The M in MASCH

Before and after pictures are in short supply this week, so I'll post this photo I took on Friday afternoon of the Jemison-Van de Graaff Mansion, a Tuscaloosa landmark.

I just love houses with cupolas, don't you?



Remember in grade school when you'd play MASCH? You'd draw a square with the letters MASCH above it, and they stood for mansion, apartment, shack, cottage, house. This is just the sort of house I imagined when I landed on M.

Believe it or not, I've never taken the time to go inside for a tour. My mother told us long ago that it was once the public library, and I've always thought of it as the perfect library. Books floor to ceiling, sliding ladders, dust motes, cushy chairs in secret corners. I kinda hate to go inside and ruin my mental image.

According to the Tuscaloosa County Preservation Society's website, Historic Tuscaloosa, and the mansion's own website, the house (one of only a few Italianate houses in T-town) was built in 1859-1862 by Senator Robert Jemison Jr. to serve as his town house. The architect was John Stewart from Philadelphia, who along with his partner, Samuel Sloan, designed Bryce Hospital (the state mental hospital, also in T-town).

Most of the building materials came from Jemison’s plantations and sawmills, and the majority of construction was performed by skilled slaves under the supervision of Philadelphia craftsmen. The house had indoor lighting fueled by coal gas manufactured in a machine located in the basement.

If I was living in antebellum Tuscaloosa, I totally would've sidled up to the Jemisons and tried to make friends because their house was the first in town to have an indoor bathroom, including running water, flush toilets and a copper bathtub. (Of course, my family was po' white trash, so I would've been more likely to hang out in a dogtrot cabin snuggling with the family hogs.)

The house also featured a boiler for producing hot water, a gas stove, and a deep dry well in the basement that kept food fresh even in hot Alabama summers.

The house's construction was interrupted when the Civil War began, much like Eutaw's own showplace mansion, Kirkwood, leaving many finishing touches undone. According to legend, it barely escaped being burned by Union troops when boys playing a prank ran down the street yelling, "Forrest is coming, hurrah for Forrest!", and the Union commander skedaddled.

The home remained in the family until the 1940s, when it was purchased by J.P. and Nell Burchfield, who undertook a major restoration.

After serving as the Friedman Public Library from 1955 to 1979, the Tuscaloosa County Preservation Society and Heritage Commission of Tuscaloosa set up a joint board to oversee restoration of the house, which is ongoing. The Tuscaloosa Convention and Visitor’s Bureau has its offices in the basement of the house. The main floor has been carefully restored to its original 1860s appearance, and it is available to the public for weddings, parties and receptions, none of which have I been invited to attend.

I half-wanted to get married there, but Darwin was insistent on one point for our wedding, and that was that it must take place at his family's church. So that's what we did, and I still haven't seen the inside of that lovely gray house on Greensboro Ave.

I guess it's fitting. Po' white trash like me can't go places that don't provide a spitoon.

Voyeur-Tour

I spent my Saturday as a guide for the Greene County Historical Society Tour of House Porn. Okay sure, they call it something a little more prim (because Eutaw is nothing if not prim), but we housebloggers can read between the lines. Interior and exterior home tours with no restrictions on photography? Yes, that my friends, is house porn.

I love looking at old houses for three reasons. 1. I love old houses. 2. I want to get ideas (particularly for kitchens and bathrooms). 3. I am a voyeur. Well, aren't we all? We want to see how other people live: how tidy they are (though tour day is probably not a good time to judge); whether they like antiques, reproductions or Target chic; what their idea of restoration is; whether their TV is prominently displayed or tucked away; whether they have a pampered pet, a dog chained in the yard or none at all; what paint colors they chose; whether they have a bedspread or a comforter; whether they store their clothes in armoires, dressers or an entire room repurposed as a closet.

It's all so telling.

And in a small town - where everyone feels they have a right to know everything about everyone else - a home tour is the perfect way to nose into each other's business.

Each year in October several fine residences from around town are chosen to be "on tour," and there's always a slight shuffle in the mix. Half the town turns out for these tours, especially the older women, who dress to kill in elegant suits.

This year our friends L&M and S&B were both invited - and agreed - to be on the tour.

In the past several months L&M bought and rapidly restored a Victorian cottage catty-corner to us. Our house is its evil antithesis - ours is decorated with cat hair and random eBay finds, while theirs is the most immaculate house I've ever seen, and it's stuffed with glamorous trappings like rich fabrics and lots of gilt.

S&B moved into their antebellum Greek Revival the same time we moved into our house (2 years ago this month). It's a wonderful place for entertaining - lots of wide open spaces and the smells of Bobby's incredible cooking wafting through. S&B's major contributions to the house have been painting the interior walls bold, inviting colors; scraping/painting the dizzying 3-story exterior; and landscaping the yard in a way that showcases the house perfectly.

The trouble with S&B's residence is that it's too big for one person. Yep, our beloved S&B are splitsville. The house had been on the market for a month and sold the day before the Home Tour (a remarkably short sale time for a home in Eutaw).

ShantheMan asked me to hang out and help give tours of the house on Saturday, so I dolled up and headed over bright and early that morning. Some houses go all out with tour guides in each room clutching notecards and elaborating on the origin of each stick of furniture or piece of silver.

Yeah, that's not the kind of tour we did. We gave a little spiel something like this:

"The house was moved here in 1856 from the nearby community of Springfield. It was rolled here on logs" (pause for crowd reaction) "Yep, on logs! And it's only slightly haunted! Tee hee!"

Sometimes we threw in a ghost story or two and/or mentioned the fact that Dr. Willis Meriweather was the original owner and look there at those medicine bottles found in the attic! Then we sent them wandering about the house on their own.

A surprising number of fellow voyeurs asked ShantheMan: Why are you selling? How much did the house sell for? Where are you moving? Why are you moving there?

He answered with more poise than I probably could've mustered and never said, "Noneya business!"

All in all, the day was surprisingly fun. I enjoyed my tour guide role and meeting so many people who like old houses; some had even driven hours to get there.

We also got to meet the new buyers! They seem dedicated to preserving the house, which is wonderful. And the woman was wearing a cute sweater. So that's good.

Still, it was always present in my mind that our friends would be leaving soon. Bobby is moving to Tuscaloosa, and ShantheMan is moving to Moundville while he looks for a small house to restore in Eutaw.

Sigh. Anyway. In our down time, we also stole away to tour two other houses on the tour and one that wasn't, which I'll share pictures of later in the week.

And now, drumroll please, let the house porn commence:

Home Tour - ShantheMan photo set

Home Tour - ShantheMan slideshow

The Best Porch in Eutaw

This is the first in an occasional series of interior/exterior tours of some of my favorite houses in Eutaw. It may be the last in the series because I haven't secured permission from anyone else, but we old house people love to show off our houses, so I bet many of our friends can be persuaded.

I decided to do this interior touring thing because one of my favorite things about Houseblogs is seeing interior shots of old houses, decorated and lived in the way real people do it. Museums are wonderful and shelter mags are great, but they're so out of reach, y'know?

Besides, I get inspired every time I visit one of our friends' houses. There's always a creative wall color or space-saving device I want to copy - or spin off of in my own direction.

So enough of this rambling. Why am I even explaining to a bunch of house lovers why I love touring old houses? On to our first victim house ...

***

"The Best Porch in Eutaw"

Our neighbor/sort-aunt Judy is well known around town for two things. 1. She likes to talk. 2. She's unstoppably hard-working, especially in her garden.

It makes sense then that Judy's porch is one of the best in Eutaw, maybe the best - and that's saying something, because Eutaw has many lovely porches.

Surrounded by green on a corner lot, it's shaded and cool, and fellow Eutawans often stop for a chat or just slow down to wave.

Though it's right on one of Eutaw's main drags (officially, it's on Main Street), the white picket fence draped with Confederate jasmine shields you just enough and makes you feel like you're in the middle of a secret. (Plus, you have a lovely view of a little white Victorian across the street *wink wink*.)

Judy recently stained the porch floor and furniture dark green. Most of the porch floors in town are slate gray to pastel blue (including ours), so it's refreshing to see something different, especially when it works so well. The green floor, the red geraniums and the massive ferns Judy nursed through the winter make the porch feel nestled down in the garden rather than perched on top of it.



Judy's house is Victorian on the inside but Greek Revival on the outside. It was built in 1904 - would that be Greek Revival Revival? - with massive columns across the front. (I couldn't get photos that really capture the awesome of these columns. Must ask my photographer sister's advice on this.) The whole-house pic is an old one I took in cooler weather and before the roof was painted.



Inside, the house reminds me of a dollhouse, packed to the hilt with Victorian details. You could spend hours in here and not absorb it all.

Judy and Coach do most of their living in a connected bedroom and study and in the cutest yellow kitchen ever. The rest of the house is a showcase for Judy's antiques and Victoriana. Upstairs is a bedroom decorated with wedding dresses and paraphernalia. Another room Judy plans to turn into a little boy's room. These rooms aren't designed so much for use but for admiration; they're each a life-size vignette.



The dining room features an original leaf-motif stencil around the top of the wall and a row of plates propped on the chair rail.



Most of the woodwork has never been painted. The dark wood and the sun-filtering curtains over all the windows make the house feel quiet and cozy.



When you head around to the back of the house, you find more plants and delights for the eye everywhere.



One of my favorite parts is an old framed photo of the house that hangs on the landing of the staircase. From the children's attire and the bareness of the yard, it looks to me to have been taken not long after the house was built. I wish I had a piece of evidence like this on my house. Judy used the picture to recreate a fence like the one in the left corner across the front of her house.



The coolest thing about this picture (at least to me) is that those kids must have a great view across the 149 steps between their home and our freshly minted house with only baby magnolias at best in front, no power lines in the way, no little bungalow in between, no paved roads. How I wish the photographer had turned around and taken a little snap-a-roo. Maybe he did. Maybe there's a photo out there somewhere.

Inspiration in the Lowliest of Places

You may recall I've mentioned our bathroom renovation once or twice (*cough* 14 million times *cough*). I'm still not fully decided on a few things, so I look for inspiration everywhere.

When we paid a visit to our friend/neighbor/sort-of-aunt Judy the other day at her 1904 home - Greek Revival on the outside, Victorian on the inside - I'm sure she didn't expect me to run home for the camera and then spend long minutes hanging out in her upstairs bathroom snapping photos of everything from the toilet to the light fixture.

Good thing Judy is one of the kindest, most understanding people I know. Also good thing she is a tidy person! I can't imagine what horrors would be captured on film if someone burst into my bathroom with a camera.

Judy's whole house is a Victorian showcase, and I'll be posting more about it later. Of all the beautiful rooms, my favorite is the bathroom. It's similar in size and basic layout to ours - probably 8 x 14 compared with our 7 x 12 and with a window in one end and a door at the other, with the main entrance door in one side wall. It has wood floors like ours, though hers are not painted, and beadboard, though hers is the more desirable vertical, shoulder-height kind with a shallow window-ledge type thing capping it.



The sink is a tiny wall-hung with separate faucets (the kind that was in my dorm room in college), totally unobtrusive and purely functional. The clawfoot tub has no shower. The toilet is an old-fashioned model - I'd guess 1930s but haven't researched it yet. The rest of the room is furnished with wood furniture, tables, a chair and a dresser, laden with Victorian decorative items. The lighting is a startling black and white Art Deco pendant that adds a touch of whimsy.

The bathroom has a rustic, sparse, old-fashioned quality that I love. When you walk through the door, you could be stepping back in time. There are no jarring modern items to remind you when you really are.

That's what I want for our bathroom, though it will be more difficult to do with an everyday main bathroom vs. an infrequently used upstairs bathroom like this one. How can you capture that old-time feeling when you're staring at a row of plastic containers and a blow dryer?

Judy's bathroom has awakened my old perspective on our renovation. Couldn't we just do a simple sink and separate furniture as I originally planned?

The more I look at my current-getting ready station in the half bath - the countertop littered with mounds of hair stuff, lotions, makeup, jewelry - I realize even a bit of counterspace around a sink will never work. Sink vanities never have much storage because the sink takes up so much room in them. Within a week, the new countertop will turn into a giant junk heap.

I think I need a separate vanity after all - and I mean the kind you sit at - with lots of little drawers to put away all my beautifying devices. And wouldn't I feel such the Victorian lady sitting at a vanity with all my potions and tonics spread out around me?

I know I keep vascillating, and that must be terribly irritating. Heck, I'm annoying myself. But last night I had a dream I was walking through someone else's bathroom renovation, and asking where they got their marble countertop. Maybe that's a sign. Maybe what I want is a marble wall-hung sink, as discussed previously, with maybe a shelf underneath for towels.

Or maybe porcelain is good enough. Judy is planning to replace the toilet and sink in her bathroom with reproductions and has promised them to me if I want them. What do you think? A 70-year-old toilet sounds good to me!

T-Town Tour

Last Friday the weather people did their usual panic-inducing Storm of the Century stuff, so all the schools in our area closed early in anticipation of tornadoes. Because the kiddies would be left to wander the streets and become drug addicts and prostitutes, many businesses in town closed early to let the parents go home. Whew, that was a close one.

Kids or no kids, I got off at 2 p.m. Since the sun was shining and the sky was blue with puffy white clouds (the storms didn't show up for another 12 hours), and I remembered to bring my camera with me that day, I decided it was finally time for the Photographic Tour of Tuscaloosa I've been planning.

We live in Eutaw, but I work in Tuscaloosa. It's the town where I went to high school and college. In college, I often spent my sunny afternoons riding around the historic districts surrounding the university, falling in love left and right.

The bulk of the houses in this area were built in the '20s-'40s, I'd say. There are few Victorians and antebellums, many bungalows and English-style brick cottages.

No matter the style, one thing is consistent across the board. They are expensive! On the fashionable Deering Place, the tiniest, cheapest, beat-up-iest bungalow costs $110,000 more than our house. And then you get to live next door to a house rented to 6 college students.

Is it becoming clear yet why Eutaw was so appealing?

Still, I can't help sighing a little over the houses. So pretty. So so pretty. It's like shopping for handbags - you know the one you have is perfectly lovely, but so is that one over there and over there and over there. Only with houses you can't exactly treat yourself to an extra one or five.

Here are a few of the cutie pies:








Pretty in pink, though it's sandwiched next to a brick office building


Such adorable details on this Vicky. I'm lusting after this house.


There's evidence in the attic that our house might once have had a dormer window above the porch. It's hard to imagine, but then here's a similar house with one.


Downtown, including the restaurant we went to the night D proposed (a former pharmacy but now a very yummy Italian place)

And of course I have to mention the hideous:


Gigantic wall o' siding


Bet they needed a shoehorn to squeeze that house in there.

Tomorrow, a look at my second favorite house style: Tudor.

I'm Baaaaack!

I'm back home after several days in Louisville, Kentucky, where I got three massive blisters on my feet, saw snow for the first time in years, met Mikey from American Choppers, and was falsely accused of paparazzi-ism by a member of an aging country music star's entourage.

I'm so glad to be home I can't even express it. It took all my self-control not to fall down and kiss the hideous vinyl floor.

I rolled into Eutaw at about midnight Friday. Saturday morning we attended an auction at an antebellum house my parents are interested in here in town. It's an awesome house with 16-foot ceilings (!!!!) and it's on the National Register. Still, it needs LOTS of work. For example, the kitchen has a gigantic dip in the floor, there are big patches of plaster falling off everywhere, and it more than likely needs all-new plumbing and electrical.

My parents have never owned an old house before and are usually not the DIY types. However, they are approaching retirement age, and already my dad is bored. Lately, he has taken to gardening and going all out with the Christmas lights - things he rarely did when we were growing up.

Plus, Dad is a big history buff. He's the person who taught me to appreciate history. Though I'm dubious whether he and Mom have the patience for this project, I can see Dad really loving owning a piece of history like that.

And the yard is 10 acres and gorgeous. My dad was a forester for years, so he is a sucker for a lovely piece of land with some giant old trees. Trekking through the tall grass with him on Saturday reminded me of the times as a child when he would take me for walks and teach me the names of the trees.

Also this weekend, we got to see inside another National Register house in Eutaw, this one in impeccable condition. It was so beautiful. Best of all, the house has only had three owners (like ours, but this house is much older) and several photos, portraits, books and even CLOTHES were left in the house by the original owners. They have a black mourning dress on a mannequin, and I almost passed out from joy when I saw it. *SIGH* I'm so jealous.

Speaking of National Register stuff, the owners of that house advised us to start the application process to register our house. I didn't realize a house only has to be 100 years old to qualify. I thought it had to be "significant" in some way, but apparently just being at least 100 years old is significant enough, especially since we're in a town that's chock full of National Register houses.

I need to look into it some more. Anyone out there gone through the registration process? Seems like I've read it's reeeeeally complicated and time-consuming. But these folks said it wasn't too bad.

Secretly for Sale

Friday night Neighbor D gave me a tour of a vacant Victorian house down the road (and provided me dinner afterward ... thanks, D&K). The house has been empty for about five years and has suffered the consequences. Leaky roof led to ruined ceilings led to damaged floors. But most of the house - minus the vines creeping through the gaps in the windows - is actually in decent shape and hasn't been altered much from its original form.

This house, like many in Eutaw, is secretly for sale. There's a strange tendency in Eutaw to not list your house with a real estate agent, not put a sign in the yard, and not advertise in any way. People are just supposed to know your house is for sale. Seems like nine out of 10 home sales in Eutaw are done by word of mouth, even ones to out-of-town buyers (recently, a house sold to a couple from Texas ... without the benefit of a realtor or the Internet).

Weird, huh? Very Mayberry.

The reason - from what I hear - is that most of the vacant/secretly-for-sale houses in Eutaw are inheritance houses. The current owners fondly remember Sunday dinners at Granny's or Auntie's house, and they simply can't bear the thought of selling the house.

Strange that the fondness doesn't extend to keeping the house from falling down. I'm as sentimental about objects and houses as the next person - probably more - but even I don't understand that. Why is it better to let the house disintegrate before our very eyes than to let new owners come in and take care of it, love it?

Most of these houses are filled with junk from the previous owners, covered with dirt and probably crawling with bugs and rodents. One of them recently sold, and the new owners found ROTTED FOOD still in the refrigerator and CRUSTY LAUNDRY still in the washing machine. Everything was left as it was after the owner died FIVE YEARS AGO.

Somebody tell me how that makes sense.

Our Victorian was also an inheritance house. But the owners, whose parents lived here for 30 years, knew they would better honor their parents' wishes - and their love for the house - by finding new people to take care of the house.

Their only cautious request? Please don't paint over the woodwork their mother stripped. Don't worry, we assured them. That one unpainted room is our favorite in the house, and we'll be continuing the work in other rooms.

I hope that made them feel better. I hope they know they made the right decision.

Poor Man's Victorian

I made an interesting discovery yesterday at the Tuscaloosa Public Library. I went there to look up the Sanborn Fire Insurance maps (as mentioned on Fixer Upper) but got distracted looking at books about Greene County.

As I was browsing a book I've already looked through, I noticed something I had overlooked before because it didn't mention my house directly.

It turns out that the first owners of my house also built the house across the street that I discovered on my neighborhood tour. You know ... the one I totally drooled over and have done the slow-drive by many many (many) times since.



MJ lived there when she was married to a banker. When the banker died, she built our house to live in with her new hubby, a farmer.

Our neighbors gave us a tour of the house across the street (which is empty and for sale), and we noticed it shared many of the same elements as our house. Similar woodwork, similar fireplace tile. But everything was like a fancier version of what's in our house.

Now I see why. MJ's first house was built on a banker's salary. Our house was built on a farmer's. No wonder ours looks like the poor man's version of the house across the street.

Road Trip

We took a Sunday afternoon drive to tour the ring of small towns surrounding ours. South to Demopolis, east to Uniontown, north to Marion, west through Greensboro and back home. These towns are all known for their old houses, too, and we got an eyeful.



Of the towns, Darwin was most charmed by Demopolis, the largest of them all with such luxuries as Wal-mart, KFC and Captain D's. It has a cute little historic district and a "theater district."

Uniontown is closer to the size of Eutaw, maybe even a little smaller. We were unimpressed. It had some beautiful houses, like this one:



But it was mostly run down, and there was no sense that the town and its residents were working to preserve its historic houses. We saw so many houses falling down and only one that was truly well cared for.

I liked Marion the best. It is a little college town with a military institute and a college for women. Each of the old houses in town has a little black sign in front that states the name and date in scrolling white. The majority of the old houses there are 1830s through 1850s, most of them stark white with columns and magnolias in front.

But my favorite was a crumbling Victorian. We just about had a throw-down when I wanted to stroll around it and peek in the windows, but Darwin finally gave in and came with me.



Then I climbed in through a broken window.



This house is a real tragedy. It had a beautiful wraparound porch at one time, but now most of the spindles and columns are lying about on what's left of the porch floor and inside the house. The roof is falling in, and the entire floor of one room has been ripped out. Several of the windows - huge single panes on the bottom and multiple tiny panes on the top - are broken. Much of the woodwork is missing - including the mantels and the staircase.

But the saddest part isn't what's ruined but what is not. The floors - heart pine like ours but with a redder tint - are in beautiful shape. A cute built-in cabinet on the back porch is perfect. The two bathrooms - one tiled in '50s pink - are unspeakably dirty but otherwise OK. The parlor has push-button light switches.

It's sad because it's unlikely that anyone will ever fix this house. People might strip all the beautiful things out of it, might put the woodwork or floors or windows to good use in another house.

But this house has missed its chance to live again.

House Stalker

My time off had a way of disappearing itself ... the way time off tends to do. I began coming down with a sore throat/cold on Wednesday evening, and now I'm feeling miserable sometimes and OK sometimes.

In the OK times on Thursday I got a lot accomplished. I finally took the ornaments and lights down from the Christmas tree. After watching an episode of Christopher Lowell on de-cluttering, I tackled three huge boxes of clothes we had never unpacked from the move. I put away one box, packed up one box and found a whole box full of stuff for charity. I'm proud of myself for that one!

I also painted another coat of green in the kitchen. And I folded some sheets. Hey, that's something, right?

On Friday, I went to Bed, Bath & Beyond. *siiiiigggghhh* I am in love with that place. I bought three huge bags of organizational stuff and found a beautiful curtain rod for the kitchen. Darwin is hanging it right now, and I can hear his grunts of frustration while I type away in my comfy office chair.



When Darwin and I got home at 8:30 that night, we had a message from our across-the-street neighbors inviting us for dinner and dessert. Lucky us, they were still hanging out and having dessert.

So we walked across the street - so fun to be able to walk there - and had tiramisu with them. We also met two other Eutaw-ites (Eutawans?) and had a blast. We also got a tour of the neighbors' house, which you know I always love.

We ALSO found out from them that my favorite house in town is for sale. AND they have a key and offered to give us a tour of it today if we want it. Do you think we might want a tour? Hmmmm, let me think about that for a minute. YES, YES, YES, WE WANT A TOUR!

Oops, did I sound too eager there? Like a house stalker?

That's the good news for today. The bad news is, I got the day wrong for the auction. So clever of me. They told me Feb. 20, but I assumed it would be a Saturday. Oops. You know what they say about assuming.

Turns out the auction is on Sunday at 1 p.m. ... we already have plans with my parents and sister for lunch on Sunday. I'm disappointed, mostly because this auction has DOLLS.

But there will be others. Anyway, after all the wise comments on antiques the other day I was feeling less jazzed about antiques in general. And the neighbors' house last night? It was a regular house inside, like ours. It had excess stuff on the kitchen counters; it had "vintage" furniture rather than antique. It looked LIVED in.

And heck, that's more "us" anyway.

Neighborhood Tour

Saturday after my defensive driving class let out early (remember that ticket I complained about a while back?), I decided to take a leisurely stroll around the neighborhood with my camera. Everybody else is showing off their neighborhoods, so I figure it's my turn now.

I've added several thumbnail photos to my Town page. On my walk, I discovered my new favorite house in town. I can't believe I've never noticed it before, since it's directly in front of ours behind the tennis court. I couldn't get a good photo of the front because of the big magnolias, but it has so much character and fabulous gingerbread. In my Walking and Driving Guide to Historic Eutaw, Alabama, the house is called the Murphy-Henderson house. The first owner of my house was married to a Murphy before she was married to a Dunlap. Hmmm, wonder if they were related? The houses do have a similar style, though mine is on a smaller scale.



There are also quite a few houses that need help ...



Or are in the process of being helped ...

Plaster Envy and Other Discoveries

This weekend was a semi-annual event in Eutaw known as the pilgrimage. It's a self-guided tour to several historic buildings in the area.

Saturday was cool and rainy, but we decided to make the one-minute drive to downtown Eutaw and look around at all the shops. We browsed the two antique shops and the general store, which surprised me by having chi-chi decorative items alongside washing machines and other appliances. There we bought the book A Walking and Driving Guide to Historic Eutaw, which contains a photo and tidbit of information about our house. We were pleased all out of proportion to see our house there in print.

On our wanderings around the little square, we discovered that the Greene County Historic Preservation Society was having a BBQ-plate lunch to raise money. There we found out the pilgrimage was this weekend, and we bought tickets. I couldn't pass up the chance to see inside of some of the historic homes and get inspiration.

We toured four homes (1826, 1840s, 1850s and 1860), all restored or in the process of restoration. It was a very enlightening experience, though all the incredible antiques made our furniture look like it was made from cardboard and glue sticks.

And it made me miss the plaster that had been replaced with sheetrock in our house by the Parkins long ago. *Sigh*

But the best - and most unexpected - part of the tour was finding out information about our house. One woman told us our house was the best place to play when she was a child because it was right across from the park. It made me wonder who she played with ... the Parkins retired in our house, so maybe it was their visiting granchildren?

Then we met a woman whose late husband's grandmother was none other than the Mary Julia Dunlap who built our house. She said his last name was Jackson, and that helped me find out that his mother was MJ's daughter Laura (who married Alley Jackson, the high school principal). She said MJ's maiden name was McGiffert and that her brother (who lived in the 1830s white house next door) gave MJ the land to build the house on.

The woman said her husband and the other grandchildren were the ones who sold the house to the Parkins in 1969. MJ could've died around then (though she would've been around 96 years old), but I'm not sure if her daughter had taken possession for a while or what. Either way, there have only been three owners of our house - the Dunlaps, the Parkins and now the Walters.

The Walking and Driving Guide to Historic Eutaw Alabama says the house was built "around the turn of the century" and added on to "to accommodate a growing family." But the time frame of MJ's first and second marriages, births of children, etc. doesn't explain what they meant by a "growing family."

I wish I could've talked with the Parkins, who must've known more about the history of the house.