Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, April 8, 1990 TAG: 9004100551
SECTION: HOMES PAGE: C1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: SANDRA BROWN KELLY HOMES EDITOR
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
The couple has spent the past year restoring one of the Roanoke Valley's oldest properties, the Samuel Harshbarger house near Hollins Road. They say they are dedicated to purity in their project.
"Once I'm healed, Dolores says we have to get rid of everything modern," Eddie said. He suffered a crushed vertebra along with other injuries in a vehicle accident several months ago and has been learning to walk all over again.
The sneeze that caused his accident also delayed the restoration project, but it hasn't dulled Eddie's enthusiasm. He eagerly points out projects waiting for him "to get better." He intends to use toothpicks to fill in the nail holes in the now-exposed ceiling beams. The plank walls need to be a purer color.
The Harshbarger house includes a stone portion that dates to the late 1700s and a brick section added circa 1825. The brick part includes a living room split from a smaller room by the staircase leading to two rooms upstairs. Dolores has furnished the small downstairs room as a bedroom and the master bedroom is upstairs along with a sitting area.
The Truetts have been concentrating on the brick portion of the house and have brought it near completion. The project has been like a treasure hunt, they said.
Underneath a front porch they found a fire back (used in a fireplace to reflect heat) bearing the Harshbarger initials and the year 1797. It was in two pieces but is tentatively back in its place in the fireplace of the main room in the stone part of the house. They found, too, that the mantle for that fireplace at some time had been shortened. They will restore it to its original height.
A stone fireplace supported by a 16-by-16 oak beam was found behind a more modern fireplace in the brick portion of the house. The beam has been crudely scored on one side and has pegs pounded into the side, both techniques to make plaster adhere to the smooth wood.
Eddie plans to leave the beam exposed as a history lesson for the visitors the Truetts hope to have when they open their home to the public.
The public openings are some time off, but the Truetts have come a long way from the 63 dump truck loads of trash, old appliances and whatnot hauled from the site when they began work. They regret they didn't have time to carefully sort the trash because they believe a number of old bottles would have been found. Dolores did rescue a porcelain doll head. And this summer they want to excavate a 30-foot hand-dug well that has been found on the two-acre tract.
The Truetts paid $55,000 for the land and house, which was destined to be demolished. "The deed didn't even say there was a house on the property," Eddie said. A skating rink operation now touches the Truett property, but the Harshbarger homestead once was part of 500 acres bought by Samuel Harshbarger at the forks of Tinker and Carvins creeks in Roanoke County.
Harshbarger was born in 1759 and came to the Roanoke Valley with his brothers, Christian and Jacob, and his parents, Jacob and Marie. The parents had fled Switzerland for Holland and emigrated from Holland to the United States in 1754.
The family name in a different spelling was given to Hershberger Road.
Samuel Harshbarger moved his family to Indiana in the 1830s, supposedly because he disapproved of slave labor and would not compete with it in his milling and timber work.
When the Truetts bought the property it was owned by the Stone family.
The house and a kitchen connected by a screened porch were the only buildings on the property, but research indicates that a log house once was on the site.
The Truetts had the property fenced with barbed wire because they were bothered by vandals, and utilities were put underground to keep the scene as authentic as possible. Windows have been replaced with original six-pane designs, newly made but pegged and mortised as the old ones would have been.
The porch was enclosed to tie the kitchen to the house, but Eddie said the enclosure was purposely made to look more modern to indicate that it was not part of the original.
Just off the old porch is a modern bath, the only one in the house.
The kitchen beams were rotten and had to be replaced, but the replacements were hand-hewn. The Truetts give credit to a friend, Frank Fleet, and to Dolores' father, Robert Tyree, for much of the effort to stay authentic in the restoration.
Tyree is a stonemason and lives in Northern Virginia, but has spent many days on projects such as his current one of laying a stone sidewalk.
The Truetts are graduates of Virginia Tech; she in communications and he in economics, but for the past 10 years they have been in the antiques business. They own Golden Oak Era Antiques in Daleville. They formerly lived over their antiques shop and now are only four miles away. The shop and their antiquing connections, however, have been sources for furnishings for their home. Items have been kept simple and include a Botetourt pie safe, a sugar chest, a Moravian corner cupboard, an 1810 Dutch cupboard, several spinning wheels and well-worn and comfortable rocking chairs.
by CNB