Ancestral Homes

One of the homes on the House Tour has been owned 144 years by the same family! Another was occupied by three different pharmacist’s families (two of them related) beginning prior to the War Between the States followed by a family who lived there for 50 years.

This is awesome to me since I’ve lived in seven different houses in my lifetime and knew none of my relatives older than my mother and father. Esteem for the large portraits hanging proudly on the walls of these historic homes is at the top of my list. Again, I have one photo of one grandmother and grandfather and two pictures of a great-grandmother. All are snapshot size. I long for more. I want history and lineage.

Walls Talk

Houses hold the imprint of families that lived in them for as long as they stand. And when they fall they probably take that imprint back into the ground with them. Sometimes I will get a message when I enter a home but rarely when surrounded by the crowds swarming into the houses with me on the Preservation Warren County, North Carolina House Tour this past Saturday.

I split up my tour and visited a few on Sunday when I seemed to miss the groups. As I sauntered from the ‘newer’ section of a few homes-meaning added on in the 1800s or even 1900s- into the original sections built in the 1700s a different feeling emanated from the rooms.

Walls talk. We only need to listen.

Down Garden Paths

A dear friend blessed me with about seventy books on art that stirred up a new excitement in me. It’s like stepping through a lovely arbor to a magical place full of beauty and wonder and witnessing the perseverance of artists who couldn’t breathe unless the scent of paint, turpentine and canvas was in the air.
It’s difficult to know which book to start absorbing. Somehow ‘Down Garden Paths’ by William H. Gerdts landed on top. So begins my education on American Impressionists and the impact exterior gardens made on artists. The French Impressionists have long been my favorites and I’ve read and watched (on DVDs) about their personal lives as well as their painting ones. One influences the other.
Now I find myself going from the book to the internet to search out Childe Hassam, John Singer Sargent and Celia Thaxter. The art of Winslow Homer wakens me. I knew only of his sea work. Philip Leslie Hale’s ‘The Crimson Rambler’ brings tender moments to my mind.
A thread appears linking me back to Bordentown. In Candace Wheeler’s group of creative geniuses pops up the names of the Century Gilders. This is the same Gilder family that lived on Crosswicks Street, the same family where each child was extremely talented in the arts, in writing and traveling including exploration.