Chelius H. Carter is a Consultant for the Restoration, Renovation and Redesign of Old and Historic Buildings. He is from Holly Springs and is helping NA and me with the Duncan House project. On Father's Day, he made a discovery deep under the Duncan House. I’ll let him tell this story in his own words. I think you will like his message:
"Today is Father's Day. It will be my seventh, counting the time Amelia was "in the oven." Regretfully, neither Amelia nor Townes are here; they are at my mom's home, north of Millington, Tennessee, and Jenifer is in Fredericksburg, Virginia. So, I spent my Father's Day crawling under the Duncan House (ca. 1859) in Corinth, Mississippi, trying to determine existing conditions of its structural frame, prior to the house being lifted and relocated. Crawling over broken bricks, pipes, through cobwebs, mud puddles, various specimens of excrement, banging against floor joists, and over the detritus of 100 years of changes (many), since the house was last moved in 1915, has left my body absolutely wrecked.
Not exactly the Hallmark Card sort of Father's Day to cheer up this old fossil! THEN I found this wonderful piece of period chalk graffiti, left by a carpenter, who, like me, was obviously thinking of his family while working on the same structure in the late 1850s. He apparently had a lot of girls - I see four young girls and two older ones. What can be safely assumed to be his wife is crudely sketched in a nice period day dress at lower right. The figure next to her is hard to make out, but I've enlarged it, and conclude it is a piece of parlor furniture. Another image partially lost at left looks like a dog. Dad's not depicted, he is off working! This will do for my Father's Day card, until I get one of Amelia's masterpieces. Love these little hidden discoveries in this odd work that Jenifer and I do!"
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