Rossiter-Little House
Rossiter-Little House is generally considered the oldest house in Sparta, Georgia, United States. The present structure was built onto and around a log cabin. The structure was built on the highest point in Sparta and used initially as a fort. Beneath the crawlspace of the present house, the original structure of the log foundation is still in place. The Rossiter-Little House was probably built about 1798 when Timothy Wells Rossiter, a Revolutionary War surgeon from Connecticut, bought the northeast corner lot at Broad and Miles Streets or the year after that when he bought the adjoining lot to the east. It is a contributing property of the Sparta Historic District, listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1974. It is also part of the Historic American Buildings Survey.
The main part of the house is built on a classic New England saltbox design typical of the 17th and 18th centuries. Dr. Rossiter displays his ancestral ties by building a house in a form distinct to that region. This style of house became used infrequently at the close of the eighteenth century for large home construction as the more popular Georgian and Federal styles were used throughout the region and may offer an insight into the house design he had been familiar with prior to emigrating to Georgia from Connecticut.
The Rossiter-Little House has been modified, however, from the archetypical New England form by having two front projecting wings or ells with an inset front porch or gallery between them. This is an atypical design for New England, but it does appear infrequently in some late 18th and early 19th century Southern plantations, such as the Kingsley Plantation in Duval County, Florida, just below the Georgia border.