill, his political opposite.
