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Nancy Stephens - Culverton

I bought my house in Culverton in the summer of 2001.  It had been vacant for about 15 years and, of course, needed a roof but that’s the story of any old house I’ve ever owned.  I had heard my kitchen used to be an old store and that the  Culverton Academy used to stand on the back of my property.  Of course I took off to the courthouse to see what I could find out.

I have never seen so much information in deeds before.  I found out that Jeff C. Smith bought the old Culver and Connel store lot (the store having been turned into a dwelling house per the deed) on November 12, 1909 for $416.00.  Yes!  The kitchen and dining room were an old store.  Then on  December 16, 1912 Jeff Smith bought the old Academy lot “on which the Culverton Academy had stood for over 50 years” for $50.00.  Well, that answered a lot of questions.  Now I knew why my house was so close to the road, why the back section was older than the front, and why my lot was such a weird shape.

Then Johnny Smith gave me a picture of the old  Culverton Academy .  In the picture on the front of the academy was the same trim that was on the front of my house.  I dug a little more at the courthouse and found out that in 1860 Hardy Culver had given an easement to the  Culverton Academy for a road to the school because an upstairs had been added for a Masonic lodge.  Well, the trim looked like it may have been added a little later than 1860 by about 20 years.  But that got me thinking.  I had crawled under the “new” part of the house for some reason or other and noticed that one side of the house has sills that are hand hewn and they are huge.  The other side of the house is balloon framed.  Also hanging from one of the sills is a huge hook.  This makes me wonder if maybe half of the “new” part of the house wasn’t built from parts of the old Culverton Academy , and the sills were pulled up here and set in place.

Wow!  I had no idea I would find all this out and put all this together from a trip to the courthouse and looking at a few deeds.  I thought I just had an old country Victorian cottage.  What a nice surprise.

 Now back to the old Culver-Connel store.  When I pulled the sheetrock down in the kitchen there were wonderful wide pine boards underneath.  The beams are mortise and tenon (did I spell that right?).  The back door is original with the original strap hinges.  In my pantry you can see were an old door was covered up that went into the dining room which appears to be an addition to the store.  From the outside the dining room is the board and batten part of my house.  You can also see from the outside where the front part of the house was built onto the dining room.

 And in addition to all of this, Jeff’s wife loved to garden.  So far I’ve found a fish pond and a flower pit that I’m very slowly bringing back.  She had a very good eye for landscaping.  The yard around the house is terraced perfectly with beautiful plantings of camellias, bulbs, and all kinds of things I haven’t discovered yet.  I just can’t wait to see what else is here.  The newest mystery is a round circle of dead grass about 6 feet across that has sunk in some.  It may be an old well, but the last time I saw the same thing was at the  Graves’ house and it was a fishpond that had been filled in.  I can’t wait to start digging!