The Knott House

Evidence points to George Proctor, a free black man, as the probable builder of this house in 1843. It was a wedding gift for Catherine Gamble, the bride of attorney Thomas Hagner. In 1865 the house served as temporary Union headquarters for Brigadier General Edward McCook, and on May 20th, 1865, McCook read the Emancipation Proclamation from its front steps, declaring freedom for all slaves in the Florida Panhandle. After the Civil War, the locally prominent physician George Betton bought the house and brought with him a young buggy driver, William Gunn, a former slave. When Gunn showed an interest in learning medicine, Betton funded his medical school study and helped him establish a practice in Tallahassee, where Gunn became Florida's first black physician. In 1928 the Knott family acquired the house, added the front columns, and lived there until 1985. William Knott served the State of Florida for more than forty years as its first State Tax Auditor, as Comptroller, and as Treasurer. His wife, Luella Knott, was an artist, musician, poet, and political activist who called her home "The House That Rhymes" and filled it with Victorian era furnishings, nearly every piece adorned with a poem narrating history and moral lessons with charm and wit. The sale of alcohol was banned in the state's capital for more than fifty years, in part because of Mrs. Knott's involvement with the temperance movement.

Tallahassee, Florida · United States