The Soul of a Home

Posted On August 1, 2012

The tragedy of the Perth-Andover Flood of 2012 continues to unfold and traumatize as our beautiful and historic old homes are demolished and wiped off the pages of history due to flood damage.
 
We’ve had a number of readers tell us they wanted to see stories about these old homes, and we will do our best to oblige though I have to tell you, having to write these stories at all is (expletive deleted!) infuriating.
 
But, wallowing in rage is not the way to bring about a better future!
 
However, losing these stately and fabulous old Dames…and I always think of homes as feminine, like boats, because they shelter and nurture us…is really hard on the head.
 
Putting aside for the moment the concerns of real estate value, property equity and personal loss, the old homes that are coming down had personalities and soul. They were built to last, with loving attention paid to detail and craftsmanship.
 
And during the hundred or more years that they have stood, bearing up under our brutal NB winters, they absorbed the energies, hopes & dreams of their inhabitants, providing us with a tangible link to our past.
 

They are our history, our physical connection to our forebears. And, if you are paying attention, they speak too of a time when stuff was made to last, when craftsmen took pride in their work and quality was the name of the game, not cheap crap that disintegrates in the blink of an eye.
 
New homes may be clean, but will those mini-homes still be habitable in even 30 years? Much less 130 years?
 
Here’s another interesting little tidbit I ran across in my travels regarding older homes….statistics have revealed that if a fire breaks out in an older home, and you smell smoke, you have on average about 17 minutes to get out before smoke inhalation will kill you.
 
In newer homes, you smell smoke and you have maybe 3 minutes maximum before the toxins in the smoke will kill you, because of all the synthetic materials used in today’s newer homes.
 
Food for thought, eh?
 
Losing these old homes, that would have stood and housed families for maybe another hundred years, if not more, is absolutely insane.
 

Vanishing Village indeed, and another aspect of this tragedy is that government officials only look at the surface loss….not at the deeper aspects of our love and commitment to our hearth and homes.
 
Leisa Bowmaster and Chris Cornhill bought their home at 1197 West Riverside Drive from Roger and Ann Lockhart in 2004.
 
After the flood, when the house became contaminated by fuel oil, Leisa felt so badly about the home’s tragic fate that she went on a mission to find out more about its history before it was obliterated forever.
 
They had an old copy of the Tobiquer Magazine, which had a photo of the home from 1893 and which spurred her search through the annals of time for some historical data.
 
The home originally belonged to the Reverend Charles Henderson and his wife Sara in the 1890’s.
They are buried right next to the Baptist Church in Andover.
After some digging, Leisa found a census from 1881 that listed her home and all the inhabitants at that time.
 

Not only was this the home of Charles, Sara and their two children Charles Jr and Gertrude but their servant John Travis lived there as well along with 4 other young male boarders: AC Keepkey ( a Blacksmith); HH Tibbits (Station Manager) DB Gallagher (Laborer) and Joseph Keepkey (Milkman).
 
Interestingly, the 1881 census gives the nationalities and religious persuasions of everyone as well!
Everyone listed in the census at that time was Irish, English or Scottish, and nearly all were Baptist with a couple of Church of England adherents and one Methodist thrown in for variety.

Stephanie Kelley