A local home has just been added to the national and state historical registries, the Memphis Area Association of Government announced Friday.
The Dr. Thomas H. Price House, located at 620 North Main Street in Covington, was placed in the National and Tennessee Registers of Historic Places by the National Park Service of the United States Department of the Interior last month.
“We started in 2014 trying to get it on the registry,” said county genealogist David Gwinn. “It’s about a two-year process.”
To be eligible, a property has to be historically and architecturally significant, among other factors. It also has to meet criteria, such as not having had alterations for 50 years.
Dr. Thomas H. Price (1873-1962) was the last local African-American physician to reside in Covington until the 1970s.
The house was built at the turn of the 20th century and was renovated in the 1920s. The Price family purchased the house during the World War I era. They lived in the original structure, which was much smaller, until it was remodeled and remodeled into the way it appears today.
Gwinn said the Prices likely boarded teachers and others in the home, a very common practice at the time as there were no apartments or duplexes at the time.
Dr. Price was born on Feb. 14, 1873 on a farm in Fayette County, received a Bachelor of Science from Lane College in Jackson, and graduated from Meharry Medical College in Nashville in 1902.
He was a member and long-time officer of the Tri-County Medical, Dental, and Pharmaceutical Association, which was composed of African-Americans in the medical profession from Tipton, Lauderdale, and Haywood counties.
Price was also a member of the National Medical Association, the largest and oldest medical organization representing African-Americans in the medical profession in the United States.
He was also member, trustee and on the Board of Deacons of the Canaan Missionary Baptist Church, the first African-American site in Tipton County placed on the National Registry of Historic Places. The Price home is only the second.
In May, representatives from the Association for the Preservation of African-American History and Culture in Tipton County asked the City of Covington to help purchase the house from Price’s nephew with the intent of establishing a black history museum at the location.
Other local sites on the National Register of Historical Places are Charleston United Methodist Church and Cemetery, Coca-Cola Bottling Plant (now Rose Construction), Hotel Lindo, Mt. Carmel Presbyterian Church, Rhodes House, Ruffin Theater, South College Historic District, South Main Historic District, St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church, Trinity Episcopal Church and Old Trinity Episcopal Church.
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