Exploring the Secret History of the Dewey Cox House

[@AppalachianMemoryKeepers]

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[@patricialong5767]

It really makes me long for an ancestral home to return to and learn stories/history of my back then family. But alas, there is no ancestral home for me to go to! :((

[@badapple65]

Closest I ever came was the family home we moved into in 1969 built new, I was 4 yrs old and lived there until I got married. Parents sold it mid 90’s, current owner looked myself and 2 brothers up and called each of us to ask if any interest buying our childhood home. But all 3 of us had other things going on. Thought it was nice of her to reach out though.

[@susanrunge7455]

Our family had one & it was just terrific! My maternal grandfather's family built a Plantation style summer home in the early 1900s in Paducah, KY that was kept in the family for over 80 years. It was a white clapboard house with a big red roof and a deep covered porch across the entire front & around the sides. My grandfather's aunt had traveled to SC & admired this style house, so came back & announced that the family needed one. Eventually the house was winterized & decorated for year- round living. Two of the daughters (my grandfather's sisters) - who'd never married - moved into it for the rest of their lives... to the late 1980s/early 90s. After they died, the other siblings & heirs decided to sell it bc life moved on. Without anyone living in it to maintain it, it was simply too much house to keep up. I grew up visiting every time we went to see my grandparents. It was the central gathering place and Aunt Helen & Aunt Gertrude hosted Sunday dinners for the extended family whenever someone came to town to visit. It was a magical place to us kids with 6 acres of wonders to explore. A grass lawn tennis court, a day lily field, servants quarters with Lilies of the Valley plantedout front (I picked some to take to my grandmother who'd suffered a severe stroke & lived in a nursing home for a few months before my grandfather brought her home as she was so miserable there), a chicken coop, a sleigh barn & more. The main house had an enormous front covered porch (probably 60 feet wide & it wrapped back on both sides of the house) up the steps overlooking the front yard facing the road with two seating sections on either side of the front door - to the left was a porch swing with wicker furniture, to the right was a porch swing with a bunch of rocking chairs. The right side was the preferred side bc who doesn't like to swing & rock, and also they'd open the window into the den & you could answer the phone thru the window. 😂 There was a rear screened-in porch off the kitchen with a huge dining table where we'd eat summer meals. The dining room inside also had a huge dining table for the same. Fried chicken was a favorite meal, always served with green beans, mashed potatoes, ice tea & sweet pickles. They had very fine china (the family owned a fine jewelry & china business in town) and crescent-shaped bone plates at each place setting for your chicken bones - I inherited those, along with one of the china sets from my great Aunt Helen. My mother inherited her grandmother's beautiful china... Helen & Gertrude's mother. The family was large with 11 children so there were endless great aunts & uncles, aunts & uncles, cousins around, many of whom stayed in Paducah so we always saw them - loads of fun stories at the dinner table, out on the porch, at church before Sunday supper, in the large living room that in its original form as the country house housed the summer carriages and porch furniture during the winter... so you can get an idea of the size of the room - the dining room was at the far end of the living room on the back of the house. Bedrooms flanked the main hall... which became the living & dining room once winterized...2 on the left, 3 on the right. The kitchen was on the back left corner with the back porch off of it. There was a magnificent attic filled with wondrous old Victorian wooden furniture (I inherited a charming carved wooden chair with the original blue milk paint) & things that you accessed via a staircase inside of a closet. Lol. Exploring the place was truly endless. There were city homes for the family during the cooler school months. The city downtown was about 2 miles from the country house and down by the Ohio River that voted one year. I'm lucky bc I also inherited the family photo album that had pictures from the flood with my relatives rowing thru town streets in canoes 😂, along with pictures of the children playing out at The Country (as we named the house) in a 🐐 goat cart - you heard that right, goats pulled the kids around in a little cart...my cousin in GA inherited the cart. The town eventually expanded & grew around the summer house so that eventually it was no longer out in the country but the house was still referred to as The Country. Wonderful, wonderful times. Townspeople who grew up driving past it always wondering about life inside it were hoping someone would buy it & turn it into a B&B, but there are no such buyers so the heirs sold the house to a bank. The bank never materialized & resold it to a man who then ended up tearing it down quickly in 3 days before anyone in the city found out & could do anything about it. So, the home & its memories and, of course, our past relatives live in our minds & hearts as we whistfully recall the magical times we experienced growing up. We were lucky. Very lucky. 😊❤ Apologies for any repetition & other errors - it's a challenge to write long form in the KZbin format.🤷🏼‍♀️

[@MeMyselfAndUs903]

10:00 A “mess of beans”. Makes me chuckle because I’m a city girl. When I met and married my husband, whose kinfolk came from the hills of Virginia, I wanted a special green bean recipe his mother made so well. She told me I needed a mess of beans. Well, I had never heard that term, and they had quite a difficult time explaining exactly what that meant.

[@scotthurley4967]

I live very close to this farm. I’ve always said that this was my dream farm. Stunning!!

[@AppalachianMemoryKeepers]

It really is!

[@cdog6725]

What a wonderful grand home, TY for the history and these videos.

[@AppalachianMemoryKeepers]

Thanks for watching!

[@gregorykelsey8705]

What a great house I would love to live there.... Thank you for sharing

[@carolyntaylor7776]

I love this history ... great!

[@AppalachianMemoryKeepers]

Thanks for watching!

[@stevegilbert8738]

That story about the house was great

[@goodday23456]

I always heard the porch ceilings were painted blue to keep wasps and bees from building nests. They thought it was the sky when it was painted blue.

[@Charlotte-bn4gp]

Everything i google about Dewey Cox and says its a fictional person🤷 Looking forward to seeing where this leads. Being from N.C., curiosity is a driving force😊

[@darleneeide7090]

This is a beautifully preserved home. Thank you for the enjoyable tour.

[@AppalachianMemoryKeepers]

Glad you enjoyed it

[@brittanyisaacs7892]

OMG the dynamite caught me off guard.GOOD VIDEO.

[@Germainmedia]

Thanks! :)

[@darlenejohnson8864]

Absolutely love this house. So pretty. Love the stories.

[@AppalachianMemoryKeepers]

Glad you enjoy it!

[@JoJoHOPPE-i7j]

Such a beautiful restoration! Just wonderful.

[@AppalachianMemoryKeepers]

Glad you like it!

[@larrysmith6499]

Excellent video

[@AppalachianMemoryKeepers]

Thank you very much!

[@chrisoakley5830]

Great story here. I'd like to thank y'all for these wonderful videos that you do on these old mountain homes. You are allowing me to experience something I've often wanted to do and that is visit these grand old places. The videos are very educational and heartwarming. Love hearing the different people tell their stories !

[@AppalachianMemoryKeepers]

Glad you enjoy our work! Please consider joining our organization and gain access to ALL our work at AppalachianMemoryKeepers.org

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[@geraldinecarpenter970]

What a Beauitful house!

[@ddsmiles6382]

I’m loving this series’s. So much beautiful wonderful history. Thank you so much.

[@billh9350]

So many memories just came flooding back into my mind. You guys did a terrific job telling the story of this house, the shot from the 1990's was a perfect ending. Great work!

[@AppalachianMemoryKeepers]

Thank you! Glad you enjoyed!

[@patricialong5767]

I grew up on two small farms and as a teenage girl, I learned to cook food on a wood stove, using cast iron pots and pans and making delicious food. Yes, it does make a difference as tp what heat you use!

[@larrypicard8802]

Happy to find this channel. I spent summers on my grandparent’s farm in Sampson County, NC. We spent time picking and shelling field (snap) peas, string beans and butter beans. Also chopping cotton. Fun times for a kid from NJ.

[@AppalachianMemoryKeepers]

Make sure you check out our other KZbin channel: kzbin.info/door/cZrby8y7hTfflzhbtVuWoAvideos

[@atexinc.5472]

Thank y’all. Really enjoyed

[@AppalachianMemoryKeepers]

Our pleasure!

[@kathyhodson2526]

Beautiful thank you for sharing

[@conniesmith2834]

Blue porch ceilings also keep wasps from nesting

[@cathy5072]

Wonderful ❤

[@mildredrharmon4032]

This home is so beautiful it makes me cry! 🥰❤️😍

[@YouWorryMe]

I think youre on to something with this content. Its different. Fascinating. As long as there are stories that go with the footage. Having someone that lived there saying, "I was born in this room". or "My Grand Father would sit in a chair right here and play his fiddle." Oh I love it! Im hooked. But how do you find these places with the people that know? Don't tell me, just keep doing it.

[@nancyyonce2906]

Beautiful house ~!!!

[@shirleyharrison2580]

What a beautiful home, love the porches. I really enjoy this channel, thanks for sharing.

[@AppalachianMemoryKeepers]

Glad you found us Shirley! :)

[@judithsmith9319]

Hmmm. The Stranahan house in Ft. Lauderdale, FL has the blue ceiling on their porches and when touring the house they say that it was painted blue to keep bees or other boreing bugs from ruining the wood. The belief was if it looked the color of the sky they wouldn't bore in to it.

[@MeMyselfAndUs903]

11:05 That blue color is also used to keep wasps away.

[@badapple65]

Interesting! A very nice shade of blue too.

[@arneservatius1982]

She walked in love!

[@phaedrabacker2004]

How do they heat that big place?

[@AppalachianMemoryKeepers]

with lots of firewood!

[@MeMyselfAndUs903]

13:20 What are those ball-shaped things hanging from the dead tree?

[@AppalachianMemoryKeepers]

Decorative balls

[@wizardofahhhs759]

The Dewey Cox Story "Walk Hard"

[@arneservatius1982]

I bought a 1857 house! It had been stripped and destroyed 😢. My wife and I rebuilt a 5000sqft. Home ugliness house in neighborhood. We bought $19,000. Into $509,000. Best home on😅 street.

[@Justice4547]

What are the balls in the tree?

[@AppalachianMemoryKeepers]

Decorations