It can be easy to live in a place all your life and miss its treasures. Such is the state of the Wren's Nest House -- not because of the house itself, though it's the oldest house museum in Atlanta. But the tale of the man who owned it in the 19th century and his impact on children's literature with UncleRemus and his Brer Rabbit tales is quite interesting.

The tales, which originated centuries ago in Africa, were made popular by the then journalist Joel Chandler Harris. Harris, who heard the tales from slaves while working on a plantation, made them popular first in columns he wrote for the Atlanta Constitution and then in a collection of eight books.

"It was the first time animals walked, talked, dressed and sassed like people," Harris' third great grandson, Lain Shakespaere said.

Now "ramblers" perform some of these 195 tales in keeping with the oral tradition of storytelling to the 12,000 men, women and children who annually walk through the Wren's Nest antique doors -- doors Joel Chandler Harris' himself walked through until he died in the home in 1908.

Generations are led through the home by tour guides to see the dining room where he sat with his mother, his wife and their nine children; his bedroom barely touched in over a century with his eyeglasses and hat still seated on a table; the foyer where he ushered his guests including other renowned writers, and the bathroom he installed eight years before he died.