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The Williams Home

52 Wesley Street

Mrs. Mary Jane Swint, (widow of Judge Thomas Swint) purchased the Powers residence – a two-story dwelling - at 52 Arnall Street in August 1910. She moved into the home with two of her grown children – son, Tom and daughter, Joe (Josephine). Tom was a meat merchant and Joe owned a hotel on Perry Street. The west end of Wesley Street was Arnall Street until it was changed to Wesley around 1911. Mrs. Swint passed away at age 90 in 1923. Tom and Joe continued to live in the home until it was destroyed by fire in the late 1930s. The siblings replaced the home with the brick residence here today. They both continued to live in the home until their deaths in 1941 and 1942. Paul and Bessie Starnes owned the home for many years. Mr. Starnes was known as a fig enthusiast (he has been called the original “fignut”). In the 1980s he co-founded the “Friends of the Fig Society,” reaching a membership of several hundreds in 40 states and several foreign countries. An article in the Atlanta Constitution in the late 1980s, proclaimed that Mr. Starnes had 82 varieties of figs in his yard. A neighbor fondly remembers Mr. Starnes asking if he might collect the manure from their pet rabbits, because it was a great fertilizer for his figs. Princeton and Lynn Williams bought the home in May of 2019. They moved to the neighborhood from Fort Worth, Texas, with their son Drew. Christmas is their favorite season, and they love decorating their many trees and displaying a broad collection of nativities.