William Denis St. Leger and His Columbus, Georgia Legacy

By Doug Purcell
Former Executive Director, Historic Chattahoochee Commission

Left: Tombstone fragment of St. Leger marker; photo by John Mallory Land. Right: Masonic Hall on corner of Broad and 12th St. This photo, taken in 1928, shows the building as a bank, after its 1921 renovation. “Third National Bank Building. Columbus, Georgia,” Columbus State University Archives and Special Collections, accessed December 12, 2024, http://digitalarchives.columbusst ate.edu/items/show/845.

Denis St. Leger (born c. 1833) emigrated from Ireland to the United States, arriving in 1853. Arriving at about the same time was his wife-to-be, Margaret McCarthy (born c. 1834). Devout Catholics from Brooklodge, County Cork, they were married in Boston at the Cathedral of the Holy Cross in early April 1853.

St. Leger was a skilled carpenter who left Ireland following the end of the Great Famine, which lasted from 1845 to 1852. His exact arrival date in Columbus is unknown, but the first mention of him is in the December 18, 1855 issue of the Weekly Columbus Enquirer about a militia unit, the Union Riflemen, in which St. Leger was a member. After parading in the streets of Columbus, a target shooting competition ensued. The top two marksmen were listed as privates Owens and St. Ledger (sic). By this time, Denis and Margaret St. Leger were the parents of a child born about mid-April 1855.

However, this child died at the age of 15 months and was buried at the Columbus City Cemetery (now Linwood) on July 24, 1856. In his report covering the period from July 1 to October 1, 1856, the cemetery sexton listed the cause of death as “teething.” We know, today, that “teething” was not the primary cause of an infant’s death.

In searching for the burial site of this child using Find A Grave, I found a reference to a marker fragment at Linwood Cemetery with the following partial inscription: “… ENIS J. Son of … J. & Margaret … Leger.” My interpretation of this broken inscription is “DENIS J., Son of Denis J. & Margaret St. Leger.” The only inconsistency is the middle initial “J” for both the son and father. But this could have been an error by the stonecutter. There were no other St. Leger or Leger families living in Columbus at this time.

During this traumatic period when their child died, St. Leger was in the process of overseeing the construction of the Masonic Hall Building at the corner of Randolph (12th Street) and Broad. A detailed description of the building appeared in the November 26, 1856 issue of the Columbus Daily Sun, which mentioned St. Leger’s carpentry work. Then, in the March 25, 1857 issue of the Columbus Times & Sentinel Tri-Weekly, there was an article about the dedication of the Masonic Hall, referring to the building “as the admirable work of our fellow citizen, Dennis St. Ledger …”

St. Leger did some additional work in Columbus before moving to Eufaula, Alabama in 1859, at which time he started work on an Italianate mansion there. On August 4, 1863, he enlisted in the First Battalion Georgia Infantry for a period of six months. This State Guard unit apparently saw little, if any, action. From 1862 to 1863, he contracted with the Naval Iron Works in Columbus for materials used in the construction of the CSS Chattahoochee. In May 1864, at Apalachicola, Florida, he signed an Oath of Allegiance to the Union and was then, as a non-combatant, transported to a Provost Marshal prison in New York. Upon release in March 1865, he journeyed to Savannah, GA, where he was once again arrested for “using treasonable language” and sent to another Provost prison at Hilton Head, South Carolina.

St. Leger returned to Eufaula after the war, and then, in the late 1860s, moved to Brunswick, Georgia. He died there in 1870 from accidental drowning while on a pleasure cruise in the Atlantic. His wife, Margaret, had four more children but died from “cancer of the womb” in early 1865 while her husband was imprisoned in New York.