Sepia Saturday: First Home

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.”

― Robin Hobb, Fool's Fate

The Sepia Saturday HOME TOUR starts now.  Enjoy your visit.

© 2014, Wendy Mathias.  All rights reserved.