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HGTV
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So what was it that Barbara discovered that caught the producers’ attention? Well, actually several things turned up... but one rare, special find in particular.
The story begins in a high-pace, stressful job in the city.
“All my friends were saying ‘When I retire and move to the country...’”, Gavron recalled of her life in the ‘corporate world’. “I decided I’d better go ahead get my house in the country now,” she says of her life-turnaround.
Ending up in Eureka, she bought a house on Singleton Street in 1983. She described the condition: “All the original trim from our local Perkins Mill was still in tact, but painted. Everything was a smokey medium green.The house still had the original window sash locks and exterior doorknobs which could be found in old Sear’s catalogues. Both houses (9 and 11 Singleton, side by side and built by the same owners) were built with square nails and full 2x4s milled locally.”
One part of the house, though, that was not so nice was the basement — it was brimming with things discarded from its many tenants over the years.
“In the spring of 1984, the first thing I did was hire someone to haul off all the stuff in the basement,” she recounts. “It was full to the ceiling in some parts and I wanted to be here just in case something important showed up, so Rex Gentry from Berryville brought a huge truck and parked it out in front of the house for a week while we sifted through everything... I remember hundreds of Readers Digests.”
As the sifting continued, Gavron’s hopes of finding something interesting in all the rubble grew pretty dim. But on the last day of cleaning out, Gavron made an amazing find that would eventually land her and her house on television screens across the country.
It was a handblown, turn of the century, milkglass walking cane in perfect condition. How the glass cane had escaped harm beneath the mountains of junk for decades was a mystery. Gavron notes that the find is even more special, considering the town’s history.
“Historically the first welcome booklets in Eureka told all newcomers arriving for the ‘cure’ to buy a drinking cup and a walking stick,” Gavron said, explaining that ailing visitors were instructed to walk all over the hilly town, from spring to spring drinking the water. |
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“There are archived photos showing cups hooked on men’s belts and both sexes using canes and walking sticks.”
The cane and other finds in the house under attic boards and such — including two small porcelain doll heads, cardboard Ripley Dairy milk stoppers, the heel of a small shoe, an amber medicine bottle still full of little round pills, photos of the house, and a series of love letters that appear to piece together a love triangle from the early 1950’s — led Gavron to dive into the history hunting of her house.
Luckily, she ran into a very valuable resource for this hunt, a neighbor by the name of Marie Dobbins who had lived in the town for some 70 years. Dobbins not only knew the house’s first owners, but was also able to supply some photos. Dobbins recalled visiting the house as a little girl and helping to make cookies.
Along with information from Dobbins, Gavron searched records at the city museum and even made a trip to the cemetery (where she found the owners’ graves). She discovered that the house was built about the same time as the “Old Red Brick Schoolhouse”, which was located just out back (now gone) and built in 1892. The builders were the Kennedy brothers — George and Fred. George was born in Illinois, was a barber, played in the town band, was a ‘Woodsmen of the World’, and was married to a woman named Bertha. Fred was born in New York, and married two women, first Pearl, then Mary Riley. One of the sets — suspected to be George and Bertha — also opened the New Ozark Theatre downtown. Both brothers lived in 11 Singleton at different times.
Gavron said John Cross at The Bank of Eureka Springs was also able to turn her on to a woman in Clifty whose father was also a barber at that time. Upon visiting the woman, Gavron discovered more photos of George and the town band. The woman, Sue Cole Jones, identified two others in the photo also as barbers — her father and grandfather, in fact.
Gavron said she is still missing information, such as what Fred did for a living and if there were any children of either brothers.
As for the cane, it could have belonged to a number of people, as the house had a wing added on by 1904 which was rented out numerous times over the years. “I would guess that it belonged to Margaret Crowley, a tenant who lived for over 20 years in the left side apartment,” Gavron said. “Or the cane could have been Pearl’s or Bertha’s... We may never know.”
Perhaps most interesting is a piece of furniture still in the house that was fashioned out of the cabinets from George’s barbershop. Gavron said a guest made the connection one day by looking at a barbershop photo then at the kitchen hutch, saying, “Look, there’s your furniture.” Gavron later found the original piece in an old Sears Roebuck catalogue which called it a ‘dressing case’. It was priced at $8.40 when ordered with a marble top.
Gavron says she has enjoyed researching her house, but would still like to know more about the Kennedy’s. “There have to be people still alive that know more,” she said. For now, she continues to share what she knows with visitors to her award-winning B&B.
The HGTV “If Walls Could Talk” episode is slated to run January 14, though schedule changes are constantly updated on their web site. HGTV is now scouring the area again for more interesting houses and stories. |
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