Poe home on the hill
WW-1 poster leaving little doubt what was expected of you as a male.Home decoration created by the wife as one of the required social skills to be accepted in her community.
Gas and electrical lighting fixture. The gas and electrical wire use the same down rod - really sounds safe - NOT!
Model stove used by the salesman to show when taking orders. Kids of wealthy families often ended up with these as toys.6/6 Wednesday Our notes today are quite lengthy, but we learned so much history and ‘rules’ of North Carolina on a tour. We toured the Poe House in Fayetteville, the home of a rather wealthy businessman whose wealth was derived from his brick business. He had this large two story home built in 1897 on a hilltop to take advantage of the prevailing winds and to stay away from the river with its associated bugs. Screens are not yet available, so open windows allow all the critters in.
Heidi who was very well versed on the home and the traditions in North Carolina at that time gave us a private tour. The home was in summer dress meaning the upholstered furniture was covered in white linen and the mirrors and pictures that lacked glass were covered with white netting. The linen was put over the furniture to protect the material with something that could be easily washed. The netting over the mirrors and pictures protected them from the dirt left behind by flies. Mirrors were imported and considered to be a luxury. They did not have anything to clean the surface of the mirrors like we do today and they were concerned with damaging the mirror while attempting to clean dirt from the surface.
This house was built before the introduction of electrical power in homes, but Poe knew it was coming, so he had combination gas / electric lights put in. In each room the power-gas combination pole came down from the ceiling to the light with an “S” shaped pipe coming off the side of this down rod to an area where a gas flame burned. Later homes in the area with only electrical lights would have had these light fixtures draped with netting to keep the flies off the fixtures.
At the front door of the home one room was designed to be the show place of the home. This is where the expensive and special furniture was put so any guests visiting would see this and know your social status. In this home the special pictures, the really nice sofa and the piano was in this room.
Across the hall was more of the family room. This is where they spent a large percentage of their time and did things like correspondence. This would be a room where the furniture from across the hall might be moved when they bought newer, nicer pieces. By standards of the time, this room was large with a high ceiling. This and the entertainment room were wallpapered. We also saw many posters and other information related to World War One and questioning how much of an American patriot you were and how much you could support your forces overseas. They had a poster you put in your window to show you were had a family member who was serving in the war.
Off this was a bedroom. We now enter an area with painted rooms; this is very new at this time. According to Sherwin Williams, the paint people, they advertised this was much healthier because you could scrub the walls to clean them of anything that might cause sickness and possible death instead of wallpapered walls that were held in place with a flour based paste that attracted bugs and these bugs could promote disease. Families had multiple children and death to disease was common, so things like cleaning the walls was heralded as an important step in prevention. As for the family size, in North Carolina as in other parts of the South, women were expected to have kids about every two years. In North Carolina, any form of birth control was prohibited, as was even the slightest mention of the subject.
The cook in the Poe home was a black girl who arrived when she was 13. She was responsible for all the meals for the family and the hired hands around the home. Black females could only do domestic work; then could not work elsewhere or in other occupations such as a mill. The men could only do manual labor such as tending the fields or gardening. By contrast, the white females who were of a lower social standing worked in the mills making things like cloth and socks, the latter being especially important during WW-1 when the troupes were fighting in water filled ditches. For these men a dry pair of socks was extremely important to avoid ‘trench foot’ a fungus that could lead to the amputation of the infected foot.
The Poe family, due to a combination of wealth and status, had a nanny / nurse. She took care of the kids, likely under the age of 7. She assisted with the birth of the babies that marked the beginning of her responsibility for the young children. She was likely more educated, however, none of her education had been formal. In fact these families would buy educational toys and this girl learned with the kids from her time playing with these toys. When the kids were asleep she was expected to handle other chores around the home like cleaning, washing, ironing, dusting; well you get the idea. This girl had a small room, but it was one of the best in the winter as it had a fireplace. In the summer, however, it was one of the worst as it was the west side of the house where the afternoon sun hit. If this girl married, due to customs of the time, she had to move out of the home and then get up early enough to walk to the home, stoke the fireplaces in the winter to warm the home meaning the demands on her time were increased.
The wife was educated to be the worthy wife of a man in a high social position. Her value was measured three ways: 1) By the social position of her family; 2) a combination of her artistic, decorating and creative abilities; and 3) by her financial dowry or the money and/or possessions she would bring to this marriage. In the home there were three examples of shadowbox art; one made from strands of hair, another from various threads from sewing projects and a third that was a mixture of tree bark, moss and other natural products. The high social wife was responsible for the decoration of the home and her worth by visitors was evaluated based on the family home.
Going upstairs, we used one staircase that was narrow at the back of the house. Only the black help used this staircase as they carried dirty laundry or bedpans from the house. This staircase went directly to the back door. If the kids the nanny cared for went upstairs to play, they went up the family stairs that faced the front door and was much wider while she went up the back stairway to the same hall on the second floor. Meantime the maid went up the other stairs to the same large hall on the second floor. This upstairs hall was quite wide and was where kids played who came over. Although this was the hall that led to the bedrooms, all non-family kids were forbidden to enter any of the bedrooms. All the toys were in this hall as was the recycled furniture from the family room downstairs. Dressers lined the walls holding the winter clothing and blankets. In warmer times the upstairs windows and doors were left open to take advantage of any breeze. The front stairway or family stairway was wide and faced the special guest room near the front door. When daughter married, she would descend this stairway to meet her groom in the special guest room. This meant the stairway had to be straight and impressive in its design.
In the case of this home, the kitchen was attached by a breezeway. Unlike so many other kitchens we have seen that were clearly separated from the main house, this design was quite different. Many kitchens were removed from the main home due to the frequency of kitchen fires. Being separated improved the chances that any kitchen fire would be contained to this building only and save the home from destruction. The stove was in the middle of room and was the main feature. When in operation, the heat from the stove would easily keep this area well over 1000 when used. There were windows on all four walls to help remove the heat.
Looking back a moment to the war efforts of the citizens, at times such as Thanksgiving and Christmas, these people would create a meal made from rice and other products that was then shaped to look like a turkey before being baked. In this way the real turkeys could be sent to the men on the front lines of the war. Those made many sacrifices at home so that the fighting men could have the food and other things they associated with being home.
When Heidi introduced herself and began the tour she told us she was ours for one hour, the length of the tour. She said the tour could be less if we were bored; however, our tour was closer to 1-1/2 hour as we had many questions and with just a little encouragement, she continued to tell stories about the Poe family and the customs. She helped us understand that even after the slaves were freed, they lived much like they had during slavery times. These former slaves had to work to live but now they did not have a Master to look after them during times between crops when there was less work needed. For a while the life of the former slave was likely worse than during the times when they were owned by a Master.
Heidi explained how the Gibson Girls of the time set the fashion for women like the fashions of today are set by the clothing and cosmetic empires. They were responsible for the introduction of the corset, the bustle and the resulting “S” shape of women as viewed from the side. The corset caused women to be unable to bend at all, thus the beginning of the curtsey. In addition wearing a corset and being unable to bend now required ‘ladies in waiting’. These were girls who stayed to the side or just out of view, but they quickly and unobtrusively moved in to pick up anything the lady dropped.
Regarding the family children, the Poe family had a bunch of them; 10 in total. The difficulty raising kids in the time was the frequency of their death from disease. The Poe’s twin boys who survived lived in a shared a room and bed until they were out of the house. One went to the military while the other followed other endeavors. As they grew up they were reported to be trouble looking for a place to happen. On the other hand, the girls in the family had fragile reputations to be carefully guarded. This meant they were always under the proverbial microscope related to how they dressed and how they conducted themselves in public. Throughout their formative years they were ‘in training’ how to be a good wife of a man in high social standing. If they fell from grace they could only expect to find a mate of lower social standing. By contrast, by being very proper they could move up the social ladder even greater than their parents and find a man who was part of a higher social standing. The old South had its rules and those who were trying to live the good life clearly understood the rules. Boys tried to be boys, but girls who expected to live the high social life were very careful to protect their name and virtue.
Finally Heidi told us about the tradition of wearing black and dark colors with a lot of black in the dresses of the wife and mother. When she had a child die, she wore black for two years. By now she has most likely replaced the child with a new infant and it was expected the grieving time was now over. If her husband died, she wore black a minimum of three years, then she wore a dark dressed with considerable black in the pattern for many more years. These were considered to be minimum times and many women would extend the morning dress time. The color reflected the latest death of a loved one she had experienced. Mrs. Poe wore black for over 25 years until her own death. This was due to multiple deaths including that of her husband although both of them lived much longer than the life expectancy of most adults of their time.
This was a very interesting tour and we would strongly recommend anyone visiting in the area to take this free tour (donations gladly accepted for the continued maintenance of the home) to learn many things that could not be included in this blog. If Heidi is there, be sure to ask for her!
