Mount Rouge was built around 1816 by John Cobbs and his wife Jane on a tract purchased two years earlier from Thomas and Ann Fitzhugh. The land was part of the vast acreage originally owned by Parson Robert Rose. Cobbs named it Mont Rouge (French for Red Hill) from the color of the soil. Although John Cobbs named his place “Mont Rouge,” subsequent owners preferred the name Mount Rouge. In 1832, Cobbs sold 576 acres including the mansion to Robert H. Anderson. Through the years were conveyances of tracts of land to others outside the family but the mansion house and some acreage went always to another Anderson.
Constructed of frame and brick, it was originally a three-over-four room house. The house had one-and-a half story rooms of frame construction and a two-story brick section of two rooms on each floor. The three sections of the house are unique in that they were only one room deep. The bricks used in the construction were made on place with red clay. A large rear addition was added in 1935 to provide a downstairs bedroom with bath, an enlarged kitchen with back porch, and two additional bedrooms with bath on the second floor.
Interior
This property possesses fine interior woodwork and many of the antique objects and furniture of the new owners.
Outbuildings
Mount Rouge has a good collection of outbuildings. The log kitchen has lost its chimney, and a frame addition with no interior communication, was added to one end. By 1857, Dr. Kimbrough Anderson occupied Mount Rouge and built the small brick building to the right of the house. It was used as his office and his surgical instruments are on in display in the mansion. The antebellum doctor’s brick office was laid in Flemish bond. A double-pen corncrib and smokehouse also survive at Mount Rouge. On the place is the family burying ground but there are no markers to identify the graves.