Story by Gail Parsons | Photography by Leidy Lester

The old home on North Laurel Street has watched Springfield change for nearly a century.

It survived the Great Depression. It remained in the same family for generations. Its pine floors softened beneath thousands of footsteps, and its tall windows continued catching the Georgia sunlight year after year.

Now, nearly a century after its construction, the home remains remarkably intact; not frozen in time, but carefully preserved so that its history still feels alive in every room. Today, the historic house at 301 North Laurel Street has begun a new chapter, no longer as a private residence, but as the home of Vision Financial.

The first chapter 

Before conference tables and client meetings filled its rooms, it was simply the home of a woman named Anna Kiefer Shearouse.

For Amelia Senecal, a financial advisor with the company, learning the story of the house has become just as meaningful as restoring it.

“Every time we hear another story about Ms. Anna or her family, it feels even more like we made the right choice,” Senecal said.

The home’s story begins during one of the most difficult economic periods in American history.

Anna Kiefer Shearouse built the house in 1929, at the beginning of the Great Depression, after the death of her husband, Barton Shearouse. According to family history shared with Vision Financial after the purchase of the property, Barton was deeply involved in civic and business life in Effingham County. He served as a county commissioner, school board member, bank president and Sunday school teacher.

“He was a very socially involved man in Effingham County,” Senecal said. “His obituary even says in every business endeavor he ever had, he did very well.”

But after his death, believed by family members to have been caused by a heart attack, Anna found herself widowed with children. Three years after being widowed, she built the North Laurel Street home herself.

“She actually built the house during the Great Depression,” Senecal said. “I think that is pretty amazing of a widow woman.”

In rural Georgia in 1929, a widow setting out to build a home would have faced obstacles that went far beyond construction itself. The country was slipping into the Great Depression, and credit was tightening even for established families. For a woman without a husband to sign contracts, secure financing, or regularly oversee work in a male-dominated building trade, the process would have faced great challenges.

Once construction began, the challenges would have deepened, but Ms. Anna met them head on. In rural Georgia in 1929, building materials were not simply ordered and delivered.  For a widow overseeing such a project, each step would have required persistence, turning logistical barriers into decisions made through determination rather than convenience.

That determination is still embedded in the house itself. The pine floors remain original and were built from trees that once stood on the property itself.

“There were pine trees on the lot,” Senecal said. “She had them cut down and taken to Savannah to the mill, and then they were brought back to build the house.”

Nearly 100 years later, those same boards still stretch throughout the home. As visitors walk through the building today, they can feel the subtle shift and settle of the floors beneath them, a reminder that the house was built long before modern construction methods prized rigid perfection.

“They float and creak as you walk across them,” Senecal said. “Not everything’s perfectly level, but I think that’s part of what we love about it too. It’s not perfect. It’s a little quirky and cute.”

One of the home’s most unusual features remains hidden beneath the kitchen floor.

“They actually had the cellar, a cold cellar, underneath the kitchen,” Senecal said. “And we still have the cold cellar to this day.”

The underground space, once used for food storage before refrigeration became commonplace, remains noticeably cooler than the rest of the house. Though now cleaned out, the cellar still offers a glimpse into how families once lived and functioned in rural Georgia.

Above ground, much of the original home remains intact. The fireplaces are original as are the window.

Heritage guides the next chapter

For decades, the house remained in Anna Shearouse’s family, carrying its history forward quietly from one generation to the next before eventually opening itself to a new purpose.

The property eventually passed to descendants including Barty Alderman, former mayor of Springfield, whose mother Naomi was one of Anna’s daughters. Until Vision Financial purchased the building in 2025, the house had remained in family hands for roughly 96 years.

“It stayed in that family for a very long time,” Senecal said. “It’s amazing.”

The house also remained lived in and cared for through the decades, something Senecal immediately noticed during her first visit.

“When I walked in, I could tell it was in great shape,” she said. “Someone had been living there. The air had been turned on. Sometimes you walk into an older home and you can immediately tell whether or not it has been taken care of. And this house really had been taken care of.”

Still, transforming the residence into a functioning office would require vision.

Vision Financial had spent nearly two years searching for a new location after outgrowing its office in Rincon. The company wanted to relocate into Springfield but struggled to find a property that fit both practical needs and personal taste.

Some spaces were too small. Others lacked enough property for future expansion. And newer commercial buildings simply failed to inspire the team.

“We didn’t want something cookie cutter and brand new,” Senecal said. “We love the Effingham history of it and the charm.”

Her father, Talbert Edenfield, co-founder of Vision Financial, first discovered the property. Though intrigued, even he struggled initially to picture how the house could function as a business office.

“He even said, ‘I’m not visualizing how this is going to turn out,’” Senecal recalled.

Contractor Sean Carter, however, saw possibility almost immediately.

“He said, ‘I can see it. We can add a hallway here. We can add six offices. This may be great,’” she said.

That confidence helped move the project forward.

Vision Financial purchased the property in August 2025 and began renovations almost immediately. The restoration took approximately six months before employees officially moved into the building in February 2026.

Rather than modernize the structure beyond recognition, the goal became preserving as much of the original house as possible while carefully adapting it for commercial use.

The renovation team removed drop ceilings added sometime during the 1980s, revealing the home’s original ceiling height and roofline once again.

“Those kinds of things we took out because the drop ceiling put it way back to the original roof line,” Senecal said.

The original fireplaces remained untouched, serving as focal points throughout the building. The windows stayed in place despite suggestions that replacing them might improve efficiency.

“That’s the first thing people comment on when they walk in,” Senecal said. “‘Please don’t replace those windows. They’re beautiful.’”

The front dining room, once used for family meals and gatherings, now functions as a conference room for clients.

“It was a beautiful open space,” Senecal said. “That was immediately what I thought when I walked in.”

Additional office space was constructed behind the original home to allow room for company growth without drastically altering the historic structure itself.

The property’s original barn also still stands behind the building, though restoration work there remains part of a future project list.

Inside the home, the balance between old and new became especially important in the kitchen renovation.

Senecal and her mother handled much of the interior design themselves, choosing elements that modernized the space while still honoring the home’s historic character.

“The kitchen needed a lot of love,” Senecal said.

The remodeled kitchen now features green cabinetry, butcher-block countertops and gold accents that complement the warm tones of the original pine flooring.

“It modernized it a little bit, but still kept the beautiful charm with the old pine floors,” she said.

Throughout the renovation process, family members connected to the home continued sharing stories and photographs with Vision Financial’s team.

Keeping Ms. Anna’s legacy alive

Pam Moore, one of Anna Shearouse’s granddaughters, provided historical photographs showing Anna standing proudly in front of the house decades earlier, often surrounded by flowers from her gardens.

“They were very into gardening,” Senecal said. “She had lots of violets and camellias that she was really proud of."

Those photographs now occupy a prominent place inside the restored office.

When visitors enter the front room, they find bookshelves framing one of the original fireplaces. Sitting among the books are framed photographs of Anna Shearouse and her family, reminders that while the building now serves a different purpose, its history remains central to the space.

The process of uncovering the home’s past has become, for Senecal, one of the most rewarding parts of the project.

“A love of history has come out,” she said.

What began simply as a search for office space evolved into something far more personal, a restoration not just of a building, but of memory. And perhaps that is what makes the house on Laurel Street feel different from newer construction. Its walls already carry stories. Its floors already hold history.

Long before Vision Financial moved in, the house survived economic hardship, changing generations and nearly a century of shifting life in Springfield.

Now, instead of fading quietly into disrepair or demolition, the old home has found another purpose.

The conference room still fills with conversation. Light still pours through the tall front windows. The old pine floors still creak beneath footsteps.

And somewhere beneath it all, the cool cellar remains exactly where it has always been, a hidden reminder of the woman who built the house during the hardest of times and left behind something strong enough to endure long after her.