Old walls share secrets of past
Historic home yields time-worn treasures
If the walls could talk, perhaps they’d ask to go, too. Or maybe they’ll welcome a new owner.
The Mount Airy home located in Cordova isn’t visible from Latting Road. But hundreds of shoppers found their way to the estate sale Saturday morning at one of the oldest log homes in West Tennessee.
“We opened the gate early at 8:30 this morning and 75 cars drove onto the property,” said Scott Park, owner of Memphis Estate Sales Co. “It got up to about 90 cars. At one point we had 150 people in the home at one time. But it hasn’t dropped much.”
With hopes of taking home a piece of history for the right price, weekend yard-sale shoppers abandoned their routines for a more grandiose estate sale, which continues from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. today and from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Monday.
Families strolled the grounds, as some were looking for the right piece to complete a collection; others may have been looking to start new collections as many walked around with their arms full of items.
Park, who conducts, on average, three estate sales a month, said none is as illustrious as Mount Airy.
“It’s phenomenal,” Park said. “The first time I saw it , I fell in love with it — I wanted to buy it myself.
“The house just has a lot of personality,” Park said. “I walked around, hearing floors creaking. This place really has character.”
“Character” is how former owner Jodi Vanderpool described the home, too. Vanderpool and her husband, both history buffs, were the home’s first owners who aren’t descended from the original family.
“When I saw it, I told my husband we had to have it,” she said. “We are only moving now to be closer to family.”
The home, circa 1835, had been on HGTV’s “If Walls Could Talk” program because it has a lot of great personality and atmosphere, she said.
“It has a broken stair at the bottom,” she admitted. “The story is — an old pony got in and actually ran up the stairs and broke the step.”
The home also was featured on NBC’s “Who Do You Think You Are?” The show tracked the ancestry of Vanessa Williams, the first black Miss America and a star of the TV show “Desperate Housewives,” back to the Mount Airy home.
Williams’ great-great- grandfather, William A. Feilds, was one of the first black representatives in the state Legislature, where he served from 1885 to 1886.
Now the home is returning to the original family lineage — Memphis attorney John Adams Feild purchased the home.
Vanderpool, who has al- ready moved to Idaho, said she will miss her Tennessee home. From the mid-1800s armoire she purchased with the home to the Civil War treasures she found around the property — it’s all being sold. She said she’ll miss the seven-piece birdseye maple bedroom set, noting she had never seen a bedroom suite as beautiful or as detailed.
The walls are talking, she said.
“They are ready to share their many years of memories,” Vanderpool said. “This is an opportunity to finally share with the local community some of their ambience, personality and warmth.”
But the stories are what will stay with Vanderpool the most.
“It’s still a mind-boggling miracle to me,” she said. “It’s made me laugh for many years, thinking about that old pony.” — Christopher Whitten:
(901) 529-2355