Ancestry Magazine

(Photos courtesy of Bill Chapman, Enon Hall; for more information, visit www.enonhall.com.)

Tomorrow is the big day. We will close on Enon Hall at 4:00, ending what has been a very long process. I first saw the home in a photograph … in a book called “Hathaways of America” that was published in 1970. I was immediately enchanted with the idea of owning a home that had been in my grandfather’s family for such a long period of time (1666–1940). I should point out that I was just 7 years old at the time.
Bill Chapman
25 July 1999

Not everyone is so focused at such an early age. But for some people, reaching back to their roots means reaching back to the house where those roots were first planted.

“The first time I saw a photo of Enon Hall in a book and understood that it was a huge part of my family’s history, I was hooked,” says Bill Chapman, Enon Hall’s current owner, an advertising executive whose eight-year-and-counting project gives a whole new meaning to the term weekend warrior. “I committed myself right then to someday live here. I think part of the attraction was the fact that the house was no longer in the family. It had been sold in 1939. So it really struck me as a kind of Holy Grail. It was a family treasure that had been lost.”

Family treasure—that might be best way to sum up a quixotic quest to reclaim the old homestead. More often than not, that treasure is buried under layers of earth, coats of paint, and years of neglect. It costs more time, more money, and more gray hairs than anyone would care to admit. And yet we persist. Why? Because the real treasure isn’t the old familiar structure; it’s the journey home.

Laws of Attraction
When you come right down to it, the mysterious magnetism of a home place often defies logic. Carla Gerding’s grandparents were proud when her father became the first in the family to earn a college degree and move from the family farm in Henry County, Kentucky, to Louisville. “The attachment to the farm and home never left him, however,” says Carla.

Carla grew up spending Saturdays and summer vacations on the farm. It was the farm that felt like home, she says. “We only happened to be living for the present in Louisville.” As a girl, she told her grandparents and great-grandparents that she wanted to live in the house when she grew up. “They thought, of course, that I was daft and dismissed the idea.”

But the pull of that home place was so strong that even Carla’s own children, who grew up in a military family and had never lived on the farm at all, would tell people they were from Henry County. Her father retired there, built a house across the street from his childhood home, and started the restoration process. Upon word that her father had cancer, the Gerdings retired six months early, and Carla returned with her family to take up the work her father had started (“It was practically a ruin when we decided to tackle it,” she says) and maintain a working farm. That was in 1994—and today they’re still going. Their most recent endeavor? “Working on our last major house project which was to refinish the front hall and stairs … all 43 of the spindles removed and refinished!”

Carla’s experience isn’t unique. According to Susan Solakian, author of Managing a Renovation: Staying in Charge and out of Trouble, tackling a remodel of an old, family home is anything but easy. “There’s a 99 percent chance that [the buyers] have never done anything like this before,” she says. And hands-on lessons in renovation how-to tend to be unfortunate—and fast.

But there’s still something that compels a person to tackle a job like this. “I think they’re people who have an appreciation of history, who feel some life in a house like that,” says Solakian. “It could be the feeling that other spirits have been there, or it could even be the aesthetics—they don’t build houses with beautiful molding or those beautiful fireplaces anymore.”

There’s also the drive to recapture a part of personal history. That’s what happened for Dave Munsell and his wife, Kathy. On their evening walks, the couple would often pass by the farm in Salem, Oregon, where Dave had been raised, and they’d dream. The farm itself had been sold a few years before, but about the time the Munsells were looking for a larger home for their three children, they learned that the state was preparing to repossess the property for back taxes. “The equity from our house just made the tax payment and served as the down payment on the house and 2.5 acres of land,” says Kathy Munsell. “Dave [had] always talked about the house. We never thought it would become available to us.”

Their job was never easy—the roof needed fixing, and Kathy says “all of us spent years walking around and around the house, painting primer by hand. By the time we got around once, it was time to paint again, and we never did get to the top—our ladder wasn’t tall enough.” But now the painting’s done, and a new country kitchen has been installed. She continues, “We just need to win the lottery, so we can stabilize the barn.”

Something Old, Something New
Nationwide, statistics show that Americans are spending more and more money on remodeling old houses. At the same time, the National Trust for Historic Preservation has pinpointed 300 distinct communities around the country—up from only 100 in 2002—where teardowns of old homes are negatively affecting historic communities.

There may be a reason for this out-with-the-old-in-with-the-new mentality: breathing new life into an old home is an expensive, taxing, and seemingly never-ending project, even when the home was built as recently as the 1950s. All that can lead to bigger and bigger headaches for someone who wants to reclaim Grandma’s house.

“Before building codes were instated in 1954, construction methods were guesswork,” says Solakian. “Anything built before that is up for grabs. There were no rules. Most of the homes in the late 1800s were not built in a city—they were built by the families that lived in them. They used handy materials. If they had hardwood trees in the backyard, they would mill them. And they didn’t always have a lot of choices on building materials.”

In her own remodeling work, Solakian has stumbled upon her share of surprises. “I found a piano bench holding up part of a wall. We found circular staircases completely enclosed by walls. Most of the time, you just have no idea why this was done. We were working on a 1904 house, and from the lawn we noticed a window that we couldn’t find on the plans that the architect had done. We tried to find this window from the inside of the house, and we discovered a door that had been wallpapered over—repeatedly. From the inside, there was just no way you could tell this room existed,” she says.

Aside from recommending that a homeowner without home restoration experience never tackle a project like this as a do-it-yourselfer (“It’ll take 10 times as long and cost 10 times as much”), Solakian notes that you have to be ready to expect the unexpected. “You just don’t know what you’re going to find.” Headaches start to mount for people who don’t realize what they’re getting into: even a house that has been lived in seemingly forever can have its share of problems. “What you get depends on how bad the house is, who built it, where it sits,” she continues. “You’re mixing old and new when you do repairs, so your experience can also depend on how many remodels have been done over time. Houses are just like people. Parts wear out.”

House Calls
Hassle aside, sometimes an ancestral home just seems to be waiting for its old owners to return. Wendy Firman Isenhart had tried before to buy her grandparents’ former house in Chelan, Washington, but couldn’t. One summer during a trip back to Chelan, friends arranged a tour of the house for Wendy and her husband. “It was great to see it again,” Wendy says. As they were leaving, her husband told the then-current owner, “If you ever want to sell, I think you’re looking at your buyer.” Four years later, Isenhart says, “there was a message in my inbox asking if we wanted to buy it.”

The Isenharts had renovated several classic homes, so, says Wendy, “we were kind of a perfect match for this amazing property. It does feel a bit eerie sometimes to be in the same places you remember as a child, but it mostly feels good. The house likes us, I think.”

Inside the Bones
Beyond the structure of the house and odd design decisions, other surprises may also await the buyer of an ancestral home: memories. Particularly the types that are stashed under the carpet or stuffed behind a wall. And any number of them can lead a person on to bigger and better family history insight.

Stratton Hicky remembers that there had always been “treasures” in the drawers at the home where he visited his nana as a child. After moving back to Georgia to be closer to his aging parents, he found Nana’s place packed with photos, books, furniture, and papers—especially papers.

“The house has been in our family since 1820, and apparently every generation decided to squirrel away papers, letters, and photos in various cabinets and closets. We have papers going back to the late 1700s. Several ancestors were lawyers, so some of the papers are records of trial proceedings or judgments. There are several diaries too. My grandmother and her sister lived in the house until they died, and it almost looks like they saved every personal letter they ever got,” says Hicky.

One of Hicky’s more spectacular finds was a Civil War-era letter even his own father, who grew up in the house, knew nothing about. In the letter, Hicky’s great-grandfather, who was about 14 at the time and in military school, writes to his own grandparents in August of 1864.

“It tells about how he and the other cadets from his school went to Atlanta to help in the defense of the city in July [Battle of Atlanta]. He even drew a crude diagram of Atlanta, the trenches where the cadets were assigned, and the location of the four union batteries that were firing on them. He mentions guard duty, picket duty, and some interesting sleeping arrangements over the trenches, with his rifle on his chest hoping he didn’t roll over into the water filled trench. He also mentions several cadets getting hit by mini balls and one hit by a 12 pounder. He closes with a discussion about how his clothes are wearing out and asking his grandparents to send his trunk with more of his clothes,” says Hicky.

Saving left-behind memories is an important step in the reclamation process, and it’s one that Solakian recommends the homeowner tackle long before the renovation starts. “The homeowner has to completely clean out the house to prepare it for the project. You might find boxes of old photos, wedding gowns, things that people put up in the attic and forgot about,” she says. And do it early—once the contractor starts the project, odds aren’t good that mementos will remain intact.

Plus, keeping old photos and artifacts handy can help with the reconstruction, as they’re currently doing for Bill Chapmans’ Enon Hall project. “We dug up an old shutter dog in the yard and were able to confirm that it did, in fact, come from this house by looking at old photos. And by matching the dog’s broken base to the bases still attached to the old siding we could even tell exactly which window the dog came from.” Thanks to the great find, the house’s new windows will include antique shutter dogs that match the bygone originals.

Homecomings
The simple truth is, homes—real homes—are people magnets. And even with all of the expense, the struggle, and the headaches, reclaiming an old family home is pretty much guaranteed to attract family—new and old.

Bill Chapman can attest to that. He estimates that close to 100 long-lost cousins with links to Enon Hall have gotten in touch with him since he bought the house and established the Enon Hall Web site in 1999. Loads of people with distant ties have asked if they can stop by for a visit. “We always welcome them,” Bill says. “Many of us enjoy visiting the family homes of famous Americans, but we rarely have the opportunity to visit our own ancestral homes. Births, deaths, marriages … there have been centuries of family passages that have occurred right here and each one of these events somehow and some way led to us being who we are today. It’s very cool. And it’s cool to see other people have that experience when they visit.”

Kathleen Booher’s restoration of her mother’s family’s 1840s V-notched log house in Kentucky has also helped her restore old family ties. “Family is drawn to the house for its nostalgia and memories. We had an incredible family reunion—over 100 [attendees]—three years ago, complete with wagon rides and several of us wearing period dress of the late 1800s. We had about 20 in attendance who were in their 80s and 90s. The restoration of this house has warmed their hearts.”

It’s a feeling Kathleen hopes to pass on as well: “Honoring my ancestors has become very important to me … and I believe what I am doing with this home place will help teach our family’s younger generations the importance of ‘remembering to remember.’”

Journey’s End—Back Where We Belong
Even for younger generations—kids who didn’t know the house or its original owners—being surrounded by this very personal history gives them an almost immediate connection to the past. And an opportunity to create a legacy for the future.

For the Munsells, their reclaimed Salem, Oregon, family farm has now become the hub for Kathy’s family of all ages, though it was originally in husband Dave’s family. “We have two granddaughters who act like they will literally die if they don’t see us at least every other weekend. Life is sweet,” she says.

And at Enon Hall, where son William has spent over half of his 13 years watching and helping as new life has been breathed into the old house, the experience is something he’ll never take for granted. “It is a great feeling to know that we are back where we belong,” he says. “There is really no greater satisfaction than knowing that you helped to save a house that your ancestors lived in. There is a feeling of gratitude that you get when you realize that you wouldn’t be there without your house and it wouldn’t be there without you. It is comfort, rest, and something to be really proud of. I am like a kid—who just got his favorite flavor of popsicle.”

Paul Rawlins is a writer and editor in Salt Lake City.
Photo courtesy of Enon Hall. www.enonhall.com.