Friday, November 9, 2007

Historic Time-Line (so-far)

Yesterday, after lunch at a local downtown southern buffet, I thought I would walk next door to the Local Archives (photo below)to see if they had any info on ThirteenEleven. I walked in and there was my High School AP history teacher. (That's what it is like living in a small town.) He flipped to the directories they had on file and found out some interesting stuff.

Time Line so far. (we need to research the first 19 years)
1938
The first Directory that contained information on the home was 1938. (The other directories did not state information as far down the road as our house.) In 1938, Richard J. Willis owned the house. Richard owned a grocery store. His wife's father built and lived in the house next door. R.J. Willis's phone number was 796-J. (wonder where that phone jack was? hall maybe?) Richard was married to Emma Bradfield. ( How did one dial a "J" on a rotary phone?)
Ebay 1938 phone

1941
Vacant

WWII- no information available

1946
Owner Lord H. Morrison he owned the local Nehi Bottling company located closer into town on the same street. His wife Edna G. worked at Nehi also. The location was probably the block next to the old Coke-Cola Building. Too bad we didn't find any old Nehi Bottles. Only about 45 new beer bottles.

1948
Harold W. James and his wife Helen owned the house. Helen was the dance teacher. In 1948 Harold was a salesman and in 1950 he was an accountant at JK Boatwright.


1950
James H. Wynn Jr. ia listed in the directory as living in the house. His phone number was 4253.



1952
Robert C. Worthy a mail carrier owned the house. The Worthy's had two daughters and we bought the house from the estate of one of the daughters. After Robert and Blonde Worthy died. (more on that later)The Worthy family rented the house out for a number of years. Which explains the poor lack of up keep and condition of the house. Actually a friend of mine lived in the house in the early 90's.

In 1952, the Worthy's phone number was 3835.




Ebay 1950 phone. I am SURE they had pink!


More exciting news is our house is officially on the National Register with out us having to do a thing. The whole street is a Historic District and all the homes are included. 130 acres. The paper work states that "the area is significant as a rural residential area that was originally developed along a country road at the outskirts of town and was gradually incorporated into the urban development of the city." On the map our property is included.



Everyone was helpful at the Archives and were glad we were restoring this house. I just hope everyone has patience with our mess.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Good post, Jen. Very interesting.

Anonymous said...

In our neighborhood the street numbers changed at one point in time, so maybe you can't find anything before 1938 because yours also changed?

Anonymous said...

You must be younger than 40 :)
To dial a rotary phone 'letter', 'J' would be 5 ('K' and 'L' are also assigned to 5). When I was a kid, all phone numbers consisted of letters and numbers. If you lived in the Murray Hill Section of NY, your phone might be said verbally as
Murray Hill 5 9840, or written as MU5-9840

April said...

I love that you give the four digit phone numbers. Mine growing up was 3894.