Family honored special son by naming historic Augusta building | CPT PPP Coverage
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Family honored special son by naming historic Augusta building appeared on www.augustachronicle.com by Joe Hotchkiss.
Developers are preparing to renovate Augusta’s oldest skyscraper. The building’s name is familiar to many Augustans. What’s less familiar is how the Marion Building got that name.
Marion actually is the man’s first name. But the story begins with his last name – Phinizy, one of Augusta’s oldest families.
Marion’s great-grandfather, Ferdinand Phinizy, emigrated from Italy in the 1700s, settled in Augusta and is buried at St. Paul’s Church. His grandson, Ferdinand II, became one of the richest men in Georgia through cotton trading and property development.
Ferdinand II had seven sons. Two died in their 20s. Four other sons became prominent citizens while pursuing careers in cotton, insurance and the law, and while accumulating stock in and later leading the Georgia Railroad.
Marion Daniel Phinizy was born in 1859. He was born in Augusta, never married and spent the last 50 years of his life in Athens, where he died in 1927 at age 68. In most historical sources, that’s where Marion’s story seems to end.
More clues, though, add to Marion’s short biography. Before his father died in 1889, Ferdinand II appointed his sons and son-in-law joint trustees to 30-year-old Marion, whom his father referred to in his will as “my unfortunate son.”
Other legal documents reference a family dispute after Marion’s death over his assets. They refer to Marion as “a person of unsound mind.” They also include this phrase: “During his lifetime and for many years prior to his death, Jacob Phinizy had acted as the sole trustee of Marion Daniel Phinizy (his brother), a person non compos mentis …”
The Latin phrase identifies parties in legal proceedings who aren’t fully mentally capable of handling their own affairs.
Building anticipation:‘Augusta’s First Skyscraper’ to be preserved
Another will, unusual for its time, reveals more. Marion’s father owned a slave named Julia. She purchased her freedom in 1862 and remained with the family as a servant. When she died in 1892, the terms of her will stipulated that her savings must be left to Marion, “to whom she was greatly attached.”
Julia Phinizy likely was a round-the-clock caregiver for the disabled Marion.
One of Marion’s descendants, Bowdre Phinizy Mays Jr., agreed with that likelihood when interviewed by The Augusta Chronicle in 2017. Mays wrote a massive history of his family and other Augusta families titled “Is Living Well Still the Best Revenge?”
The book briefly mentions Marion, “known as a grown-up as Uncle Manny,” Mays wrote. “Always had a supply of beaten biscuits in his pockets; looked after by his older brother Jacob as it seems Uncle Manny did not deal from a full deck!”
Jacob Phinizy was president of the Georgia Railroad and Banking Co.; president of four cotton mills; and a one-time mayor of Augusta.
After the Marion Building burned in Augusta’s Great Fire of 1916, Jacob bought it and vowed to renovate it. He formed a corporation to attract investors, called the Marion-Daniel Corp. An Augusta Herald gossip column in October 1921 first mentioned the name of the rebuilt structure would be “the Marion Building,” but without specifying a namesake. The building opened in August 1922.
When the building changed ownership from the Phinizy family in 1963, an article reporting the change in The Augusta Chronicle mentioned Jacob Phinizy, stating: “The building was remodeled and named in honor of his brother, Marion Phinizy.”
The fog of history might permanently obscure the precise nature of Marion’s disability. But while the names of his brothers have faded, the touching honor they bestowed on their special sibling remains, literally carved in stone.
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