You've hit on what's probably the main feature of the Italianate style of American architecture -- popularized in the 1840s and 50s by an architect named Downing (things were slow to reach what was still the Alabama frontier in those days!) The heavy cornice brackets under the roof overhang are the other feature that you always see.
The Greek Revival style was much more popular, and most of the houses you see on the Eufaula tour of homes are in some variation or other of that style.
Amazing stories mom. I love old architecture everywhere but Southern is close to home.
The Civil War and Reconstruction destroyed most paths from antebellum prosperity to today.
There are precious few Southern "dynasties" like in New England or Texas.
The Union troops seemed to have been given a lot of latitude in destruction particularly in Missississippi, Georgia, South Carolina and Middle Tennessee....and the Shenandoah Valley of course.
My wife's great great grandad was one of Tennessee's largest landowners and married to WP Barksdale's sister and they lost it all...everything. They went back to hardscrabble.
Most of my kin were hardscrabble Mississippi piney woods. My maternal grandma had some gentry hueguenot kin around Columbus Miss....Majure family.
Mississippi is still relatively the same bloodlines it was at the time of the war with little new blood having come in over the years sans some Yankees after the war and whatnot so nearly everyone down there has a "history" of some sort that they know....like your's...maybe without something still standing. Nashville is way diluted now....at least 25% Yankee I'd guess.
In the end....it's still dust in the wind but I enjoy the continuity. With the advent of new easy technology to preserve and access records, it should be a breeze for folks 200 years from now to know everything about us as thier ancestors ...if they care....some folks give not one whit about such.
Regards and thanks for sharing.