A Historic Home and Popular Tourist Attraction Is Filled With Lots Of History

COLUMBUS, Miss. (WCBI)- Thousands are expected to be in the Friendly City fir the 2018 Spring Pilgrimage.

Visitors will get the chance to tour more than a dozen historic homes on this years pilgrimage such as The Amzi Love Home.

“I’ve lived here longer than I did in my home in Memphis where I grew up,” said Sid Caradine, the Amzi Love homeowner. “This is home.”

To the naked eye, the Amzi Love home may look like your typical modern day home, but there’s more here than meets the eye. Just ask the homeowner himself.

“I’m the seventh generation of the family to live here and the first male of my family in 100 years,” Caradine expressed.

Caradine said his Amzi Love home is named after his great great grandfather, and has been standing tall since 1848.

“They’ve never taken anything out,” he said. “They haven’t updated it. I still use space heaters and things like that, and I cook on a 1920 gas stove.”

Caradine has lived here since 1981 and knows what it takes to keep a home that’s over a century and a half old, looking brand new.

“I try to paint a quarter of it every three months, and keep a roof on it, and polish it, and keep it shiny,” Caradine explained. “You got to work, you got to keep the house clean.”

Caradine said when tourists stop by, many of them enjoy seeing the out-buildings or other antique features of the home.

However, for him, it’s the rich history the home is filled with that stands out the most.

“I think going back and seeing the people that actually lived here and seeing their portraits and pictures and seeing the things that they made, all of the netting and knitting and crocheting, all of the bedspreads, and things like that,” he described. “The people that actually lived here you see their pictures on the wall and in the scrapbooks so I think that’s the unique thing about this home.”

For Caradine, it’s important to remember and preserve this type of history, and it’s a message he passes along to everyone who comes through, especially the youth.

“They’re hitting a wall with the social media, said Caradine. “I think it’s like that old cliché, if you don’t know your history you don’t know where you are going, that sort of thing, so it’s nice to know your history.”

The Spring Pilgrimage will be in town until next Saturday.

For a full list of the events and times, visit for http://www.visitcolumbusms.org/calendar-of-events/?tribe_events_cat=186#filter-app more information.