Listed on the National Register of Historic Places, the Curlee House is a significant example of domestic Greek Revival architecture.  Featuring 16-foot ceilings with elaborate plaster moldings, the home was completed in the spring of 1857 for a cost of less than $10,000.  It was built by surveyor Hamilton Mask, who had cofounded the town of Corinth, Mississippi a few years earlier with his brother-in-law, Houston Mitchell.

In March of 1860. Mr. Mask sold the property to Burnett Wilkerson, who, in October of that same year, sold it to William Simongton.  Mr. Simongton owned it up until and throughout the Civil War, although the Simongton family evacuated the home early in the war and never returned to live there.

During the Civil War, the house served as headquarters for both Confederate and Union generals.  Order #8, authorizing the attack which became the Battle of Shiloh, was drafted in the bedchambers of Confederate General Braxton Bragg.  And from the Confederate evacuation until late 1864, Union generals, Including Henry W. Halleck and Granville Dodge, resided there.

In the fall of 1875, the Curlee House – which had been temporarily occupied by the Corinth Female College – was purchased for $2,000 by William Payton Curlee and his wife, Mary Boone Curlee.  Mrs. Curlee, a descendent of Daniel Boone, was the daughter of Francis Marion Boone, the founder of Booneville, and the granddaughter of Ruben Boone, recorded as the first white settler of the Mississippi Territory.

After Mr. Curlee’s death in the yellow fever epidemic of 1878, Mr. Curlee sold the property for $2,200 to the Leroy Montgomery Huggins family.  Leroy Huggins and his wife raised a large family in the home, constructing two rear additions around 1885 to accommodate their growing household.  Today, the original structure, which was known as the Verandah House remains unaltered.  The rear additions, including the back porch were remodeled in the 1930’s.

It was during the Huggins’ ownership that the block the Curlee House occupied was subdivided.  Leander  Huggins, Leroy’s brother, built a home on the northeast corner facing Jackson Street, two rooms of which remain in existence as a guest cottage.  The Huggins brother has moved to Corinth from Gravel Hill, Tennessee, and operated a grocery store in what is now the four hundred block of Cruise Street.  The northwest corner of the Huggins property was solder and the constructed there, known as the Young-Ray  home, stood until the 1960’s.

In 1921, Shelby Hammond Curlee, oldest son of William Payton and Mary Boone Curlee and the founder of the Curlee Clothing Company, located in St. Louis, Missouri, bought the house back from the Huggins heirs for his Corinth home.  His sister, Eleanor Katherine Curlee, resided in the house until her death in December of 1944.  At that time, the property was given the City of Corinth to be used as a museum or library, and today, the home serves as The Verandah/Curlee House Museum.