Attic Treasures

Robin Elliott inherited an 1840s house—and found an amazing archive of family history

Ever since she was a little girl, Robin Elliott has loved the old family homestead familiarly known as The Farm. Set on three acres in Liberty, Mississippi, just across the Louisiana state line, the property has been in the family as long as she can remember.

“It’s not a fancy plantation house like you see on the River Road,” said Robin. “I’d call it more a glorified farmhouse. It’s 2,400 square feet, one and a half stories. Mother had it placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1982.”

Built about 1840 by William Crawford McGehee, the house has been altered very little over the years. Around 1950, a porch was enclosed and converted into a kitchen and bathroom. “We first got indoor plumbing in the 1950s,” said Robin, whose family variously lived in Baton Rouge, New Orleans, and Summit, Mississippi, while spending weekends and holidays in Liberty. “Before that we used a well and an outhouse.”

At a family reunion about fifteen years ago, Robin had a conversation with her mother, Robbie Adair Jones Yaun, about who would inherit the property, formally known as the McGehee-Beall House.

Robin seemed the obvious choice. The oldest of seven children (two brothers were deceased), she had been crazy about the house and its history since she was a child. But her mother hesitated, fearing the other children would be mad at her.

So Robin came up with a solution. “Let’s put all our names in a hat, and you draw a name, and whoever you pick gets the house,” suggested Robin, who had a one-in-five chance of being the “winner.”

Her siblings agreed that this was fair. Her sister-in-law wrote each name on a slip of paper and dropped them into a hat she grabbed from an antique rack in the central hall. She held the hat over her mother-in-law’s head, and Mrs. Yaun reached up and pulled out a slip of paper.

The name on it was Robin’s. “It was incredible,” recalled Robin. “I had always presumed I’d be the one to inherit the house because I had spent so much time going over there and fixing it up and helping Mama with it. But I didn’t want to put my mother in the position of having to choose. When she actually drew my name, it was like ‘Omigod’! I was reconciled that the odds were against me.”

Mrs. Yaun created a trust, leaving the house to Robin and dividing the surrounding property among the other four children. She also specified that certain pieces of furniture go to Robin, including an 1880s matching Eastlake set of a half-tester bed, armoire, and dresser; a sleigh bed and a huge armoire from the antebellum period; and several primitive tables dating to the 1840s.

Giving a tour to a visitor, with her Chihuahuas Lulu and Lily trotting after her, Robin noted features that might easily have been “updated” but remain in their original condition, including a door with faux bois (fake wood) panels painted to look like Birdseye maple and mahogany. Parts of the wainscoting have been painted in faux marbre, to look like marble.

“The foot-tall crown moldings are hand-pulled plaster,” said Robin, pointing at the twelve-foot ceiling. “All the rooms are seventeen by seventeen feet. There are four major rooms downstairs—plus a huge central hall—and two upstairs. The floor planks are five inches wide and seventeen feet long. The house is one hundred percent loblolly pine.”

Robin’s mother lived at The Farm until her death in January 2012; she is buried in the family cemetery just a few hundred yards away. Robin took possession of the house in November 2012. Her first order of business was to have her siblings remove the furniture and other items they wanted. “There were five of us, and we never had a cross word,” she marveled.

Then Robin began inventorying everything from furniture to fabrics. There was clothing dating to the 1800s, including a child’s muslin nightgown with a hand-crocheted yoke.

Exploring four separate attics, she found a half-dozen trunks containing hundreds of documents dating to 1838 and perhaps earlier. There were hundreds of photographs, as well as tintypes, of family members.

“The papers in the attic went right up to my mother’s correspondence,” said Robin. “I found tax receipts dating to the 1880s, receipts for fodder and hay for the horses. My family had a cotton gin and a store. There are ledger books showing what different families bought at the store. I found not just family history but community history.”

It took her six months to sort through it all. She did it methodically, purchasing a dozen maroon binders and scores of plastic sleeves. Each document went into a sleeve that Robin labeled with the date. Photographs went into albums by family.

Among her favorite discoveries was her mother’s twenty-page autobiography, handwritten in the 1980s. Even better, Robin found a ninety-minute audiotape cassette of her mother interviewing Robin’s grandmother, Janie Lee McGehee Jones. Made around 1985, when Janie Jones was eighty-five, it is filled with anecdotes of family life.

In one fascinating story on the tape, Jones talks about her half-sister Ira Beall Tucker McGehee. In 1912, at the age of nineteen, Ira Beall (pronounced Bell) contracted typhoid fever, probably from drinking contaminated well water at a picnic. She was desperately ill when her mother sent a telegram to one of her beaux, Jack Crawford, who had recently graduated from medical school.

Crawford who was living in Alexandria, Louisiana, hastened to Ira’s bedside in Liberty. He told the family that, in order for him to treat her, it would be best if they were married. So a minister came to the house and a hastily arranged wedding was held in the front bedroom.

“They put a fresh frilly nightgown on her,” said Robin. “She was in the half-tester bed with a lace tablecloth draped on it to dress it up. Her black hair was so long it touched the floor. My grandmother said the fever made her cheeks look rosy.”

With a wreath of flowers on her head, Ira made a beautiful, if bedridden, bride. “She was just the prettiest thing,” Robin’s grandmother says on the tape.

Dr. Jack Crawford did indeed save Ira, even when she later had a relapse. They moved to Lake Charles, where he established a thriving medical practice; and they had a daughter, Ethelyn. Ira lived to the ripe old age of ninety-four.

Another story on the tape also involves Ira. Her younger brother Thadius Claude “Nuda” McGehee, age sixteen, had appendicitis and was being rushed to the hospital in McComb, Mississippi, in a horse-drawn wagon. Ira rode along, and young Nuda begged her to sing to him to take his mind off the pain. At his request, she sang “I’ll take You Home Again, Kathleen.” Tragically, the boy died en route to the hospital.

Another story Robin found on the tape was that her great-grandmother, Jane Ophelia McGehee Beall, had also won the house in a drawing, about a hundred years before Robin did. Robin and Jane Beall were born almost exactly one hundred years apart to the day.

She also found a tragicomic tale of Jane Beall’s demise. “She died from complications from a broken hip that she suffered in a fall while being chased by a cow on her way to the outhouse,” said Robin.

Robin’s current priority is making repairs to the house, most immediately to its leaky roof. “I want to restore it,” she said. “There is pretty severe water damage to some of the plaster. It’s a challenge to find a person who knows how to repair it correctly. Someone suggested I put the house in a foundation and make it an appointment-only museum. Then I can apply for grants to preserve the house.”

Meanwhile, she is learning more every day from the treasure trove of information she found in the attics. “I love this house,” said Robin, who has made many repairs herself. “But the most incredible thing about it is the documents.” 

Ruth Laney can be reached at ruthlaney@cox.net.