Sepia Saturday challenges bloggers to
share family history through old photographs.
This week’s
Sepia Saturday prompt is the ancestral home. Oh, if only someone would invent a gadget
that would translate “Beginning
at two red oak saplings on a hill thence east one hundred and ninety-two poles
to a white oak in a glade” into a Google map complete with street view of that
ancestral home! In the meantime, I am
just grateful for a few photos of my parents’ and grandparents’ first homes.
My
maternal grandfather
Orvin Owen Davis (1899-1963) grew up on Third Avenue in
Shenandoah, Page County, Virginia. It is
likely he was born in that house too.
This photo of the Davis children with their Sullivan cousins is the only one that I can confidently claim shows the ancestral
home.
 |
Back row: Floral Sullivan, Orvin Davis, [unknown photobomber],
Laura Jollett Sullivan, Mary Frances Jollett Davis
Front row: Violetta Davis, Velma Davis, Elta Sullivan, Leota Sullivan |
 |
| Snipped from Google Maps |
And
here it is today, still looking quite good for her age.
 |
Velma Davis in front of the
house on Sixth Street
1922 |
By
1920, though, my granddaddy’s daddy
Walter Davis moved his family into a “modern”
Sears & Roebuck Craftsman bungalow which he built at 411 Sixth Street. It’s where my grandaunts
Violetta and
Velma
lived while they were in college and where Granddaddy lived until he married
Lucille Rucker.
 |
Violetta Davis 1924
A low wall has been added
to the front porch |
Here
is the house today, still well-kept and loved.
I know that because in the 1970s Walter’s only grandson – my mother’s
brother – bought the house, and my aunt still lives there.
 |
The house Walter Davis built at 411 Sixth St
Look closely and you can see where the fence used to be. |
When
my grandparents married in 1923, they moved out of 411 Sixth Street to rent part
of the house across the street. That’s
where
my mother was born in 1929. The house shows up in many photos because the Davises seemed to have prefered posing in the front yard.
 |
"C.M." and Violetta 1924
Momma's birthplace in the background |
 |
Velma Davis 1924
Momma's birthplace in the background |
She
didn’t live there long because her grandfather Walter Davis was a carpenter, a
builder of houses. In fact, many of the
houses in Shenandoah are Walter’s creations.
He and Granddaddy built the house next door at 414 Sixth Street. It became my mother’s childhood home. Apparently the house was built between 1930
and 1935 because in the 1940 census Granddaddy said they lived in the “Same
House” in 1935.
 |
My mother Mary Eleanor Davis about 1934
at her grandparents' home on Sixth St.
Two things to notice: (1) the fence is now gone, and
(2) Momma's childhood home is across the street. |
 |
Momma with her Shirley Temple doll and friend.
The retaining wall, brick pillar and fireplace
indicate this is Momma's home at 414 Sixth St. |
Today
both the house where Momma was born and the house where she grew up look
cheerful and well-maintained.
 |
412 and 414 Sixth St, Shenandoah, Virginia
Snipped from Google Maps |
Meanwhile
across the state in Portsmouth,
my dad’s first home was with his maternal
grandmother Mary Theresa Sheehan Killeen Walsh.
The house on the corner of Charleston and Palmer Avenues is barely
recognizable today with its addition of vinyl siding and absence of
landscaping.
 |
Helen Killeen Parker at the Walsh home
2017 Charleston Ave, Portsmouth, VA
early 1920s |
 |
The house at 2017 Charleston Avenue today
Snipped from Google Maps |
But
years ago Daddy remembered it. He even
had the nerve to march up to the front door, knock, and ask the current owner
if he could come in and look around.
(Sounds much like Miranda Lambert’s song “The House That Built Me” –
promising to take only a memory!) But
these are different times, and the only memory Daddy took from there was a
door-slam in the face.
As
you can see, many of those first homes can still be visited, even if only from
the street. However, not all my
ancestral homes were so lucky. The home
of my great-great grandfather
James Franklin Jollett hosted the much
anticipated family reunion for many years (although not during MY lifetime). So far I have not found a “full frontal” view
of the house, but pieces of the house can be seen in the background of many
photos giving me a sense of what it was like:
a tall 2-story white clapboard house outlined with an irregular picket
fence; a grape vine arbor shaded a back porch.
 |
4 Generations 1925
Orvin Davis
Mary Frances Jollett Davis
Orvin Jr.
James Franklin Jollett |
 |
| Jollett Reunion 1923 |
James
Franklin’s home came to be known as “Jollett Springs” because of the fresh
water springs on his property. People
came from miles around to fill their gallon jugs with his water.
Today
the house is gone. In its place is this:
 |
Jollett Springs Mobile Home Park
Grottoes, VA
Snipped from Google Maps |
 |
Jollett Drive
Snipped from Google Maps |
A mobile
home park.
The
only reminder that James Franklin Jollett was ever there is the street that
bears his name.
Addresses
inside the park are either North or South Jollett Lane.
I’m
glad for the ancestral homes I can still see and sad for those long gone until
I remember this:
“Home is
people. Not a place. If you go back there after the people are gone,
then all
you can see is what is not there anymore.”
©
2014, Wendy Mathias. All rights reserved.
