From the Oak Ridger Online

Story last updated at 2:59 p.m. on Friday, March 2, 2001 

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  Heather McKeethan Burnett leans against one of the tall columns of Colonial Hall, her new home.

Colonial Hall

by Jocelyn Woods Griffo
for The Oak Ridger

"I've always loved old houses, and wanted this old house since I was five. My mother would drive me by [on the way] to school at Oliver Springs Elementary, and I would say, 'I'm going to live in that house someday.'"

That's how long 30-year-old Heather McKeethan Burnett, a teacher at Roane County High School and Roane State Community College, dreamed about becoming mistress of the only antebellum (pre-Civil War) home in Oliver Springs, known as Colonial Hall.

Her mother, she says, is a realist and would cautiously remind her the house had been owned by the same family for nearly 100 years and would not likely become available.

Not since Elizabeth "Lillie" Gerding Hannah purchased the house on Dec. 12, 1886, after the death of her father -- using her share of her father's estate -- has the house belonged to anyone outside the Hannah family. Lillie was the daughter of George Frederick Gerding, a man of considerable wealth, credited as founder of the pre-Civil War immigrant colony of Wartburg.

In this house, Lillie raised her two sons, Harvey Horatio and Gerald (by her first husband, Maj. John Hannah), her daughter, Bernice McFerrin (by her second husband, Dr. R.A. McFerrin), and an orphaned Cuban girl, Lorena Maria Lacarada Paidrone, whom she brought from Cuba following the Spanish-American War.

Harvey Horatio became an outstanding orator and statesman, who purchased the William Wiley mansion within view of his boyhood home. Edward and Linda Coker now own the latter mansion.

Colonial Hall passed through the Hannah family to Geraldine Hannah Blanton (Mrs. Vaughn), the granddaughter of Lillie. According to the Oliver Springs Historical Society, it was Vaughn Blanton who noticed that the .38-caliber pistol belonging to his father-in-law, G.G. Hannah, was missing -- the same pistol found with the body of Leonard "Powder" Brown and used to murder Mary and Margaret Richards on Feb. 5, 1940.

The Blantons had no children. Geraldine Hannah Blanton was widowed in the late 1950s or early '60s, Heather believes. It was Geraldine who, on Sept. 11, 1975, succeeded in having the house registered with the National Register of Historic Places.

Established under the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966, the National Register has identified and documented, in partnership with state, federal and tribal preservation programs, nearly 73,000 districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects.

The National Register includes landmarks of American achievement as well as properties that reflect everyday lives of ordinary people in communities across the nation.

Currently, two landmarks are listed in Oliver Springs: H. Sienknecht Store on Tri-County Boulevard and the house known as Colonial Hall (no one knows when or how the house acquired the name).

During Tennessee's Bicentennial celebration in 1985, Mrs. Blanton, who lived a reclusive life and was not well-known to locals, opened a few rooms on the first floor of the house for public viewing. Heather was 15 years old. It was the only time she was ever in the house.

"She [Mrs. Blanton] was seated in a corner of the sunroom," Heather said. "She was gracious and elegant -- an older lady -- what I would have expected. A grand piano sat in the parlor. She had incredible antiques -- I've never seen the amount of sterling she had, even on my trips to Charleston."

Time and fate, however, rewarded Heather with her great expectations. Little more than a year ago, then-96-year-old Geraldine Blanton was removed to Seattle, Wash., to be near relatives.

Historic houses sell "silently," according to Heather, who in 1997 purchased and restored the "Old Carroll House" in Harriman. "Basically, old houses sell without ever having a 'for sale' sign put up," she said.

She resorted to downright sleuthing. "I'd heard rumors for about a year or two that the house might be for sale," she said. "I actually went to the Roane County News to look for her [the owner's] brother's obituary to find the names of her nieces. I went on the Internet and searched for everyone with those names. I called everyone listed in Seattle with those names. I had a big phone bill that month. I was getting worried."

Her efforts led nowhere. A friend finally suggested she get in touch with Blanton's physical therapist, who subsequently gave her the name and address of Candace Egnor, a niece in Seattle who acts as family representative. By the time Heather was able to make contact with Egnor, "There were already 18 people bidding on this house through a secret bid."

In addition to an offer to buy, "They wanted a letter from a bank to guarantee our loan, and a letter describing what we'd do to the house," she said. This done, she and her husband, Brian, who works for a security firm, waited. And waited. She'd asked to be notified even if they weren't awarded the property, and when the call came -- after two months -- the voice on the other end of the line, said Heather, sounded nervous.

Fearing the worst, Heather couldn't believe what she heard.

"She said, 'You have the house.' Sometimes when I walk around the property, I still can't believe it's mine."

"As soon as we knew the house was ours -- before the papers had been signed -- we started on the yard," she said.

This was no easy task, as her parents, Tim and Melba McKeethan of Oliver Springs, can attest. Tim McKeethan, although retired, worked countless 50-hour weeks clearing out brush and vines in the three-acre lawn that was so overgrown, out-of-towners would never guess a house stood behind the jungle of vines and brush. Even in 1985 during the Tennessee Bicentennial, Heather said, the lawn was already overgrown.

McKeethan has exposed a fishpond complete with pump near the front veranda, which Heather hopes to restore. A series of overgrown boxwoods once formed a natural arbor -- steppingstones and a semicircular pattern in the center are telltale clues.

Elsewhere in the underfoot, he retrieved four large marble tablets in perfect condition. Shaped rather like tombstones, their original purpose is unknown. Heather plans to have poetry inscribed on them and have them erected in a formal garden setting.

An orchard of apple and pear trees in the rear competes with black walnuts, maples, numerous magnolias and a great weeping cherry tree. Heather can only guess at the ages of some of the giants.

There is much work to be done. Last summer, Lawson Brothers of Harriman, a firm that restores historic homes, "scraped and scraped for weeks" then repainted the exterior of the house.

Another major exterior project the Burnetts hope to accomplish within the year is to replace the roof with a standing seam roof, which Heather describes as "more historically accurate -- only green."

"A guy that crawled under the house said there are huge, huge timbers under there," she said. They are all sound. The Greek Revival architectural style structure appears to be in good shape for its age.

Age dates part of the structure, it is believed, to sometime shortly after 1819. According to Roane County Deed Book E, Lewis Rector Sr. bought 21 acres on Dec. 23, 1819, from Moses Winters, the first white settler in the area. The acreage was part of Winters' original 249-acre tract. Rector either remodeled or constructed a log house at the corner of what eventually became Main and Spring streets.

According to the Oliver Springs Historical Society, Rector and his family lived in the house until his death in 1859, at which point his widow sold the house and 21 acres to her son, Lewis Rector Jr. (Roane County Deed Book J2).

Ownership for the next 30-year period is not exact. At some point before the Civil War, Heather believes, the property came into the possession of Angeline Wiley Estabrook Hornsby. Angeline's father, Henry, was a partner in the Coal Creek Mining and Manufacturing Co.

Angeline was first married in 1853 to Dr. Joseph Estabrook, who left the presidency of East Tennessee University at Knoxville (now University of Tennessee) to enter into a contract with Moses Winters for the establishment of a large salt works in Oliver Springs. Unfortunately, Estabrook died in 1855.

Then, during the Civil War, Angeline, her mother and sister, Confederate sympathizers, fled Oliver Springs to Kingston. Three years after the war ended, Angeline married William Hornsby, who was associated with the Wiley family in the coal business. In their later years, they made their home in Knoxville.

Additionally, one Ellen W. Scott of St. Louis, Mo., came into possession of the house because it was she who sold it to Lillie Hannah in 1886.

Somewhere alone the way -- exactly when no one seems to know -- the existing two-story, 3,000-square-foot Greek Revival structure was built, incorporating the log cabin. Heather thinks the cabin may be a part of the lower left front section of the house.

Interior decor restoration will be "historically compatible" to the style of "Empire to late Victorian," she said, with the exception of some upholstered pieces, and "maybe not antique beds." Husband Brian is 6 feet, 4 inches, and sons Andrew Sullivan (6) and Ethan (15 months) are expected to be as tall.

Furnishings have never been a problem. Heather has been collecting antiques at auctions and sales since she landed her first job and still lived at home with her parents.

She plans large panel landscapes for walls in some rooms. Zuber, a French company, produces landscapes that were in vogue in the 1860s. Jacqueline Kennedy used this style of wall covering in the restoration of the White House, she said.

The kitchen and sunroom will undergo the most intensive remodeling. The sunroom, complete with fireplace, is an L-shaped room at the left rear of the house that was added in the 1920s and has suffered extensive weather damage. Heather said it must be totally reconstructed but she plans on reinstalling the original windows.

The kitchen is a long rectangular room at the rear of the house, the most interesting feature of which is a large brick fireplace. Heather says she remembers the fireplace from her visit in 1985 as much larger -- large enough to roast a pig -- and closer to the floor, and thinks it was rebuilt since then.

Interestingly, the kitchen walls are completely paneled in a medium dark stain. She plans to bleach and glaze the wood. Tile murals will be worked into the scheme.

The existing kitchen ceiling will be torn out, exposing wooden beams several feet above. Besides aesthetics, the additional height will allow the installation of tall, glass-door, distressed-wood cabinetry.

A popular model of gourmet stove that appears old, and a cabinet to hide the refrigerator will lend the appearance of historic compatibility while affording modern conveniences, she said.

Pine plank floors throughout (except for the kitchen and sunroom) will be refinished, and coats and coats of paint will be removed from the staircase in the foyer -- a staircase so solid, there is not a creak or groan from a single step.

The front door is flanked and topped by numerous 3- by 5-inch stained-glass panels in pale green, blue, gold and pink, that splash color across the foyer walls and floor.

The parlor to the left of the front door, accessed by double wood doors, is approximately 27 by 18 feet and is an odd shape -- rather like a greatly exaggerated bay window. Three double-hung windows at the extreme end together with one window on the front fill the room with light.

The fireplace hearth is a treasure: Majolica tiles in multi-colored coral and green hues bordered by "history tiles" featuring William Shakespeare and scenes, according to Heather, from "A Midsummer Night's Dream." History tiles, she said, were endemic to the Victorian era and are greatly prized by collectors today.

The smaller parlor to the right of the entry also has a fireplace. However, original mantels of three of the five fireplaces were removed before Heather purchased the property. All rooms feature foot-high painted floor molding.

The dining room behind the small parlor features a massive stone fireplace of giant gray fieldstones -- the kind that radiate stored heat for hours. It fills the wall from ceiling to floor. The firebox is recessed behind a semicircular arch span, a stonemason's pride.

The stone arch, invented and perfected by the Romans, so significant that the word architecture derives from it, is an exercise in the principles of physics.

The arch is used to create an opening while transferring to either side the weight, or thrust, that tries to fill that opening. The proportionate displacement of stress is critical to the principle. Stones must fit tightly for an arch to stand and good mortar joints are a necessity.

The single staircase leads to a small landing over the front door. To the right is the larger of only two bedrooms in the house. This room mirrors the exaggerated bay-window architecture of the parlor below.

A portion of this room has been converted to a small bathroom -- the sole bathroom in the structure -- and needs updating. Heather says that some time after they have finished restoring the original house, an addition will be necessary to accommodate their style of living.

Other projects include replacing the dilapidated detached garage, and rescuing the cozy bricked court off the sunroom. There are issues with springs that seep to the surface and flood this area in rainy weather as well as jeopardizing a concrete wall that holds back the bank behind the house.

Vine-covered steps from the court lead to a crumbling, two-story structure that Heather says could have been quarters for slaves or servants.

She bases this on local hearsay as well as traces of blue paint she says are on the interior upstairs walls. Some slave quarters in Charleston bear this color, called "haint blue," she said. But she is just as quick to acknowledge the building could have been a springhouse.

She has written to the University of Tennessee offering the property for research by experts in hopes of learning answers to this as well as the location of the original log structure in the house, and other questions.

The front veranda is wide and accommodating behind typical two-story-tall white columns that support the roof. Above the front door, a restored wrought-iron electric lamp hangs from a unique chain made of large ornate wrought-iron links. Tim McKeethan spent hours and hours cleaning and restoring it to like-new condition.

Most of the glass panes in the windows are original. Some will be repaired but there are no plans to replace any of the windows. Wiring to code, installation of central heat and air conditioning, and additional plumbing will be added.

Daunting tasks. But Heather is comfortable with the future and her dream and her love for Colonial Hall.

"This will be my home always and it will not ever be on the market ever again," she said. "We are setting up a trust so that it will be passed on to our heirs and their heirs."

Colonial Hall, witness to nearly 200 years of local, state and national history, has passed into the loving care of a new "Grande Dame."