HELENA-WEST HELENA — Everyone who has ever tackled restoring an old house dreams of it - finding a treasure hidden within the walls, attic or basement, tucked away for decades.
And by buried treasure, we’re not talking a stash of gold, a cache of big bills, or a folder of old stock certificates now worth millions - though that would be nice.
Old-house owners and those laboring to breathe new life into old places often find the work evokes an emotional connection to their project.
What did the exterior once look like? How was the interior originally configured? How were the rooms decorated and furnished? Who lived here? What living, loving, laughing, crying and dying occurred here through the years?
If only these walls could talk.
If only a hidden time capsule of sorts had been tucked away generations ago to be found by those in the future.
That dream was recently realized by workers at an antebellum home in Helena-West Helena.
Last week as restoration began on Estevan Hall, built in 1826, workers found a surprise behind a wall in the attic.
“While removing insulation from attic crawl spaces behind four foot knee walls, one of the subcontractor’s employees, Timothy McDaniel, found two framed oil portraits and three smaller framed photographs,” says project manager James King with CM Construction of Little Rock. The house is owned by Southern Bancorp in Helena-West Helena, which is leading the project.
“The original structure would have fit in the current parlor,” says the project’s architect, Tommy Jameson of Little Rock.
Through the decades the house was expanded several times with remodeling projects in the 1870s, 1919 and the 1950s.
He has determined that the house was similar in style to the Plum Bayou log cabin at the Historic Arkansas Museum in Little Rock and was an L-shaped, two room house with front and back porches.
“The original house was modest but would have been grand for its day,” Jameson says.
Workers are peeling away the 1950s additions to return the house to its 1919 state.
After restoration, the house at 653 Biscoe St. will open to the public as the Civil War Helena visitors center. The first phase includes restoring the house and adding a caretaker’s quarters and is expected to cost about $600,000. The visitors center, set to open in 2013, will be completed during a second phase with the addition of exhibits and an audiovisual system, according to Cathy Cunningham, community development coordinator with Southern Bancorp Community Partners.
Civil War Helena is a part of the Delta Bridge Project, a broad-ranging $7 million effort led by Southern Bancorp and using federal, state, and local funds to boost economic development in the city. It will feature at least 28 historic sites including the visitors center and Freedom Park across the street. Interpretation at the park will chronicle the story of refugees and runaway slaves as they followed the Union Army into Helena. Later this month, ground will be broken on the park, which is set to open in the fall.
The project is funded by grants from the National Park Service’s Save America’s Treasures and American Battlefield Protection programs and the Delta Bridge Project.
The portraits, displayed in matching 20-by-30-inch gilded wood frames covered with old glass, are in excellent condition and estimated to date from the 1800s.
The two oil paintings are of a middle-aged man and woman. The bearded man has no trace of gray hair and is sporting a bow-tie and dark suit and matching vest. The woman has hair piled atop her head, a high-collared dark dress with a hint of white lace just visible above the collar. Her dress is accented with a large oval brooch near her throat which matches her earrings.
“They haven’t been seen since at least 1950, and probably longer back than that,” King says, adding the photographs and portraits have been sent to the Delta Cultural Center in Helena-West Helena for safe storage until the restoration of the house is complete.
The three small framed photos include one that appears to be of the same man many years later, one of a woman with a little girl with a handwritten date of 1913, and one of what seems to be the same little girl sitting on a set of steps.
Who are the man and woman depicted in the oil paintings?
They could be Fleetwood Hanks Jr., the original owner and builder of the house, a Quaker who was born in the late 1700s in Bedford, Va. He built it in 1826 and married Frances Stanford the next year. Hanks served as one of Phillips County’s first sheriffs and was in the territorial Legislature before Arkansas became a state and then later served in the Arkansas General Assembly.
Or they might be Fleetwood’s son James Millinder Hanks, who was born in 1833 and was married to Helena (Lena) Thompson. Millinder, a Democrat, was an elected judge in the 1st Judicial District and served as a U.S. congressman from 1871 to 1873.
James Millinder Hanks was a dedicated diarist and wrote daily in a journal for 44 years, beginning in 1865 and continuing until three days before his death in 1909. The 45-volume collection is housed at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville.
“I believe, just from the resemblances and the time period of the photographs, that the portraits are Millinder and Lena Hanks,” says Bill Branch, curator of the Delta Cultural Center in Helena-West Helena.
King says that even though his crew is working fast and furiously at ripping out the generations of additions to the house, it is a selective demolition with everyone involved mindful of the history at hand.
“We are currently in the demolition phase,” he says, “but all the workers, they are still being very careful about what they’re doing. I’m also a trained archaeologist, we’re not just tearing things off. Instead, it’s more like we’re surgically removing things to figure out how and why things went where they did.”
The crew seems to respect the history of the home, King says.
“That guy that found the photographs was super excited about it, and it has really fired up the whole crew,” he says, adding, “I have found a lot of old things in old houses through my years in this work but never anything this valuable from a historical standpoint.”
Even after those in the photographs are positively identified, a lingering mystery will remain. Why would someone encase the portraits in the attic behind a knee wall, knowing the items -someone’s family heirlooms - might never see the light of day again?
Jameson’s theory? The portraits were tucked away in a remote dark corner of the attic for safekeeping and simply forgotten and overlooked when the knee walls were built.
If only these walls could talk.
HomeStyle, Pages 28 on 04/07/2012