#733 It's a Small World

The world just isn't that big and the shipping industry ties us all together.

We often see Hamburg Sud containers loaded on rail cars passing our historic Aurora train depot in Missouri, 4,714 miles from their home in northern Europe.

Even since this little guy came into our lives, we pay extra close attention to these trains coming to town.  Sometimes we stop and watch so we can see just who (JB Hunt, Hamburg Sud) is rolling by.

Hamburg Sud, mercifully short for Hamburg Südamerikanische Dampfschifffahrts-Gesellschaft ApS & Co KG, ranks among the ten largest container shipping brands and is part of Denmark's Maersk Line, the world’s largest container shipping company. It employs 25,000 on land and 7,000 seafarers on 800 vessels.  [from Wikipedia]

In 2008, we spotted this Maersk ship in the Baltic Sea.

And in 2014, we found this Maersk container welcoming us back to our ship, the MV Explorer, after a day spent exploring Isafjordur, Iceland.

Yours in following the shipping lines from our home to the world,
Mary Jo

#729 Lewis and Kate

When we purchased our bungalow in 2009, we immediately started researching its history.  We've learned so much since then due to the truly wonderful research tools at our disposal:

• Aurora Advertiser, microfilmed copies of our local newspaper housed in the Mount Vernon public library
• Aurora Historical Society, its collections, and its collective memory 
• Census records in Ancestry.com
• eBay and its numerous Aurora postcards by phenomenal photographer R.E. Hinchey
• Facebook groups familiar with the house and its previous owners
• FindaGrave.com
• Google Maps with its historic street views
• a Hairstylist who knows the locals
• another Hairstylist who knows the locals
• House owners and family of house owners
• Lawrence County Historical Society
• Lawrence County recorder office  
• Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps housed at University of Missouri and Library of Congress
• Yale University's Beinecke Library and its preserved and digitized copy of Hinchey's 1907 Aurora, Lawrence County, Missouri book of photos

Our most recent discoveries are the photos of Lewis Shaw Coleman and Mary Kate Miller Coleman.  This young couple has captured our imaginations for years because while still in their 20s, Lewis and Kate built an architecturally unique airplane bungalow in small-town Aurora. We have been most eager to lay our eyes on their faces and thanks to the work of the Aurora Historical Society, we are thrilled to digitally hold these images in our house history collection.  

Lewis Shaw Coleman

Mary Kate Miller Coleman

We very much appreciate many library and archival institutions for the good work they do.  And we are especially grateful for those small-town organizations all around the country, such as the Aurora Historical Society and the Lawrence County Historical Society, for working on shoestring budgets in order to accomplish so much in the collection and preservation of historic documents and artifacts that help us tell our story.

Yours in appreciating the great work of local historical societies,
Mary Jo

#728 Ozarks Bungalow walls

We learn a lot during our Aurora haircuts!

In 2015, while getting a haircut at the Hair Shed, Jackie connected us with a descendant of the Seburn family who built the house on our lot prior to ours.

When Jackie retires a couple years later, we find Rachel whose shop is visible from our home.   It isn't long before we learn that Rachel grew up in our neighborhood and her grandfather knows a lot about our house. 

After an in-depth conversation with Rachel's grandfather, we learn the identity of the bricklayer and stone mason. Harry Darnold and his partner Charley Walters were the masons who built the brick and stone portions of our house like the columns on the front porch.

Charley Walters at lower left

Yours in gratitude for Aurora hairstylists and for the skilled masons who built our house,
Mary Jo

#707 National Register of Historic Places

Our house is now listed on the National Register of Historic Places!

The NRHP is the official list of historic places worthy of preservation in the US.  It recognizes the architectural significance of the house and helps to raise awareness of the importance of historic preservation in southwest Missouri.

Though we often refer to our house as the Ozarks Bungalow, the official name is the Lewis Shaw Coleman House.  Mr. Coleman and his wife Mary Kate Miller Coleman, whose families both owned area lumber yards, built the house in 1914 on a corner lot overlooking Oak Park.  The Colemans chose a Craftsman bungalow for the style of their new home and included exposed rafters in open eaves, low-pitched gable roofs with wide overhangs, decorative gable beams, large windows to connect the house with nature, and a prominent front porch with tapered stone columns.  (For more details, see our nomination.)

The Craftsman bungalow style was unusual for Aurora in 1914 and so the construction project made the local paper.  The Aurora Advertiser reported the Coleman family was "completing a beautiful bungalow on East College" and the new Coleman bungalow showed "the progressive spirit of the city." 

Four homeowners later, we are thrilled to be awarded this NRHP listing recognizing the architectural significance of what the Colemans envisioned a century ago.  It is the only building in Aurora included on the NRHP.

In our excitement, we print this temporary plaque to hang by the front door!

Yours in living in an historic place,
Mary

#703 It Happened in August 1996

It's been 20 years since we first laid eyes on our favorite house in Aurora, MO.

On August 2, 1996, we are living in Kansas City and visiting family in southwest Missouri.  Kathy and Mark are moving to Texas so we're all getting together to celebrate their move, either that or to try to talk them into staying in Missouri!    

During the weekend, the family meets for a meal at the Plantation in Aurora (can't remember if big hats were worn) and accidentally, serendipitously, we drive down College Street and discover the house.

Our first photos are taken in 1996 when the house is owned by the Duncans and the grounds are so beautiful and well maintained.   

We continue to drive by (or stalk, if you must) the house for the next 13 years whenever we're in the neighborhood until we eventually learn it is for sale, which is yet another story of serendipitous good fortune.

Yours in serendipity,
Mary

#702 Intensity of Caring

"I've always felt that the details, no matter how small or seemingly insignificant, are more than just nice things to notice.  They are manifestation and expression, a kind of measure of the intensity of caring." - Fay Jones

A tour guide at the Frank Lloyd Wright house at Crystal Bridges once told me that and I believe it.

We are the proud fifth owners of our 102-year-old house following behind the Colemans (1914-30), Moores (1930-83), Duncans (1983-2004), and Holmes family (2004-09).  All these Aurora residents have shown their intensity of caring by their stewardship and looking after the details.

So we are thrilled when previous owners or their descendants come from near and far to attend our house party and share memories and photos of the house through the years.

Yours in house parties and celebrating people who care,
Mary

#701 House on the Move

Historic photos of our Ozarks Bungalow are hard to find but we just keep looking.  Sometimes the stars align.

Until recently, the earliest photo we had found is this 1937 photo from Lawrence County in Pictures, published 23 years after the house was built in 1914. 

At the most recent meeting of the Aurora Historical Society, Bill told us about his family's early-20th-century house-moving business using horses and a winch.  It worked something like this...

From http://www.searshomes.org/index.php/2013/12/17/moving-houses-in-1916/

Lucky for us, Bill still has a circa 1920 photo of a large white frame house moving west down the center of College Street with OUR HOUSE IN THE BACKGROUND!

With a closer look, we see more detail about the upstairs window (previously hidden by an awning in the 1937 photo); we can see a lighter paint color in use on the top floor; and if we use our imagination, we can almost make out the outline of the outdoor porch lighting. The porch visible to the left of the horses belongs to our neighbors Bill and Denise.  The porch visible to the right of the horses is ours.

Yours in appreciating historical society meetings, family archivists, magnifying glasses, and the spirit of house movers,
Mary

#692 Chip Boys on Madison Avenue

Lunch at the Madison Avenue Bistro with my two friends is always entertaining, but today's roast beef sandwich lunch is especially fun. It includes chips! 

Sam is the first to try a chip.

 

Soon, though, he thinks of his friend Kelly and offers him one.

Kelly gladly accepts and the boys share a chip-munching moment.

 

They seem proud of their chip-sharing routine.

And they share some kind of coded chip message between them.

The next step appears to be all arranged.

That's when Sam hands Kelly another chip and it all begins again.

Yours in enjoying the chip boys,
Mary

#684 The Wheel Horse Gets a New Stable

I admit it.  We haven't been mowing our own lawn.

We got out of the habit back in 1999 when we moved into Indy's Lockerbie Square neighborhood.  And since we moved back to Missouri last year, our attentions have been focused on the inside of the house.

That's all about to change because today, we bought a 1987 Wheel Horse 312-8 lawn tractor.  The Horse had one proud owner for its 28-year life and was sold at an estate auction this morning.  (Some proud owners have even been known to join the Wheel Horse Collectors Club and meet in Pennsylvania each June for some Horse trading!)

To break in the Horse, Kelly saddled him up and rode him home through the streets of Aurora. 

Past the Pate Early Childhood Center

Past the beautiful Aurora countryside still proudly wearing his bidder number

Waiting for the traffic to clear on Carnation Drive

Past downtown and our favorite store. (Kelly must have run inside Modern Variety to pick up something.)

And finally arriving at home.

I'd love to get a copy of Straight from the Horse's Mouth: The Wheel Horse Story at a fair price for the new Horse owner in the family.  Please let me know if you find one.

Yours in Horsing around town,
Mary

#675 Butterfield Overland Mail Route in Missouri

Five miles south of our home, the historic Butterfield Overland Mail Route meanders through the Missouri Ozarks and we are on a mission to find it!

The Butterfield Overland Mail Company held the US government contract for mail delivery between Saint Louis and San Francisco from 1857 to 1861.  Using stagecoaches, celerity wagons, and 139 horse relay stations along the route, the mail could be delivered nearly 3,000 miles in 25 days.

We knew parts of the old trail still existed, so we set out to find it.  Lucky for us, the route comes close to our home and there's a map guy in the family.

Sometimes the trail is easy to find - such as when the road is labeled "Butterfield Trail Road."  (I bet those stagecoach drivers would have loved a Garmin GPS!)  

Other sections of the trail, though, are not so easy to find.  But if you persevere, you will see some beautiful Missouri country and come closer to imagining what it might have been like to travel by stage 150 years ago.

Waterman Ormsby, a reporter for the New York Herald, was the only through passenger on the first coach to leave Saint Louis.  For his first-hand account of the 24-day trip beginning September 26, 1858, be sure to read:

Ormsby, Waterman Lilly, Lyle Henry Wright, and Josephine M. Bynum. 1942. The Butterfield overland mail. San Marino, Calif: The Huntington library. 

Yours in traveling by pretend-stagecoach through beautiful Missouri,
Mary

#673 Ozarks Bungalow Research via Social Media

As our Ozarks Bungalow research continues, we turn to social media to learn all we can about the history of our home.

Stories from Aurora is a Facebook group of about 1900 members.  Who better to ask? 

So last month, we posed the question, "what memories do you have of this 100-year-old house on College Street across from Oak Park?"

Here are some of our favorite responses:

I believe Mrs. O. E. Moore lived in this home. I remember visiting her in this home in the 50's. I in particular remember built in mirrored cabinets in the dining room. Sure hope I'm not leading you astray and thinking of Bob and Irene Moore's original home which was on Elliott. Beautiful picture of this home---it has been well cared for and loved thru the years. Enjoy!

I used to mow the lawn at that house for several years when Mrs. Moore lived there.... Took two and a half hours and paid $10. She built the house next door too and I had to do both.....Kept me skinny long time. She was always very nice to me. Time line 1971 to 1975

They always bought girl scout cookies from me.

It has kept its age very well, I've been in the house when the Moores lived there and they were very picky about the house. I thought the living room was odd and not very big with lots of doors all around. It was pretty with the fireplace going as you walked up the steps to the front door. I always enjoyed the room to the right, I think it was a study or a family room, it had lots of light shining in. But its still a beautiful home today. I didn't know it was that old however. Enjoy your stay in a landmark home.

Does the kitchen still have pink appliances? I had never seen pink before.

I walked and jumped all over the concrete wall around it while waiting for the bus every day! Still live just down the street!

One of Aurora's finest homes of the past. They don't build them like that any more.

That home should be on the National Registry. Also can you fit your car in the garage, its so narrow. Are the flower beds still there, Mrs. Moore was really picky with those and worked in them all the time.

I always loved that house. I cleaned for Mrs Moore in the late 70's. I thought the ceiling in the living room was awesome. Mrs Moore said she got the idea from Better Homes and Garden.

This is one of my favorite houses in Aurora!

I have been your neighbor for the last 9 years and have admired the simple elegance of the home.

I have looked at that house almost everyday since I was a small child. I have always loved how beautiful it is.

Yours in appreciating the benefits of crowd sourcing and the kind words of our neighbors,
Mary

#661 Universal Design Ideas @ My Library

We're in need of some universal design ideas.

As we are refurbishing our 1914 home, we want to think about how we will be able to “age in place” using universal design elements such as walk-in showers, level outdoor walkways, ample lighting, and kitchen appliances that eliminate the need to bend. Lucky for us, a few universal design books are just waiting for us on the shelves @ our local library. 

So we walk all the way (about 4 blocks) over to the Aurora Public Library on Mr. Jefferson's street.

 

The lovely folks at the Carnegie Corporation of New York granted $9,000 in March 1913 to construct the Aurora public library for us.

After giving thanks to Andrew Carnegie, we waltz right in, register for a library card, and walk out with just what we need. 

We're just starting to think about how best to design our home. So if you have some favorite universal design ideas to share, please leave it in the comments or contact us!

Yours in scoring big @ my library,
Mary

#659 Remembering the Great War

During the 100-year anniversary of the Great War, I've been thinking about life back then.

Today, we discovered this WWI monument in a small park about 5 miles west of Aurora. 

The 1910 census shows that the largest population of foreign-born residents in our small county came from Germany.  It's hard to imagine that 423 of Lawrence County's residents were born in Germany.  Can you imagine the debate among Lawrence County citizens about whether the US should remain neutral and not enter the war?  Yet this monument commemorates the 32 local men who left their Missouri homes, crossed an ocean, and gave their lives to the war effort.

Also today, I read The Care and Management of Lies.  (What can I say?  I'm retired!)  Jacqueline Winspear, the author of the beloved Maisie Dobbs series, tells the story of Tom, an English farmer who leaves his farm in the capable hands of his young bride when England declares war on Germany in 1914.  In my imagination, Tom is not that different from those young Missouri men, likely farmers, who never stopped thinking about getting back home to the farm.   

Yours in remembering the Great War,
Mary