Family

To my knowledge, we are the first people to live in this house that are not part of the original family.  There is SO much history we don't know about the house, but what we have learned so far is that the house was built somewhere between 1850-1870.  I TOLD you it was old!  I love that people automatically assume I mean 1940 at the very earliest.  Then I tell them go back another century and it blows their mind! So cool!  We were originally told it was built in 1870, but then at the actual closing, a different family member told us it was a good 15-20 years before 1870 because he knew it was done before the Civil War.  The man who built it owned the entire street and it was all farmland basically.  He had every kind of crop you can think of!  So you can imagine his disgust when Lake Murray was created in the late 1920s!  The enormous and beautiful lake where most of us spend our summers, RUINED his land!  We were told he even refused to fish in the lake!  For those who aren't from SC, here is our beloved Lake Murray.

So anyway, the house was passed to one of his children who I *BELIEVE* was the lady who owned it before us.  (Paul-please correct me if I'm wrong and you're reading this!) She sold all of the lots around her to each of her children, so we are surrounded by a sibling set!  It's very cool!  At the same time, we felt quite a bit of pressure as we began working on the house.  We didn't want to seem as though we don't appreciate the history of the house.  It is the exact opposite!  We have held onto so many little knick knacks that we have found along the way.  I tried to keep my decorating in tune with the "farmhouse" feel.  Although it was important to us to get NEW things to make the house safe for children, we wanted it to still FEEL old.  It has been fun searching for stuff that has the old look to it, in a brand new piece of furniture.  We are humbled that the family around us has allowed us this precious piece of history.  They have treated us like their family from the very beginning, and that is such a wonderful gift!  We couldn't have done this without the encouragement and excitement of our neighbors!  It was so fun to leave the front door open and know that we may have a visitor stop in from down the street on any given day!  We hope it will always be that way!  God willing, we will NOT be moving again.  EVER.  I want my grandchildren to come back to this house.  We are giving this house a new life, and I can only hope that the original builder would approve! :)