My last Diary post centered on White Point Garden, and now I want to explore the immediate vicinity a bit more. In keeping with “White Point Garden Weddings” occurring across the street in the park, number two Meeting Street was essentially a wedding gift presented by George Williams to his daughter Martha. One of very few individuals in the impoverished South who was wealthy after the Civil War, George Williams built his home at 16 Meeting Street, a Victorian mansion of approximately 24,000 square feet, around 1876.
In 1890, Martha Williams married Waring Parker Carrington, a jeweler in his family's business on King Street, in an elaborate wedding at Trinity Methodist Church a little farther up on Meeting Street. The story goes that Mr. Williams gave his daughter a check...