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Photo credit freestone

Entering the Knott House is a trip to the past, as this 1840s mansion still show its Victorian splendor. This mansion, unlike most house museums, still retained all of its original furnishings dating back to the time when the Knott family took possession of this Victorian home.

There are poems by Luella Knott hanging from items of furniture, preserved exactly as she had left them. This earned the mansion the nickname, “the house that rhymes.”

Photo credit readerwalker

The Knott House was built around 1843 for Thomas and Catherine Gamble Hagner. Originally, the house was only about half the size it is now, but Catherine Hagner added six more rooms about a decade later.

The Knott House is truly a historical house, for it is from its front steps where Union General Edward M. McCook read the Emancipation Proclamation that freed the slaves of North Florida.

Photo credit perrygrl

The Knott family acquired the mansion in 1928, and added the Classical Revival portico to the front of the building. They house was also decorated with Victorian furnishings and Luella wrote poems about many of the furniture pieces in the house which she attached with satin ribbons. William V. Knott, on the other hand, had an active political career and twice served as State Treasurer (1903-1912 and 1928-1941), State Comptroller (1912-1916).

This museum mansion is rumored to be haunted, and many swear of ghost sightings in the place. The Spanish moss and live oaks do add an eerie touch to the picture of this Southern mansion.

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