Our front porch is the most in-your-face architectural feature of our bungalow. Massive tapered river rock columns support a network of wooden beams shaped into an over-sized truss jutting forward from the house toward College Street. Until recently, we thought our porch and its unusual truss unique.
Stained glass artist Randall Bush memorialized the porch and truss design in stained glass.
Mary Kate Miller Coleman and her husband built our porch-centric house in 1914. Mary Kate's dad, T.A. Miller was kind of a big deal. Miller, Missouri was named in his honor when he brought the railroad to that town. He built the Lawrence County Courthouse. He was elected mayor of Aurora where he built the Presbyterian Church. He owned ten lumber yards.
Until now we've assumed, without proof, he also built his daughter's house with that unique truss-covered porch.
This week while browsing "Lawrence County in Pictures and Prose", a 1922 book about our county's history, we spied this grainy truss-centric photo:
Look at that truss. That's OUR truss!
Miller bought this Hoberg lumber company around 1910 and "added largely to it" according to "Lawrence County Missouri History", another local history book published in 1974.
Did T.A. Miller add this decorative truss to his newly-acquired Hoberg lumber yard in 1910?
Did Mary Kate and her hubby ask her dad to use that same unique truss design when he built their dream bungalow in 1914?
Yours in piecing together this truss puzzle,
Kelly
