In May 1861, the Oglethorpe Light Infantry, commanded by Captain Francis Bartow, received its flag from the women of Savannah on the steps of the Jepson House before marching off to the Central of Georgia Railway station on their way to the First Battle of Manassas two months later. Bartow was the first high-ranking Confederate officer from Georgia killed in the war. His portrait hangs in the Jepson House Banquet Room on the east side of the Parlor level. Edward L. Holcomb, son of the home’s original owner, also served in the Oglethorpe Light Infantry.

Samuel Eckman owned the home from 1863 to 1870, when it was bought by Robert Falligant, one of General Robert E. Lee’s officers and a post-war lawyer and later a Superior Court judge for the Eastern Judicial Circuit of Georgia. When Lee made his last visit to Savannah in 1870 (the year of his death), Falligant entertained the famed Confederate leader in his home.

Falligant and his descendants owned the home until William G. Gnann bought it and restored it for $25,000 (approximately $205,000 in 2014 dollars) in November 1958. At that time the house was divided into five apartments: one on the garden level, and two each on the second and third floors. Gnann fixed a badly damaged roof, removed a two-story 1890s veranda on the building’s east side, refurbished the garden-level and third floor apartments, and lived on the parlor level himself. The restoration architect was John Lebey.