Foxfire 9

by Foxfire Fund, Inc.

  In the fall, when school started back, Scott Shope went to work on starting this issue of the magazine. Scott mostly printed the summer photos and continued taking photos of the house in stages as it was being rebuilt. Some other students got interested and helped with the work, taking and printing photographs and going on new interviews.

  At Mountain City, George Ensley worked on grading the location where the log house now stands. Pat continued to supervise while Frank Hickox and Roy Carter worked on the construction with him along with Clay and Darryl.

  Reconstruction went on until about December when the weather got bad. The roof was put on and the work was stopped. All this time, Scott and other students were working on the magazine. They continued to work on it throughout the school year. Still more photos were taken and printed while others drew diagrams and went on more interviews and began to do research on the land in the courthouses at Stephens and Habersham counties.

  I am a student who got hired this summer by Foxfire to work on Foxfire 9 and this magazine. My name is Greg Darnell. I got started on this magazine at the start of the summer right as school got out. About half of the magazine was done when summer started. I was helped by other students who were also hired this summer by Foxfire. Kyle Conway and Chet Welch helped take additional photos, draw diagrams, and go on final interviews with Moot and Mitch.

  Wig and I worked on this issue the day we had to take it to the printer getting the last pages ready. On the day before, we were at the courthouse in Clarkesville still trying to get all the history straight. We went back as far as we could, but because there weren’t any land plats, and the boundaries were just described as locust trees and boulders, we never were sure we had it all right. Hopefully some people in Stephens County or other members of the family we haven’t met will help fill in the blanks.

  The building itself is still not complete. We got the roof on so that it would be kept dry, but it is still a good ways from being complete. The reason for this is money. We did get a donation of $200 from the Belks Stores, though, and we are working on raising the rest. When we do have enough money to complete it, it will be used as offices for the Rabun County Historical Society, a community meeting area, and a museum.

  The Farm

  Mitch Anderson, who has been retired for twenty years from a lifetime of working with the Georgia Power Company, was raised near the Rothell place, and so he was one of our prime sources of information as to how that part of the country in general and the Rothell place in particular looked when he was young:

  * * *

  We moved into the settlement up towards Toccoa Creek within a mile of the Rothell place about 1915. My wife and all the Rothells and my four brothers and sisters, we were all kids together, and we were together most of the time. We’d get together on Saturday nights, and we all went to school together. That school moved about three or four times. It started out in the woods. Wasn’t a road to it. The reason for that was that there were people coming off the Tugaloo River to that school, too, so they took the distance between the Toccoa Valley, you might say, where we were, and the Tugaloo River settlement, and they divided the distance and [put the school halfway between the two].

  PLATE 379 Mitch Anderson

  Then they started having school in the old Tom Scott store—that’s where Payne’s store now is. The old store had closed out, and so it was just an empty building.

  Then they built the Pulliam School, and then they built a school on top of the hill behind the old barn on the Rothell place, back up there on that hill and adjacent to the Rothell place in one corner. Mr. B. O. Yearwood donated that land—deeded it to the school for as long as it was a school, and then that land was supposed to come back to him when it ceased to be a school. It was called the High Point School, and it stayed a school till it was abandoned, I believe.

  All those schools were elementary schools. After you finished elementary school at one of them, you either went to school in town or that was all the school you had.

  Now the Rothell Road came down by the Rothell house, and the old Clarkesville Road went up behind the house to Clarkesville. That was before my days that that old road was being used, but I’ve heard my dad speak of it. That road went up past the High Point School and the Murphy family graveyard, which is still there up on the hill behind the Rothell place.

  At the front of the house there used to, be an early spring garden. They always had a good little garden there—small, but it’d come in real early. It got the morning sun, you know. The little shed behind the house was the smokehouse, and they had their big gardens in back of the smokehouse. They always planted their pole beans back there. Boy, they raised them, too!

  Then there was a big barn straight on up above the house. Bruce Friar, Moot’s daddy, his mules ate it up. That was when he was in the mule-trading business. They ate the bottom log till it almost was set down on the ground. He thought he’d get it built back, but they finally tore that barn down.

  And there was a little house right below the main house that a servant named Sarah Elrod lived in. She worked for Mrs. Rothell. Another one named Aunt Millie lived there [after] Sarah. Then there used to be another servant that the boys bailed out of the chain gang. They called him “Old Snook.” He lived there a couple of years, I believe. Worked in the fields and helped around the house—got in wood and all. And then he disappeared. Slipped off and they didn’t find out where he went.

  And right out from the house, behind the kitchen, was the well. It’s a hundred feet deep, and it’s solid rock in the bottom. When they got down there and hit that rock, they finished it up just like a washpot. That’s what they told me—that the bottom of that was just like the bottom of a washpot all hollowed out and smoothed up. That well always had six or eight feet of water in it.

  And the house itself was a big house. They gathered in a lot. They all belonged to the Shiloh Baptist Church, and they’d go to church and maybe four or five or a half a dozen would come home with them, you know. Come home and eat. Mrs. Rothell was a good cook.

  MOOT: It’s a big house. I covered it one time in tin. I’m gon’ tell you something. I wasn’t as old as you [pointing to one of the students], and they throwed a rope over the top of it and I tied myself to the rope and they let me down, and I’d nail that tin down. I know how big that house is.

  PLATE 380

  They had it fixed up nice. Had carpet all over the house. Mitch and I wired it right after I got back from World War II, so it had electricity. I tell you, you should’ve seen that place when it was actually furnished. It was beautiful the way they had it fixed up—to be an old house. They had more stuff in there than you could shake a stick at. There’s stuff scattered all over everywhere that came out of there.

  There was always a crowd there, and it wasn’t nothing but happiness. They didn’t have no growling at all. No, sir. I’ve seen it so full of people that you couldn’t get on the porch, hardly, nor in none of the rooms. They’d all be full! And I guess some of them drank, but they done it on the outside. They didn’t come in with it!

  The Upstairs

  The upstairs portion of the house was a full second story that was located over downstairs rooms D/B/E. A boxed-in stairway went from the hall downstairs (B) into room J upstairs. A storage area was located under the roof of rooms F/G. Rooms I and K were divided from J by floor to ceiling partitions that were faced with lapped wooden shingles.

  The furniture which was in both the upstairs and downstairs of the house has gotten scattered, and it is now located in various private collections and in the homes of various members of the family. People we interviewed were able to help us find several pieces that the owners would allow us to photograph, however, and they were able to tell us which rooms the pieces were located in when the house was occupied. The photographs on these pages show the results of that quest.

  Originally the upstairs rooms were bedrooms. According to Mitch, “They slept upstairs in the early days, before my days, but when
the kids were growing up, Mr. Rothell got uneasy about them sleeping up there [the danger of fire in a log house with only one exit out of the upstairs was a very real one] and that’s when they changed those rooms up there and turned them into sewing rooms. In one side they had a loom, and I guess they hung hams in the other side.”

  Moot was able to supply additional details concerning how the rooms were used when he was younger. According to him, one of the rooms (I) was left a bedroom even after the children were moved downstairs. “There was one bed set in there, and two or three big rocking chairs. Then in the center of the room they had hickory splits that hung down [from the rafters] that they hung meat on. I remember all that just as good as if it was yesterday.”

  In the central portion (J), family and friends gathered to sing.

  MOOT: Where you came up the stairs in the middle part is where an organ sat. There was a homemade bench down either side and a bunch of chairs made out of hickory. I’ve set in them and played with them a thousand times. Then there was a rerosene floor lamp that set right beside the organ. That lamp was just like the ones downstairs. Those lamps have long chimneys and they burn mantles—circular netlike wicks like a gas lantern burns. It makes out the prettiest light you ever saw in your life. That thing burns like—man, it’ll light up the whole country!

  Then there was a piano, too, that set in there beside the organ. It was so heavy that when I moved it into my house it fell through the floor! My floor wouldn’t hold it, and so I had to give it away. John could play them both, and he could play banjos, fiddles, and everything. Every one of them would get in upstairs in the evenings. The Griggses and the Crawfords and the Hunters and all’d come and they’d have big eatings and singings several times a year, and they had a singing every night, just about it. Jim Farmer’s bunch from up at Clayton used to ride horses down here and spend the night. Everybody’d come. All the preachers. Everybody. There was always a crowd there.

  PLATE 381

  PLATE 381 Mitch helped the Foxfire students draw a floor plan of the house and label the rooms. The original house was only rooms D and E. F and G were then added before either Mitch or Moot can remember. The original house and this first addition are what were moved to Mountain City. A, C, and H were relatively recent additions and, ironically, were in such a state of disrepair that they were not moved.

  PLATE 382 Kerosene floor lamps like this one were scattered throughout the house. This one sat beside the organ upstairs.

  PLATE 383 This dresser was in the upstairs bedroom.

  Now in that storage room [L], they had everything in there. They even had cotton in there that they wove, and all such junk as that. They raised that cotton and they gathered it in the bolls back then, and then they had to pick it out of the bolls. They took it to them fireplaces and picked the seeds out, you know. They had cotton pickings, and they also had candy pullings—make old syrup candy and pull it, you know, and make it white? Did all that downstairs at that big fireplace, but they kept that cotton upstairs in those sealed-in storage rooms under the roof.

  In the other end room [K], they had the spinning wheel in it that made the thread, and a loom down the middle of the room. Somebody took that spinning wheel and that made me hot because it could still be used. I’ve got a quilt in here that was made up there. Liza Hunter made it. It’s got her initials in it somewhere. She made that quilt and gave it to John Rothell when he married Lois Singleton, and when he died, she gave it back to me. It was made upstairs right up there. They didn’t know what a machine was whenever that thing was made!

  The Hall Marion’s Room Keith’s Room

  Rooms A and C were added to the original house about 1920, according to Mitch. He said, “I can remember when those were built. Those two rooms were a porch to start out with. The porch roof was straight to begin with, but when they added the two rooms, they made dormers in the porch roof at the same time. I think Fain Robinson built those rooms, and he built a big barn in the back at the same time. Keith probably helped him.”

  According to Moot, “There was a big hall tree setting out there [in the hall, room B] beside where you went up the stairs, and there was about eight or ten big rockers that set in there along the walls. Everybody wore a hat then, and so they also had hat racks all around—deer horns and things on the walls.

  “And they had some slaves, and [room A] was for a colored man they kept. I was named after him. His nickname was ‘Moose,’ and they called me ‘Mootie.’ He used to pull me in an old red wagon. Now there was one bed in there and a dresser with a mirror and a washstand. Marion, one of the Rothell girls, married a Dr. Sumter, and after he died, she moved back to the house and moved into that room. ‘Moose’ was gone by then.

  PLATE 384 This is one of a number of rocking chairs that sat in the hall.

  “Keith moved into [room C] after the other boys was gone. It was furnished the same way [as A].”

  Amanda’s Room

  Apparently in the original house, room E was the living room and room D was the kitchen. In the late 1920s or early ’30s, D became the living room and E was converted into a bedroom for boarding teachers. At that point, D was furnished with an organ, a settee, and some chairs.

  Much later, D became Amanda’s bedroom, furnished, as Moot said, with “a big bed, a big cherry cupboard that had drawers for clothes, and on top of it, it had a big mirror. And there was an organ in there, and benches to sit on with stove legs for legs. Some had four legs and some were longer and had six. And those benches were covered with some red felt stuff. And then there was three more of them kerosene floor lamps.”

  The Teachers’ Room

  Schoolteachers from both the Pulliam and High Point schools boarded in the house because, according to Moot, “That was the only house that had room sufficient for them at that time. Back then they wouldn’t let schoolteachers stay where they wasn’t protected.

  “They put four fancy beds in there, and big old stand-up battery radios, and one of those old-time windup [record players] with the horn on it. And there was washing stands and all kinds of stuff in there. That was a big room. I’ll show you a clock that came off the fireboard in there. It hasn’t got an iron cog in it. It’s all wooden cogs, and it’s got weights in it as big as window weights. It runs good, but Lord have mercy what a racket it makes. It makes the weirdest sound. When it strikes, you can hear it all over the house! They kept two peach seeds in there to keep it greased—one in the bottom and one in the top. Those peach seeds put out an oil, and so they never had to oil the clock.”

  Mitch added, “There was an old high poster bed in there that was once a rope bed. My father was a blacksmith, and he fixed that bed to where you used the rails and slats [instead of ropes]. He made the iron catches or locks to hold the rails to the posts. I remember that, because I helped him. The slats went on those rails.”

  The chimney and the fireplace in the teachers’ room were reworked while the Rothell children were still at home. Mitch said, “They put long curved rocks around the base of that chimney to help support it after water washed out the dirt from around the base. Those rocks came from the old porch [that was converted into rooms A and C]. There was a landing when you came out of that front door and the porch, and they had curved rock steps that went down to the ground from either side of the landing. That’s the way the house was built to start with.”

  At the same time the chimney was buttressed, a cement slab was poured over the hearth of the fireplace, and hand prints and footprints were put into the wet cement. Moot said, “They didn’t know what concrete was, and they just played all in it. One is Mother’s and one is Ida’s and one’s John’s. They just capped that rock over to make a flat place up there for them kids to play on.”

  Mitch laughed, remembering John’s footprint. “Old John had a size thirteen or fourteen shoe. I remember an old doctor from out of Lavonia would come up there to gig frogs, and he asked John what size shoes he wore. ‘Hell,’ said he didn’t know, but said it took
two cowhides and a half bushel of tacks to make him a pair of shoes! John was a card, I’m telling you.”

  PLATE 385 One of four identical pieces that were in the teachers’ room.

  The Dining Room

  In the dining room [F], according to Moot, “There was a hand-painted chandelier that worked off of kerosene. And there was a big table that’s round when the leaves are out of it, but it pulls apart and just keeps going out to put the leaves in, and in that house, all the leaves were in it. There was a master chair and about eighteen of the ones without arms around them. Then there was two big corner cupboards—one for glass and china and one for silverware—and they was thousands of dollars’ worth of silver in there. They had big old heavy solid silver ladle spoons that’d weigh five and six pound apiece. Then there was a buffet that had felt on the inside and a marble top.”

  PLATE 386 The hand prints and footprint in the fireplace hearth. The footprint is John’s.

  The Boys’ Room

  “When I was young,” said Moot, “the boys stayed in what they called the boys’ room. That was Keith, Cliff, John, and Bruce. Lord have mercy, I slept in there a thousand times. There was four wash-stands with holes cut out in their tops and washbasins set down in them where they washed their faces every morning and shaved. Then there was dressers with mirrors beside each washstand, and there was four beds and four of those stand-up kerosene lamps. All those lamps in the house was just alike. They must have got them from the same man.

  “Those beds were solid oak, and they each had a roller at the end with a wooden handle that you rolled the bedcovers up on to make them up. And they were decorated. They had birds and animals burned in the headboards with an iron. Them beds were so high they couldn’t go in a regular house, but that house had high ceilings.”