Little Art Tree

A place to ‘grow’ artists thriving in Ashville

Story by Scottie Vickery
Photos by Richard Rybka

Jess Lauren Alexander sees art in everything. When she looks at coffee filters, she sees flower petals. Colorful yarn looks like the bristles of freshly dipped paintbrushes, and in her mind, plastic bottles have the potential to become sculpted human figures.

“I don’t think I’ve ever not done art,” she said. “My mother’s side of the family is very artsy, and I just took up with it.”

Alexander, who grew up in Ashville, wants children to have the same opportunities she did to explore different artistic mediums, unleash their imagination and develop their creativity. That’s why she opened Little Art Tree on the Courthouse Square just over a year ago.

Young artists showing off their work.

“It’s a need I don’t think is being met,” she said, adding that art is no longer a regular part of Alabama’s school curriculum. A former substitute teacher, Alexander always had students asking her how to draw different things. When she realized how many children had the desire to learn, she started an afterschool art program at the elementary school. More than 60 children signed up, but the class was short-lived because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

She began teaching again in 2021 and opened the studio that September. “To me, art is not just something to do or a possible career. It’s therapy; it’s an outlet,” she said. “My middle school students deal with so much. Sometimes they just come in here and start drawing and talking, and it’s a release. It gives them a chance to just chill, draw and decompress.”

Alexander, who is married to Andrew and is mom to 12-year-old Dawson, teaches six classes a week to nearly 50 students ranging in age from 4 to 18. She also offers the occasional adult class – a group recently made door hangers – and she’s looking for another teacher to join her so adult classes can be a more regular occurrence. “It’s hard to switch my mindset from children to adults,” she said.

Besides, helping children and teens fall in love with art has become Alexander’s passion. “I teach techniques, but it’s mostly about giving kids space and a place to come and explore art,” she said. “Anyone can be an artist. It’s just finding the style and medium that fits your personality.”

She uses her own family as an example. Her mother, Beverly Burnett, paints landscapes with oils, makes quilts and crochets. Her great-aunt is an abstract painter in Birmingham and works mostly with acrylics. Alexander, whose style is “semi-abstract,” prefers to mix things up a bit, often combining watercolors, acrylics, and ink with non-traditional materials, such as coffee grounds, in her artwork.

To help her students discover their own talents, Alexander’s classes focus on a variety of mediums. “We do a little bit of everything – painting, drawing, mixed media, clay,” she said, adding that she hopes to add a kiln to her ever-growing list of offerings soon. “Some of the kids have just extraordinary talent for such a young age,” she said.

Alexander knows that art lessons can be out of reach for many families, but she wants to make them accessible to as many children as possible. She’s reaching out to individuals and businesses who may be interested in sponsoring a child for $100 a month, $500 for half a year or $1,000 a year. All the materials are provided, and classes are held August through May, she said.

Sparking imaginations

Alexander’s studio, in a historic building that has taken many forms, including a feed store and a beauty parlor, is the perfect backdrop to showcase the students’ work as well as some of her own. Paintings hang on an exposed brick wall, and Alexander loves knowing that the building has a history of inspiring budding artists. Christine McCain, whose family owns the building, was an artist and once taught art classes there, as well. Alexander’s mother was one of her students.

“I fell in love with the building,” Alexander said. A colorful mural of flowers, mushrooms and a tree that Alexander painted on the back wall is a nod to the studio’s name, as well as its mission. “We grow artists here,” it reads.

Detail work on a sketch of a flower

The classes have proven to be a big hit with the young artists. “I like art,” 10-year-old Jayden said in one recent class. “You can paint and use your imagination.”

Her sister, Kadence, 12, said drawing is her first love, but she loves painting and learning other skills, as well. “I love doing stuff like this,” she said, using a palette knife to paint the black markings on the trunks of birch trees. “I’ve never done this before, and I love creating stuff. When I was little, I loved to draw. I have notebooks full of drawings.”

The same can be said of Alexander, who found her inner artist with a how-to-draw horses book as a child. “I would take paper and that book and sit and trace and copy for hours,” she said. “I did it so much I got to the point where I didn’t have to trace anymore.”

Alexander said she’s studied pretty much all forms of art over the years, including painting, drawing, sculpture and pottery. “I’m always taking classes and workshops to learn new things,” she said.

Although she loves introducing new techniques to her students, Alexander also allows them free time to work on whatever they want. Some paint, some draw, some sculpt with clay and they have access to all of the art and craft supplies she keeps on hand.

Alexander has three cans marked “Theme,” “Description” and “Color” the students can use if they get stuck. They can draw an idea from each of the cans to give them a direction or starting point. Alexander recently drew “fish” for the theme, “stressed out” for the description and “warm colors” for the palette.

“It’s usually something silly, but it will spark an idea for them to work on,” she said, adding that watching them explore is one of her favorite things to do. “Everyone has a medium they’re better at and they enjoy more, and I want each of them to find their thing. When they do, I get teary-eyed. It just gives me the most joy.”

All the Dolls

Moody collector amazes with her ‘finds’

Story by Leigh Pritchett
Photos by Kelsey Bain

Kathy Haynes’ house is full of babies … about a thousand of them actually.

She is not like the Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe and “had so many children, she didn’t know what to do.” Quite the contrary, Mrs. Haynes knows exactly how to treat each one of hers. And there is always room for one more.

“I am one of those crazy doll ladies,” said Mrs. Haynes, who lives in Moody. “This is what I do. It is my hobby.”

Her collection of dolls encompasses more than 160 years. Every doll has a unique story, and Mrs. Haynes can easily recount the fine details of each.

Kathy Haynes’ doll collection is about 1,000 strong.

One – an Effanbee Rosebud – spent much of its life in England, but somehow ended up in a Huffman antique shop where Mrs. Haynes bought her. She found some of her other dolls in thrift stores, garage sales, estate or doll sales and websites.

At a thrift store, she discovered a 1970s, red-haired Blythe doll that still worked and wore original clothes. “She was perfect, missing a shoe. I paid 59 cents for her and turned around that night and sold her for $1,000,” Mrs. Haynes said.

She found a Madame Alexander portrait doll in an Irondale thrift store. “I got her for $12.”

A 1950s Miss Revlon came from yet another thrift store. Miss Revlon cost Mrs. Haynes about $15. “Isn’t that unreal? But you have to know what you’re looking for,” Mrs. Haynes said.

The oldest of her brood is a flat-top, China-head doll Mrs. Haynes got for $15 at an antique store in Crestline. That treasure, dating to the 1860s, required a week of work to get all the cat hair off the dress.

The next oldest would be from the late 1800s, a Martha Chase doll and a papier mache doll with original clothes and, from around 1915, an Armand Marseille doll and two Kestner 171 dolls. The papier mache doll was a $10, thrift-store find.

Her collection fills several curios in her living room and dining room. Additionally, hundreds of dolls are on display in a designated room. A select few grace a guest room.

Her treasure trove also includes an Armand Marseille Queen Louise (circa 1915); Bye-Lo dolls with bisque or composite heads; Nancy Ann Storybook Dolls (1930s and ‘40s); Skookum Indian doll with papoose (1940s); Betsy McCall and large Mary Jane Effanbee dolls (1950s); Annalee soft-sculpture dolls; Barbies and more Barbies (1950s and across the decades); Little Miss Echo (1960s), and modern American Girl dolls, among others.

“I have a wide variety,” Mrs. Haynes said.

A love of teaching, history

For 30 years, Mrs. Haynes taught language and history to preteens in Trussville. She used an interactive method of teaching that, for example, encouraged students to “be” Egyptians for a day as they learned about the country. Mrs. Haynes would dress that day as Cleopatra.

Her whole family, in fact, is dedicated to conveying and preserving history. Husband Bob taught advance placement history to 10th and 11th graders in Trussville. Their son, Josh, has assumed that helm, along with coaching scholars’ bowl.

Mrs. Haynes cherishes things reminiscent of her childhood and items with a story, such as antique pieces handed down in the family. She collects cookie jars, Hummels, green and pink Depression Era glass, Byers Carolers, Raggedy Ann and Andy and stuffed bears. One of the bears was created by Trussville doll artist Jan Shackelford.

Even the family pets have their stories. Chance, for instance, is a rescue dog. Mrs. Haynes said her husband gave the dog that name because “we were giving him a chance, and he was giving us a chance.”

Because of her love for history, Mrs. Haynes said the intriguing background of Alabama Baby dolls would make them the dearest in her collection.

An Armand Marseille Queen Louise doll dates to about 1915. An American Character Toodles with “follow me” eyes is in the background.

According to the Library of Congress and The American Folklife Center, Alabama Baby dolls were made in Roanoke, Ala., by Ella Gauntt Smith. In 1897, a neighborhood girl brought her broken bisque doll to Smith to repair. Smith was a seamstress, whose hymn-singing parrot would sit on her shoulder while she worked.

Smith experimented two years before finding the right method to repair the doll. From that, her doll-making business was born. In 1901, Smith received her first patent (albeit in her husband’s name). At the height of her business, about a dozen women worked with her, helping to create the plaster-headed dolls with fabric bodies. She was the first southern doll maker to produce Black dolls.

“These dolls are very special,” said Mrs. Haynes, who has four Alabama Baby dolls. One is a rare, barefoot Alabama Baby.

Though Alabama Baby dolls are Mrs. Haynes’ favorite, Chatty Cathy dolls would be a close second.

She has more than 100 Chatty Cathy dolls. She pulled the cord on one doll to demonstrate that its talk box still functions like new. “Tell me a story,” the doll proclaimed; with a subsequent pull, the doll asked, “Will you play with me?”

Smiling, Mrs. Haynes said, “I think she is a doll. Well, she is a doll!”

The different family groupings of Chatty Cathy dolls that Mrs. Haynes has assembled constitute a collection within a collection. She has Charmin’ Chatty, Chatty Baby, Tiny Chatty Baby, Chatty Brother and Singin’ Chatty dolls.

They feature varying styles and colors of hair, but almost all are wearing original outfits. Mrs. Haynes noted that Barbie and Chatty Cathy dolls shared the same fashion designer.

Holding a Black Tiny Chatty Baby doll, Mrs. Haynes remarked that very few of them were made. “Isn’t she cute?” Mrs. Haynes asked.

Mrs. Haynes also has rare Canadian Chatty Cathy dolls, which, unlike their American cousins, have glass eyes and pinker skin tones.

“I think I have about 10 Canadian ones in all,” she said.

When Mrs. Haynes was a child, her beloved Chatty Cathy doll was accidentally left in a park one day. She and her mother returned quickly to look for it, but the doll was gone.

Decades later, when Mrs. Haynes was in her 30s, her husband bought a blonde Chatty Cathy to replace the one she had lost.

“I just have a very sweet husband, … a blessing from the Lord, … a good Christian man,” Mrs. Haynes said.

Bob’s gift sparked 30 years of doll collecting, which has become an activity the couple enjoys together.

“He has always supported me,” Mrs. Haynes said. “… Bob just got into (doll collecting) with me. He went to doll shows with me. Now, he can tell you as much about Chatty Cathy as I can.”

Sharon Kirby of Vestavia Hills, who is president of The Birmingham Doll Club of Alabama, noted Mrs. Haynes’ extensive knowledge about Chatty Cathy dolls. She said Mrs. Haynes, who is first vice president, gave a presentation on Chatty Cathy to the club, which is the oldest United Federation of Doll Clubs (UDFC) group in the state. Kirby was so impressed with the presentation that she has encouraged Mrs. Haynes to give it at other UDFC groups.

“She just did a really wonderful job. … You could tell she was a teacher. … Everyone learned a lot,” Kirby said.

Kirby mentioned the interesting bit of trivia that Chatty Cathy and “Rocky” of the cartoon “Rocky and Bullwinkle” were voiced by the same person, June Foray.

Both Kirby and Mrs. Haynes said dolls not only offer a look into the past, but also preserve snippets of yesteryear.

“Dolls are a form of art,” Mrs. Haynes said. “They are also a part of our history.”

Kirby added, “Dolls kind of represent a snapshot of history at the moment – the fashion, the trends, I guess even the materials available.” They exemplify technology from their particular era, such as the mechanism that allowed Chatty Cathy to speak.

Through the generations, dolls have helped to teach children to use zippers and buttons, to nurture and “even to cut hair,” Kirby said, with a chuckle. “… If you like dolls, you see the beauty and value in them.”

Barbara Eiland of Trussville said she likes to see Mrs. Haynes’ “amazing” assortment of dolls. “They’re very interesting.”

Eiland, a long-time friend, described Mrs. Haynes as a caring person who diligently and lovingly attends to the needs of family, relatives, friends and neighbors. Mrs. Haynes is thoughtful, too, she said. After learning that Eiland, as a girl, loved Penny Brite dolls, Mrs. Haynes got her one.

“I thought that was so sweet of her to do that,” Eiland said. “… That meant a lot to me.” l

How a St. Clair faux cabin began a real home

Reclaim, repurpose, reuse

Story by Elaine Hobson Miller

Photos by Wallace Bromberg Jr.

Rodney Tucker and Billy Connelly wanted a relaxing retreat, a place to get away from the hustle and bustle of downtown Birmingham and their high-pressure jobs at UAB Hospital. In all the years they have been together, they have never built something new, but always renovated. When an internet search turned up a small 1980s cabin at the end of its own cul-de-sac in Odenville a few years ago, they didn’t waste any time taking a look.

What they found was a 900-square-foot box with a wrap-around porch, a stick-built house masquerading as a cabin by hiding under log siding. What they saw was potential.

“It ended up being a total redo,” says Tucker. “Our contractor, James Wyatt (Wyatt Construction), took it down to the studs. We extended it a little bit and enclosed some areas of the porch.”

“Extended it a little bit” meant adding 700 square feet. Wyatt removed all but one interior wall, pushed a couple of outside walls a little further out, enclosed parts of the porch to create an entry hall at the front and a gallery at the back, and added a large, asymmetrical screened porch on one side. What was once a two-bedroom house with two tiny bathrooms now has a large master bedroom and two guest rooms, two large baths, a laundry room and the aforementioned gallery and entry hall. As for the log siding, he replaced that with a fiber cement siding.

“Farmhouse chic” best describes the Tucker-Connelly house today. It’s filled with doors, furniture and decor fashioned from repurposed wood and metal. Most of the furniture was made by Stray Cats of Birmingham, while all the built-ins, such as the kitchen cabinets, were built by Joe Dickert of Big Rock Cabinets in Springville. Working with architect Bob Burns, Tucker, a palliative care physician, designed the “new” 1600-square-foot house (plus porches).

The section of the porch that formerly spanned the front of the house is now divided into anentryway with separate porches on either side. To the left and right of the entrance are the only two sections of the original porch that weren’t screened, glassed or incorporated into the house. On the left is the “cantina,” an outdoor overflow space for guests when the larger, asymmetrical screened porch gets crowded. The cantina is so named because its two tables have tops made from old tin Corona beer signs. A vintage, functional, circular Old Crown Beer thermometer hangs in the cantina area.

James Wyatt removed a wall to open up the living-dining area, turning it into one large room. The living room portion has a coffee table, credenza and end table made from reclaimed wood pallets. An Arthur Price oil painting of an old log cabin hangs on one of the walls.

“We replaced the dilapidated fireplace with Bessemer gray brick, and the new oak mantel is from an old mission-style house in Chattanooga,” Tucker says. “Only the leather sofa and love seat in here are new.”

Stray Cats made the 3.5 x 8-foot kitchen island, topping it with zinc-coated stainless steel. The cabinets are a dark-stained oak, while the all-electric appliances include a double wall-oven, a glass stove top and a French-door refrigerator with four drawers. Tucker and Connelly chose quartz countertops because they look like marble. “We would have preferred marble, but it stains easily,” Connelly says.

Tucked into one end of the kitchen, opposite the refrigerator and ovens, is Tucker’s pride and joy: a bar. Its tin ceiling came from the roof of an old Victorian house in North Carolina, while its chandelier used to hang in Rodney’s parents’ house in Gadsden.

Underneath the countertop are a wine or beverage cooler and an ice maker. The shelves over the bar house Tucker’s collection of about 1,000 pieces of barware, including wine and cocktail glasses, cocktail and martini shakers. The etched ship decanters probably belonged to sea captains at one time. “We have enough shakers to allow each guest to make his own drink, if we weren’t concerned with breakage,” Tucker says.

On a narrow, inset wall between the bar and the living room is a vintage slot machine perched atop a church pedestal that looks like a pastor’s lectern. “Oh, the irony,” Tucker says.

At the back of the house, behind the kitchen, is the gallery that Wyatt fashioned by enclosing that portion of the wrap-around porch. Tucker and Connelly refer to it as a gallery because that’s where much of their extensive pottery collection is housed. Displayed in a Dutch mission-style cabinet, it includes creamware and pieces by Weller and by Roseville.

A king headboard of repurposed bead-board dominates the master bedroom, but also notable are the side tables and a chest of drawers made of recycled tin ceiling tiles and a mission-style chair and desk. The banjo propped in one corner belonged to Tucker’s grandfather. That bathroom has new floor tiles that look like old, gray wood. The vanity is made of repurposed wood, too. The walls of the shower are a wider version of the bedroom’s floor tiles, while river rock covers the shower floor.

“We tried to keep everything neutral — earth tones — gray, brown, white beige — so the house would blend with its surroundings out here,” Tucker says. “We have some pops of sage green here and there, and the exterior walls are sage green, too. We wanted the house to be natural and complement the landscape. A modern glass and metal structure would be out of place here.”

On the opposite side of the living room and kitchen from the master suite, Wyatt restructured the original bedroom, bumped its wall out a bit and fashioned two smaller guest rooms, a short hallway to connect them, a large bathroom and a laundry room.

One guest room is dubbed The Hillbilly/Cowboy Room. There’s a large, predominantly red, pop-art, mixed-media piece of a vintage cowgirl on one wall, an equally colorful guitar in one corner, and a lamp that has a base of a moonshine jug with the moonshiner holding on for dear life (Mountain Boy Pottery out of Ohio). 

Then, there is the collection of figurines — animals, hillbillies, outhouses, jugs, etc. — from the 1940s and ’50s in a nearby cabinet. Hanging rather incongruously in one corner because nothing else would fit there is a Catholic icon. The upper portion depicts Mary and Jesus, while a drop-down, hinged door beneath them would have been used for incense and candles in a good Catholic’s home.

The pack sled from Switzerland was used as the headboard for that room’s bed at one time, but now stands against a wall, next to a pair of wooden skis from Germany. The credenza and end table in that room were manufactured in Bali from wood reclaimed from boats. “Jamey (James Wyatt) bumped out one wall in here to make a window seat,” says Connelly, who is vice president of ambulatory services at The Kirklin Clinic of UAB Hospital. “This is where my mom often sits to quilt when she comes up.”

Down the hall, the bathroom doors once opened the entry to a surgery room at an old hospital in Decatur. “They were hospital green, but we sanded them down and applied wood sealer,” says Tucker.  “Jamey spent a lot of time getting them to hang evenly and roll smoothly.”  The vanity is one of the few manufactured pieces in the house, but Stray Cats made the mirror. The floor is the same type of tile as in the master bath, but in a different color. What appears to be a collection of small cigar-box covers on a board that’s covered with a wax sealer is the main art piece in this bath.

At the end of the short hall is another guest room made by enclosing another section of the wrap-around porch. “Jamie got creative and pushed out a section of the side wall to create a one-foot-by-ten-foot alcove that gives the room a little pizzazz,” Tucker says. To save space, Wyatt used pocket doors for the closet in this room. He enclosed another section of the wrap-around porch to create a laundry room off this bedroom.

The quilt on the bed here comes with an interesting background story. Tucker went to an estate sale and found old fabric squares that were newspaper backed, as if someone was preparing to piece a quilt. “One of the newspaper pieces dates to 1938,” Connelly says. “My mom finished the quilt in 2018.” More of the couple’s pottery collection is housed in an antique barber’s cabinet and a mission-style display cabinet.

When the couple throws a party, most guests end up on the large, asymmetrical porch on the left side of the house outside the kitchen-and-bar area. It’s such an inviting room that you just want to sit down and enjoy the breeze or soak up the woodsy atmosphere. Guests have a choice of seating here, including a pew from an old church in Selma that is gone now.

The repurposed theme is obvious in here, too. There’s a sofa table with a wood top made from flooring out of an old school in Georgia. The coffee table is actually a 1922 transfer table from a Boston manufacturing company.

One promontory of the porch features a white hutch made of repurposed wood out of North Carolina. Around the corner, an old Hudson hubcap that probably covered the spare tire on the back of that car hangs over feed-and-seed signs and a coat rack. It’s next to a white repurposed glass-front cabinet that was originally built into an old house. “I bought that cabinet at an antique store,” Tucker says. “I don’t like to refinish the vintage furniture we find. I sand them down and use a clear sealer.” Over that cabinet hangs a Hinman Milkers sign, while an old metal dairy box rests on top of the cabinet. The dairy box bears the name, “Connelly’s Dairy.”

 “We bought that at an antique shop in Atlanta,” Tucker says. “In the early days of home milk delivery, the bottles would go into the metal box, and it would hang from a bicycle. I told Billy I didn’t know his family had a dairy.”

An unusual mirror hangs over the outdoor or porch sink that Connelly uses to wash the dogs and pot his house plants. It is a big dot inside a larger tin circle that was once part of a heater in a chicken house. Speaking of plants, this porch displays succulents, ferns, begonias, ponytail palm, a shrimp plant and not a few coleus.

Wyatt recalls saving only bits and pieces of the house’s original hardwood floors. “I think all we saved were pieces of the living room and master bedroom,” he says. “The kitchen was water damaged a little, had some rotten spots, so we put in a new subfloor there and new hardwood.”

Outside, the swimming pool required a total redo, too. “It had to be torn out and new gunnite poured,” Tucker says. “We also built a pool house that carries through with our unique decor as well.”

Landscaping is Connelly’s bailiwig, with the help of his mother, who visits about once a week. Cone flowers, zinnias, black-eyed Susans, petunias and salvia flank the rock-and-gravel walkway leading to the front door. Nearby are Knock Out roses, French and snowball hydrangeas, camellias, hostas and ferns. Japanese maples thrive throughout the property. “I’ve planted lots of fruit trees and muscadine arbors, lots of native azaleas,” Connelly says. “I’ve made jelly and wine from the muscadines. Gardening is my therapy.”

Exotic animals dot the landscape around the property, too. Four monkeys reside in two separate cages. Another cage houses Patagonian cavies and two kangaroos. A pasture features a zebra, emus, alpacas, horses, ostriches, sheep and goats. “I’ve always had exotic animals of some sort,” says Connelly. “Rodney tolerates them.”

“I love animals, too, but the volume we have is sometimes overwhelming,” Tucker confesses.

“You should see our feed bill,” Connelly adds.

Outdoor multi-level decks on one side of the driveway provide additional relaxation space. “They made this space usable,” Connelly says. “One of them replaced an outdoor dog pen, and another one camouflages the storm shelter under it.”

Security lights line the driveway, which winds past a derelict modular home used for storage, a barn, animal cages and the pasture, where the four-footed creatures are kept. And a fire hydrant.

“We have our own fire hydrant,” Tucker says. “It’s the result of the entire 30-acre property once being zoned for and promoted as a future housing development.”

Although the house renovations were completed about two years ago, the pair really aren’t finished with their retreat project. Ultimately, they would like to build a couple of small, one-room guest cottages.

“This was a large remodeling project, and we worked shoulder-to-shoulder on the design,” James Wyatt says. “I’ve done a lot of those in Mountain Brook and Vestavia, and it was good to do such a high-end remodel right here in St. Clair County.”

Stately Ashville home

Bothwell-Embry-Campbell House a landmark with storied history

Story by Elaine Hobson Miller
Photos by Susan Wall

Several families have left their mark on Ashville’s 183-year-old Bothwell-Embry-Campbell House. The widow of the first owner obtained a license to operate a tavern within its walls. The next family raised 12 children there. An ophthalmologist reportedly used some upstairs rooms for a temporary office. His widow is rumored to have spent $60,000 on renovations to the house and grounds that included lowering the ceilings, installing an HVAC system and building a 20-by-40-foot heated, in-ground swimming pool with a waterfall.

Fortunately, the original character and dignity of the two-story frame, classic revival house, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, has been retained. Its four fluted, Doric columns still stand on the front veranda. The original hand-sawn clapboards still cover the outside walls, and the second-floor balcony still hangs without visible support. In the backyard is the original four-seater outhouse.

It was its stateliness as well as its history that attracted the current owners, James and Barbara Mask, to Bothwell-Embry-Campbell House. “She saw it in a real estate ad and had to have it,” James says. “She has filled it with antiques she bought at garage sales, flea markets and antique shops.” They’ve lived in the house since the spring of 2015.

Built in 1835-36 by Ashville’s second physician, Dr. James J. Bothwell, the original structure contained only four rooms, two up and two down. At that time, the kitchen was in the backyard, as was customary for the period. In 1852, Dr. Bothwell added a dining room, kitchen and back porch.

After his death, Mrs. Bothwell got a license to operate a tavern in her home. In 1857, she sold all her Ashville holdings and moved to Mississippi to be near her father’s people. Her cousin, Payton Rowan, bought the house and sold it several years later to W.T. Hodges. In 1880, Hodges sold it to Judge Leroy F. Box, who gave it to his daughter, Lula, as a wedding gift when she married young Ashville attorney James E. Embry in 1882.

Soon after moving in, the Embrys added a large master bedroom downstairs and enclosed the back porch, turning it into a hallway. Their having 12 children may explain the 1917 addition of two upstairs bedrooms. That addition changed the rear roofline of the house, while maintaining the integrity of the original structure.

In 1978, Dr. Lamar M. Campbell and his wife, Rebecca, purchased the house and filled it with their own antiques. Neighbors have told James Mask that Dr. Campbell had his office and possibly an examination room at the rear of the second floor before moving his office to Springville.

After her husband’s death, Mrs. Campbell continued her extensive renovations, adding the HVAC system, the pool and pool house. During the eight years she lived there alone, she bought and sold antiques, storing them in the upstairs rooms while she lived primarily in the back of the downstairs area. It was the constant in and out of furniture that necessitated the only change the Masks have made to the upstairs.

“We reworked and repainted the second-level foyer, because the walls had been skinned with the constant moving of furniture up and down the stairs,” says James. They painted and papered most of the downstairs rooms in various colors and patterns, leaving the green woodwork alone. They haven’t made any structural changes.

Mrs. Campbell lowered most of the downstairs ceilings to accommodate the heating and air conditioning ducts. “The house is easy to heat and cool,” James says. “It has six fireplaces, and four were converted to gas by Mrs. Campbell.” The house also has its two original chimneys made of hand-pressed brick. They serve the two upstairs and downstairs rooms in the original part of the house. In addition, the master bedroom added by the Embrys has a chimney, and the kitchen has an inside one that also served the old kitchen, according to an anonymous article on the house in the Ashville Archives and Museum’s files.

All the mantels and trim are original to the house, but Mrs. Campbell had them pulled out and refinished. Originally, the house was lighted by candles and oil lamps. Several old chandeliers have been wired for electricity.

James was amazed at how solid the house was when he bought it, considering its age. “There’s not a rotten piece of lumber in it,” he says. The framework is made of massive timbers jointed and pegged together. The foundation joists are made of hand-hewn heart pine that is notched and fitted. The four rooms of the oldest section of the house have their original heart pine floors, also fitted together with joints and pegs. Mrs. Campbell had those floors refinished, too.

The Masks have furnished the large room to the right of the downstairs foyer as a parlor, while the room to the left of the foyer is a formal dining room. In the parlor are a working Victrola and a set of records that Barbara picked up at an estate sale, and a 1930s-era radio that James bought for $15. “I bought it to restore the cabinet, but when I got it home, I discovered it actually works,” he says.

A door at the rear of the foyer leads to the back hall, master bedroom and bathroom. The bathroom is split, with a toilet in its own closet on one side of a small hall and a clawfoot tub that was in the house when the Campbells purchased it on the other.

Behind the master bedroom is a large den that has a trap door leading to a tiny, dry basement with a headroom of 5.5 feet. It’s where the heating and air conditioning unit, the hot water heater and water pipes are located. When high winds or tornadoes threaten Ashville, James keeps that trap door open. “We’ve had to go down there a time or two since we’ve lived here,” he says. Another outside door also leads to the basement.

According to one of their neighbors, there was a tunnel under the house during the War Between the States. Supposedly, slaves came and went through that tunnel, which led to the back of the property. “Sometimes they (possibly the Hodges family) hid their slaves in that tunnel, so I’m told,” says James. “They hid their livestock in Horse Pens 40.” He has been unsuccessful in finding the location of the tunnel.

The modern kitchen is the third for the house. The first was outside where the swimming pool is now, according to the Masks. The second was added by the Embrys and is now a laundry room. The formal dining room leads into the kitchen with its breakfast nook. The kitchen, in turn, leads into the laundry room.

An 1835 coin is embedded in the handrail of the staircase that leads from the foyer to the second floor. The staircase has a hand-carved curved newel post, and there is an ornamental pattern hand-carved into the stringer.

On the second floor there’s a large bedroom to the right of the foyer, with a walk-in closet behind it. “That’s my favorite,” James says, as he ushers a visitor into the bedroom. “I would choose it if we slept upstairs.” To the left of the foyer are two more bedrooms, one leading into another, with a small room at the back that may have been Dr. Campbell’s office when he moved to the house. It’s used for storage now.

Two features make the upstairs bathroom a bit quirky. First of all, it’s as large as most modern bedrooms. Second, it has an antique, galvanized metal tub smack in the middle. “Mrs. Campbell was so attached to this tub that she gave it its own room,” James jokes. It was the first tub in the house when plumbing was installed, but it isn’t connected to the water pipes now. It’s strictly for show.

At the front of the house is the upstairs porch or balcony, which has no visible means of support. It is cantilevered off the floor joists of the oldest section of the house. “People probably sat on this porch and watched the Indians ride by on their ponies, then saw Confederate soldiers march through town and then the Union soldiers,” James says. Nowadays, the traffic noise of US 231 (Fifth Avenue), which the house faces, drowns out a person’s thoughts on the porch, especially in the afternoons when Ashville schools let out.

Once upon a time, a brick driveway encircled the house, but Mrs. Campbell’s renovations chopped it up. She enclosed a porch at the back and turned it into a den, then built a sunroom over one section of the brick. Above the sunroom is a deck.

Mrs. Campbell also built the garage, which is next to the privy. The latter is divided into two spaces, one for men, the other for women. (James says the structure next to the privy is the original corncrib, but articles at the Ashville Museum and Archives call it a smokehouse.) Beyond the sunroom is the pool, with its own screened-in picnic room on one side, and a bathhouse on the other.

“We use the pool a lot,” Barbara Mask says. “Our grandkids and great-grandkids enjoy it, too.” One grandson recently used the house and grounds for his wedding and reception.

Behind the privy lies a vast expanse of lawn that includes several pecan trees. A fence encloses the nearly 4 acres of land and delineates the property line. The house and grounds encompass an entire city block.

In the front yard is the latticed well house, with its hand-carved pineapple finial. The only nails in this structure are ones used in repairs through the years. James can vouch for the purity and taste of the well water. “When I work in the yard in the summer, I often draw a cup to drink,” he says.

The Masks love the house but have put it up for sale because health issues are making it difficult to maintain it, the pool and the grounds. Their hope is that the next owners will appreciate its history as much as they do.

Caroline’s Mill

St. Clair Springs couple returns to days gone by

Story by Elaine Hobson Miller
Photos by Michael Callahan

For several of the 40-plus years Tommy and Sibyl White have lived in St. Clair Springs, they have gazed out their living room window at the swampy spring-fed pond across the road and said, “Wouldn’t it be neat to have a water wheel there?”

The pond was on a piece of land that didn’t belong to them, so the couple never dreamed their idea would go anywhere. But the owner decided to sell that four-acre plot, and when Tommy learned about it, he pounced. The deal was sealed early this year, and Tommy set to work clearing the property and building that wheel and a mill to house it.

“Three springs feed the mill pond,” Tommy said. A stream ran out of it constantly all year round. We thought it would be the perfect place for a water wheel.”

He didn’t have a drawing of what he wanted, but that wasn’t an obstacle. “I had in the back of my head what I wanted it to look like,” he said.

It wasn’t the first time he had plunged feet first into a building project. The host of White’s Mountain Bluegrass Festival for 12 years, he built a wooden train, a general store and an amphitheater and stage at the top of White’s Mountain Lane. Tommy and Sibyl live at the bottom of that lane. When the bluegrass festival got too big for them to handle — they were doing one in the spring and one in the fall — they quit. But the lure of old-time music and old-fashioned folk ways proved too much for them. So about five or six years ago (Tommy isn’t good with dates), he came up with the Chimney Corner Celebration to take its place.

Held the third weekend of October, it is named after the warmest spot in any bygone farm house, the corner between the pot-bellied stove and the fireplace. The Celebration warms up at sundown on a Friday with a jam session of local bluegrass musicians. It continues from 9 a.m. until “whenever” the next day with more bluegrass, bagpipes and other period music and dance. Activities and displays include sorghum syrup and cider making, spinning wheel operations, hominy making, quilting, chair caning and blacksmithing.

“We just love that kind of stuff,” Tommy said. “The old ways of doing things bring back memories of the old days, when people had to make it, grow it or do without it.”

The star of the show this year was supposed to be the new mill, but it wasn’t quite finished in time. Tommy had planned to demonstrate grinding corn and wheat, and the water wheel was supposed to produce the electricity to power a generator for the lights of the mill house. The water level was a couple of feet below what the mill wheel needed. So, the demos would have to wait for the rainy season.

He made the eight-foot by two-foot mill wheel in his shop by modifying a metal spool used to roll electrical wire. It’s an undershot mill, meaning water runs under it to turn the wheel. Two grinding stones, one stationary and one moving against the first, form the basic elements for grinding grain. Tommy cut grooves in the mill stones so the grain could pass through them.

“To harness water power, you must have height and volume,” Tommy explained. “To get the volume, you raise the water level and restrict it to a narrow channel that is called the mill race.” The wheel sits at the discharge end of the race, and water pressure will turn the wheel. A control valve will lower and raise the water level. When the wheel runs, water will pass through the mill race and into a stream that continues under Highway 23 and into Little Canoe Creek.

Made of pressure-treated pine lumber and siding, the mill building is 12 feet by 16 feet, including a porch that wraps around two sides. It has traditional mill-style windows, which are openings cut into the siding with wooden covers that slide out of the way. “I remember Mom had windows like these in her kitchen,” Tommy said. “I would go outside and climb up and open them on a hot day.”nnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn

Mosquitoes were a hindrance to the property clearing at first, but Tommy’s son found a $400 fogger machine online, and it cleared out the mosquito population from the quarter-acre pond in a hurry. Once construction started, curious passersby on Highway 23 stopped their cars frequently, asking questions and admiring the project.

 Begonias, coleus, geraniums, hasta and caladium add color to the place, along with hanging baskets of ferns and an airplane plant, thanks to Sibyl’s green thumb and eye for landscaping. “I had to contain her, or she would have filled the place with flowers,” Tommy said. “She had some good ideas, though.”

The mill won’t sit dormant between celebrations, either. “I’ll decorate it for the Christmas season and use the electricity the wheel generates to power the lights, provided the rains come and bring up the water level,” he said. “We’ll just grind whatever folks bring us, too.”

Meanwhile, at the top of the lane where the Chimney Corner Celebration is held, Tommy has built a number of buildings that help tell of bygone days. He has a general store and post office combination, something that was quite common in the early history of the U.S. Postal Service.

The back room of the building holds some of the old-fashioned machinery he has collected, including two corn shellers, a grist mill, treadle sewing machines, several ice boxes and a cast-iron cook stove that is vented through a fireplace chimney. An avowed tinkerer, he rebuilt the corn sheller that had belonged to Sibyl’s dad as a boy by using another one as an example.

Shelves in the front room are filled with old glass and pottery, such as the soft-drink bottle embossed with the words, “Ashville Bottling Company,” that he found when he cleaned the sludge out of the mill pond. Post office boxes at the front of the store came from the St. Clair Springs post office that closed around 1949. “St. Clair Springs was a town before Springville was,” he said, a touch of pride in his voice.

He restored a cider mill that he uses at the celebrations. “I found it in northeast Alabama, or rather, I found what was left of it,” Tommy said. “A fellow advertised it on the internet, and I finagled a deal.” Sibyl researched it and had photos and diagrams for him to go by.

Both bluegrass musicians, Tommy plays guitar, and Sibyl keeps the beat on a bass fiddle, while friend David Connor plays banjo in the unnamed trio they form. They play at the Chimney Corner Celebration and area events such as the Looney House Festival, and at the annual Christmas Pickin’ the Whites hold in the back room of the General Store.

In another nod to times gone by, all electricity is turned off at the store that night, and those lucky enough to get an invitation play by the light of the fireplace, oil lamps and lanterns.

Tommy and Sibyl’s granddaughter, six-year-old Caroline, has taken an interest in learning how to play the guitar, and Tommy plans on teaching her what he knows. “We’re calling it Caroline’s Mill in her honor,” Tommy said.

Hangar House

‘Cool Springs International Airport’

Story by Elaine Hobson Miller
Photos by Susan Wall

Paulette Stills wanted a larger house. Jim Stills wanted a larger hangar. So, they compromised and built a house within a hangar.

“We originally lived in an apartment inside a hangar on the lake next door,” says Paulette. “I thought I wanted more space, and Jim wanted to get an airplane to go with his helicopter. So here we are.”

Where they are is, literally, in a house inside a hangar. The 60-foot-by-100-foot metal structure was erected on site, and the house sits inside of it. The interior walls are non-weight bearing, so the only physical connections between the hangar and the house are at the downstairs windows and doors. “The house could easily be moved or reconfigured,” says Paulette.

The Stillses bought their 40-acre property on County Road 31 about 30 years ago. In 2006, they started construction on their hangar-house, which they completed in 2008. She designed the 1.5-level house with its 22-foot tall ceiling, and Jim served as contractor. He did a lot of the work himself, including staining and grouting the concrete floors throughout the lower level.

He designed and built the swimming pool and hot tub in the back corner of the 2,700-square-foot wrap-around screened porch. Pool and tub are made of stone and feature four waterfalls, including one flowing from the hot tub into the six-foot-deep end of the sloped-bottom pool. “I said if I’m going to live in a metal building, I want a screened porch,” Paulette says. “I gave him the measurements, and he built it.”

Most of the 2,400 square-foot lower level of the house is one large room spanning the width of the metal building. Occupying one end of this Great Room is a fireplace made of Iranian copper that Jim had been saving since the mid-70s. At that time, he was teaching the Shah of Iran how to fly a helicopter, something Jim had been doing since his Army days in Vietnam. “I worked in the Bell Flight School’s secretarial office,” Paulette says. “He had intended to build a bar with that copper, but I wouldn’t let him.”

Their dining table sits near the center of the room, while the expansive kitchen takes up the other end. It features maple cabinets, granite countertops and Frigidaire appliances, including both gas and electric cooktops and a refrigerator almost big enough to walk in to. “All of our cabinets throughout the house are made of maple, all of the countertops are granite, and all of the trim work is made of clear pine,” says Jim.

The kitchen opens into a small pantry that opens on another side into a 30-foot long, 10-foot wide “me” room that Jim claims as his own. The mechanical portions of the house’s HVAC system are there, but so are a desk at one end and a sewing machine and antique dress pattern table at the other. The sewing end is where Jim puts together the handmade boots he’s known for. “That’s what I do in the winter months,” says Jim. Although he gives them away to friends and family, he has managed to retain three pair for himself. He has a red, white and black pair made of ostrich, a black pair made of leather and another black pair made of alligator skin. Each involved several hundred hours of work.

Jim flew helicopters for the Army in Vietnam, and for the former Carraway Hospital’s Life Saver Service for 15 years. He retired in 1994, then purchased his light-weight Bell 47G-2 helicopter from the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department a few years after that. The walls of his “me” room are lined with flight instructor certificates, photos, his framed service medals (Purple Heart, Bronze Star and Air Medal), the Easy-Release Fork Jim invented a few years ago, along with engravings of his patents for the two versions of that fork. The invention is a grilling fork that allows its user to spear meat, then slide it off with the flick of a thumb.

The master suite takes up most of the space on the other side of the kitchen-Great Room. It begins at the kitchen end with tray-ceilinged bedroom containing a handmade, oversized headboard and queen bed, plus built-in cabinets to house Jim’s closet and a television set. “That headboard is made like a mantel,” says Paulette. “My dad and I laid the pieces out on the floor at Lowe’s, my dad built it, and I painted it.”

The master bath flows out of one end of the bedroom in a long passageway that features a counter on one side and a 4 x 8-foot stone-tiled shower on the other. “Three of our four bathrooms are 4 x 8 feet,” says Jim. His-and-hers glass sinks sit on top of the master bath’s counter. At the other end, the bath flows into a 10 x 12-foot walk-in closet. Around the corner to the right is the laundry room, which opens back into the Great Room near the elevator.

That elevator is another of Jim’s designs. “I wanted an elevator, but I wasn’t present when he installed it,” says Paulette. “I had pictured a small, enclosed one that blended with its surroundings.”

What she got was an open-air freight elevator made of gray metal with a wooden floor. A machine shop in Springville built the frame, and its owner, Mickey Dooley, helped Jim install it. Those who don’t like the loud whir of the motor or the open-air feeling while traveling upward can take the stairs, which start as a spiral staircase on one side of the elevator and end as steps on the other side.

To say Jim is a bit of a do-it-yourselfer would be an understatement. He decided the elevator’s motor was too noisy, so he set about to replace it — by himself. He used a galvanized pipe to prop the elevator up, so it wouldn’t descend while he was working. After installing the new motor, he was trying to take the old one down when the pipe gave way. The elevator descended abruptly, and so did Jim. He broke his leg in the mishap, and the old, non-functional motor remains where it was, in the overhead framework.

On the upper level, the elevator opens onto an L-shaped balcony that overlooks the kitchen and Great Room. Off the long side of the balcony, two guest rooms and two full baths mirror each other. The short end of the balcony is much narrower, and a storage area at that end runs across the width of the house. “That’s my storage area,” Paulette says. One of the guest rooms has an open cabinet Jim built to display her father’s telephone memorabilia, such as antique telephones and a toy version of a telephone company repair truck. “He was an engineer with the phone company when it was Southern Bell,” says Paulette, who retired from AT&T five years ago.

Jim’s mom’s pedal organ and an antique wooden wheelchair, which Jim used extensively while recuperating from his broken leg, occupy one corner of the long side of the balcony. A little farther down, near the narrow end of the balcony, stands a mill bin that has been in Paulette’s family for several generations. She uses it as a quilt box. “Can you imagine the worms and bugs that must have got into the meal and flour stored in these bins?,” Paulette muses. On top of the bin is a small, 1,500 year-old spinning wheel from Iran.

On the opposite side of the house walls, Jim’s hangar opens with a giant, overhead door. The hangar is also accessible through the small sitting area at the back side of the wrap-around porch, and through Jim’s “me” room on the other side of the house.

It looks like most homeowners’ garages. In other words, it’s full. “There’s no way in hell I can get all my stuff in here and make it look organized,” Jim says. “Everything’s on wheels, so I just move something out of the way to get to something else.”

A motorhome, two mattresses, furniture, a basketball goal, two zero-turn lawn mowers and stacks and stacks of Easy-Off Fork raw materials take up so much of the space it’s as if the Bell were shoved in as an afterthought, rather than being the reason for the space. The helicopter, too, is on rollers, and Jim pulls it out with one of the lawn mowers, releases the wheels and heads skyward. It has a 150-mile range, plenty for the couple’s trips to the mountains or the beach.

The Stills’ hangar-house faces the 2,200-foot-long grassy, east-west runway. As many as four or five airplanes might be on that strip any given Sunday afternoon, flown in by some of Jim’s aviation buddies. Paulette wishes she had a more formal entrance for them and other guests besides the hangar door or the one on the screened porch.

“This is the Cool Springs International Airport,” Jim quips. “Who needs a formal entrance?”