? 1 1 1
A mountainside was cut out with pick and shovel to build the Stackhouse residence.
Memories
Of Community
That Vanished
By MARY ELLEN WOLCOTT
Citizen- Times
Women's Editor
"This is sort of a ghost
town," Gilbert Stackhouse, 72,
?aid as he took his noon-day
rest on the porch of the Vic
torian house on the moun
tainside above the French
Broad River in Madison
County.
The big Queen Anne-style
house with its turrets and
curving porch looked down on
the river bordered by the
railroad track.
Stackhouse was born in the
house, built in 1900 by his
parents, Amos and Hester
Stackhouse. He can
remember when the big trees
which now hide the house
when viewed below were
planted under his mother's
supervision.
The parlor and most of the
other rooms are furnished just
a? his mother left them.
The parlor curtains are the
ones his mother, a meticulous
homemaker, chose 70 years
ago, of lace handmade in
Switzerland.
Stackhouse and his wife,
Juanita, have lived there since
they were married 47 years
ago, living first in a spacious
apartment upstairs in the 12
room house.
His mother lived to be 89, an
elegant woman with a
reputation as a perfectionist
who oversaw every detail of
the building and furnishing of
her home.
She left the house to her son
Gilbert and his wife, who have
chosen to preserve it much as
it was during her lifetime.
The shades are drawn in the
guest room upstairs, as they
were when Hester Stackhouse
kept the room ready for the
company which often came to
Stackhouse.
It is as if time has stopped in
most of the rooms, leaving
them as they were when
Hester Stackhouse was
mistress of the house.
But Gilbert Stackhouse, who
has known the house and its
surroundings all his lifetime,
can sit on the front porch,
looking down at the river and
the railroad and beyond to a
mountain vista, and in his
mind's eye he can remember
it as it was, when Stackhouse
was a regular train stop and
the name of a thriving,
bustling community of miners
and lumbermen and their
families.
On a nearby peninsula
where the Laurel River joins
the French Broad was an old
fashioned mill village, a
commissary, combined school
and church, and a big logging
mill.
The village community was
first called Putnam and then
re-named Runion.
The buildings ? a store,
depot, warehouses, barite mill
? are gone now around
Stackhouse, and a visitor,
looking toward the adjoining
site of Runion, can see only the
green of trees and shrubs
which have grown over the
mill houses and buildings as
the mountain reclaimed its
own.
Gilbert Stackhouse can
remember when the Fourth of
July was a big day at Runion,
boisterously celebrated by
hundreds, with "log jumping"
in the water by the mill and
tub races in the creek.
"On Saturday evenings
there would be a big ball game
across the river, may be a
hundred over there playing
ball or watching," he said.
The mountains were
covered with virgin timber
and the site of the railroad was
a stagecoach or drover's road,
the Buncombe Turnpike, when
Gilbert's grandfather, Amos,
bought the 60S acres in 1868.
He had come down from
Philadelphia to Hot Springs,
then called Warm Springs,
just four miles away from the
site of Stackhouse.
"He settled down there, at
Warm Springs, and got to
walking around, walked up
this way and found this
place," his grandson, Gilbert,
said. The big house his
G0LBER1 1ND JUANIT/
3TACKH0USE hold bands >n the
of be Victor! an hou*
to WOO on i
grandfather built burned
several years ago.
"The railroad didn't come
through until around 1880," he
said. "The railroad took the
stagecoach road and agreed to
build another road but never
did get around to it. We have a
private siding of our own.
Grandpa wouldn't sell, them
any right of way; he said they
could use what they wanted if
they put him in a private
siding.
"There were six passenger
trains a day; four would stop
here and the other two would
stop if you flagged them.
There were about 40 houses
around here; my uncle and
daddy together owned them.
They would rent them to
workers at the mills."
His grandfather had bought
the land with lumbering in
mind, but when barite (a
substance used in oil and gas
well drilling, in cloth, paper,
tires and paint) was
discovered, mining became a
thriving industry, too.
The mining operation in
cluded a mill by the river and
two big water wheels, washed
away in the flood of 1916. The
wheels were rebuilt and
before the cement could dry,
they were washed away again.
Lead was found mixed with
the barite, and the mining of
barite as a major undertaking
was abandoned.
"Every three or four years,
the mines open again,"
Stackhouse says. "It's been
that way ever since I can
remember."
The lumbering community
of Runion underwent several
changes of ownership after
Gilbert's grandfather sold the
site, 100 acres, in 1806.
Gilbert Stackhouse
remembers the wooden
sidewalks and the
schoolhouse. "They had six
months school down there at
that time, and six months
school up here. I got caught in
the middle; I had to go to both
of them."
There is also the old
schoolhouse on his property, a
one-room with cloakroom
school where he went to the
second grade. For the first
grade, his mother had taken
him and his brother to the old
Weaver College, where they
all boarded for the school
term. Later Gilbert attended
school at Walnut and Marshall
and again at Weaver College.
As a boy Stackhouse found
plenty of action around the
railroad and the river.
He remembers the sound of
the old steam engines when
they would come up the
mountain past Stackhouse. "I
didn't like the sound or the
cinders either,'' he said,
recalling how you could touch
the walls of the big house on
the hillside above the tracks
and wipe away soot from the
trains.
He and other boys in the
_ -
it so slow you could about
turned his back, we'd get back
on again."
His mother never caught
him when he was hitching
train rides. "If she had, I'd
still remember it! " he said.
The kids at Stackhouse and
Runion played constantly on
the river he remembers.
"Everybody had boats.
Several families lived on the
other side of the river and
worked over here; they had to
have boats."
There was also the ex
citement of constant con
struction and years of digging
around the house Gilbert's
father built on the moun- I
tainside.
It took a carpenter, Henry
Campbell, with his brother,
"Boney," as a helper four
years to build the house.
Stackhouse says, at a cost of
$4,000. The cherry, oak and
walnut woodwork was brought
in by rail from New York and
Philadelphia, as was the
furatture.
"If you got anything in here,
that's the only way it came,
there wasn't any other way,"
he said.
"They dug off $20,000 worth
of mountain to build the house.
That's what it cost my daddy,
and he just paid a dollar a day.
They didn't have bulldozers
back then. They had little flat
bedded wheelbarrows' and
they'd haul the dirt down to
the railroad. He had eight or
10 men all during my young
days digging, putting down
pipe, getting ready to build the
brick building back of the
house, from 1900 to 1918, I
guess."
remaps Decause 01 mis
influence, Gilbert Stackhouse
became a licensed contractor,
doing commercial building all
over the Southeast until his
retirement.
He remembers the day
when the saw mill and lum
bering operation closed down
at Runion. It was June 30,
1927.
"It would surprise you how
quick those people got out of
there when the mill closed
down," he said. "I guess 10
percent of 'em left the next
day."
In the ghost town, buildings
rotted away, some sold for the
lumber. They left behind a
million feet of poplar logs,
seven or eight feet through
some of its salvaged years
later, he said
Last fall, with a group from
the Madison County Historical
Society, he walked down the
railroad track, over the hill
where Runion flourished,
where weeds and briars have
taken over.
They found the foundation of
the mill and the wood
schooUMwse, still withstan
ding the ravages of time, and
the big cement vault where
kept in the
The few houaea
falling into
was disap
only the trestle
where the railroad
Laurel River to
The family's private siding
used to hold eight cars. "When
[ was a kid everybody wanted
cars; it was nothing to see 'em
Fighting over a car."
He remembers when his
Father would order a car load
of flour for the busy store at
Stackhouse, where he sold
wholesale to Laurel and a
store in Marshall. The oddest
order, he says, was for a
carload of tobacco and snuff.
Stackhouse has been away
From his home only for a few
weeks at a time during his
lifetime.
He likes to be at home with
ois wife, whom he refers to as
his "sweetheart." She had
come from Charlotte to
Walnut to teach school when
he wooed and won her. "I
wouldn't let her leave; I knew
a good thing when I saw it. She
was pretty and still is," he
says.
They brought up two
daughters at Stackhouse, Mrs.
Bobby (Lexyne) Norris of
Arden and Mrs. David
(Nancy) Aumiller of Chat
tanooga, and now have five
grandchildren to fill up the big
house on visits.
On summer afternoons it
seems quiet and peaceful on
the porch looking down the
steep lawn to the river, but i
Mrs. Stackhouse says there is I
always something going on.
Where the boats used to ply !
back and forth, there are now
river rafts passing by. On a j
recent Sunday 70 rafts passed, j
and the Victorian house is j
always pointed out. Once a j
friend passing on a raft tried ;
to wave to Mrs. Stackhouse on ;
her porch, and fell in the river. ?
Gilbert Stackhouse enjoys !
the way it is now at his home I
place. "I was always glad to ?
get back home," he said. "The ?
biggest reason was my ;
sweetheart was here. "
this: PARLOR MANTEL is of
cherry in a style typical of the
turn of the century, serving one of
three fireplaces in the house. The
original draperies with tasseled
fringe still hang in the doorway ;
leading to the dining room. 0
\
?n
? ? ? ? . /' ? ? " ? r
THE ENTRANCE HAUL is mucfc
astt Stackhouse
furnished the house after <ts