PROVENANCE

As far back as people in these parts can remember, it was the Hunt Farm. Thirty acres of rock strewn fields, some hardwoods and a little one story house on a back road between White Sulfur Springs and Youngsville. At some point they decided to put another story on the old homestead. But instead of ripping the roof off, they cut the supporting 2x4s and jacked the roof up about four feet. What was an attic now became a full second story. You can see the cuts. A third of the house sat on a hand dug basement and laid stone foundation. The rest sat on the ground. Eventually they had TV, phone, a furnace in the wet basement, storm windows, asbestos siding, and concrete steps. They didn't have hot water, nor much of a place to take a nice morning sit down. Priorities.
In the early sixties one of the Hunt girls inherited the place. Erma Hunt married a Rozengrant. It was about then that they lopped off the house with a half acre of land. It became the Rozengrant house. The rest of the land was sold to Robertson up the road and then Peters. (My present neighbor.) They were dirt poor, but by all accounts the kids went to school clean. In 1997 Erma got sick and died. Soon thereafter, Mr. Rozengrant went to live with one of his daughters. I met him last year. He's dead now.
When i first started gutting the place i found dozens of putrid canned peaches, hundreds of empty dog food cans and quite a few religious tracts. It seems Erma was a practicing Baptist. It took two 30 yard dumpsters just to get the place workable. Not much was salvagable. But once i got down to bare wood I found old newspapers glued to the inside of the rough cut side boards. Dec. 24, 1899 was the oldest. Now that Samm and I are taking more of an art/archeological approach, we're saving everything. Yesterday I found a little gold St. Jude's medal buried in the dirt. "Pray for Us" was inscribed in the front. Amen.

-MO