Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, July 10, 1995 TAG: 9507100117
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: TODD JACKSON STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: RED VALLEY LENGTH: Medium
And the owner of the rundown two-story clapboard house, Marguarite Kelley, wasn't in any hurry to sell it.
It wasn't that she didn't care. It just didn't fit in with her way of life.
People knocked at her door bringing offers to buy it, but she always refused, not wanting the increased traffic and fanfare.
To her, the house was just that - a house.
Early last month, however, Kelley signed her name on the dotted line.
Now the home - tucked back in the country off Virginia 116 in the Red Valley section of Franklin County - is owned by a preservation trust group that wants to restore it.
The house had been owned by the Kelley family for almost 40 years. For the last 17, Kelley had turned down numerous potential buyers from as far away as California.
So why relinquish ownership now?
Simple: It could be a home again.
Kelley, 78, wasn't seeking a bundle of cash up front, or a cut of possible profits that the restored home could bring as a tourist attraction.
She only asked that she and her daughter be allowed to live in the house when the restoration is completed. They've been living in a mobile home near the house since Kelley's husband died in 1978.
``It was a beautiful house at one time,'' she said. ``I'm hoping that it will look that way again.''
Gerald Via, a member of the Jubal A. Early Preservation Trust's board of directors, said the group wanted to return the home to its pre-Civil War condition.
After Kelley moved out of the home, it became a storage place for their grandchildren's ``junk,'' she said.
That storage place will be torn down and restored, using as many of the existing materials as possible - including its slate roof, Via said.
Vinton's Tad Darnall, an Early descendant and historic architect, will oversee the restoration. Darnall owns several of Early's possessions - including a boot pistol - and has indicated he may put them on display in the home when it is finished, according to Via.
Although many pieces of original furniture were sold long ago, a hand-carved mantle and a claw-footed bathtub will remain a part of the home.
The project, for which the trust must raise $200,000, must be completed by the fall of 1997 or ownership of the house reverts to the Kelley family.
With several big-hitters on the trust board, that $200,000 probably will come sooner rather than later.
A $10,000 federal grant already is in hand, Via said.
The board includes two of the leading Civil War historians in the nation: James I. ``Bud'' Robertson, endowed professor of history at Virginia Tech, and Gary Gallagher, chairman of the history department at Penn State.
State Sen. Virgil Goode, longtime county attorney Keister Greer and leading county historian Dr. Francis Amos Mount, all of Rocky Mount, also are on the board.
Via said members of the Fincastle Rifles, a local chapter of the Sons of Confederate Veterans of which he is bookkeeper, also will provide labor and expertise.
When the project - which also includes an upgrade of the country road into the property - is finished, Via said the home would be opened for tours and rented for special events.
Kelley said she and her late husband, Raymond, didn't realize the historical significance of the house when they lived there. ``We never paid it no mind whatsoever,'' said Kelley, who was born in Roanoke. ``I'd never been much into history.''
The property's history included a dairy farm housed on a portion of the surrounding 328 acres the Kelley family owned.
After moving out, Kelley said, ``To me, it was just a house standing there falling down.''
It's much more than that to her now.
After being contacted countless times about the home and its tie to Early, Kelley had no choice but to learn about Early, commander of Robert E. Lee's most important independent army.
She said it is believed that Early, who was born in the house on Nov. 3, 1816, was delivered underneath the hand-carved mantle located in the front portion of the house.
As one of the most combative and colorful commanders of the Civil War, according to biographer Charles C. Osborne, Early got closer to Washington, D.C., than any other Confederate general during four years of fighting.
He continued to champion the Confederacy's cause until his death, and even moved to Mexico for several years because he didn't want to live in a conquered South.
Early died in Lynchburg, where he is buried, in 1894.
Memo: ***CORRECTION***