Bonjour from Campagne Maison
Here I go confessing again!! Another thing that many of you do not know about me is that I am a lover of all things old. I easily get lost in the era of times gone by, especially when I come upon a gem like this!
One of my favorite things “in the whole wide world” to do is tour old homes and old grave yards. That may sound weird to a lot of you but it is heaven to me.
I can just imagine this house in its “heyday”. Structurally, for its age, it is still in good shape, That is, except for the front porch that spans the entire width of the home. Can’t you just imagine all the footsteps that walked across there?
This home, which is rather spacious for it’s time period, appears to have housed a large family. There are two front entrances and five windows. It is hard to see in the pictures but the pieced in wood around the center window suggests that it was built in at a later date. This would make sense, architecturally, that there was a “dog trot” between the two areas, separating the living quarters from the sleeping quarters. As you can see from the side view there is only one large chimney. It sits to the rear of the home, suggesting that area to be the heart of the home—the kitchen.
The screened in area across the rear back side may have been a sleeping porch. That is only my assumption, because unfortunately, since I am not from this area, I know nothing about the history of this beautiful homestead. It may have just been a nice cool place for the family to eat their meals during
the dog days of summer. There is no evidence of any inside plumbing and the remains of an old “outhouse” lie on the ground out back, close to the barn. There is farm equipment in there, and it appears to have been maintained specifically for that purpose and there are cows grazing in the surrounding pasture.
This definitely is a home that houses many memories to someon
e in the area. It remains standing as a legacy to honor the family that built it, that birth and reared their children in it, and more than likely, that died in it. The only thing that would have made this find even better would have been for
me to actually go inside and get a real feel for the home.
History. It makes me wish there really was such a thing as time travel. But, since there is not, I do have
my imagination which is actively at work. I see myself as the lady of that home, sitting in my rocking chair on that front porch at the end of a long, weary day. As I rock the worries of the world away, perhaps snapping beans or mending clothing, I watch my children at play in the yard until the fireflies fill the darkening sky in the
beautiful Sweetwater Valley here in East Tennessee. Please leave a comment if you stopped by the farmhouse today. We just love having company.
Au revoir,
