LAUREL MAGAZINE - CASHIERS HISTORY ARTICLE - NOVEMBER 1, 2005 ISSUE
In Cashiers, across the street from the Cornucopia Restaurant parking lot, in the fork of the road where Schoolhouse Road and Highway 107 South meet, there once stood a very old house. About twenty-five years ago the house was dismantled, board by board, and if you had not seen the house when it was still standing, you would never suspect a house had ever been there. Keep in mind that the house was built long before today’s Highway 107 was “straightened out” in the late 1930s. The house was not originally in the fork of any roads but sat directly on the main road coming into Cashiers Valley from the south – today’s Schoolhouse Road.
The house knew many residents during its over one hundred years long life. Prior to the late 1950s the families of J. B. Collins, Will Hunter, Walker Deal and Paul Fugate lived there. Madge Dillard Merrell remembers attending a mountain-style Christmas party there when the Deals were in residence and she told also of spending many a night in the house when her mother’s younger brother, Paul Fugate, was living there with his family.
The exact date of the demise of the house has not yet been pinpointed, but it was probably around 1980. It had sat unoccupied for awhile. Several very reliable people remember what finally happened to the house but their accounts don’t exactly agree. One person clearly remembers the dismantling of the house with the old boards being saved to be used again. Others saw the house burning. Perhaps both versions are correct and when the parts of the house that could be salvaged were taken away, then what was left was burned.
The last resident of the old house was the widow, Mrs. Edna Allen. She was born Edna Lusk in Salem, South Carolina, and at the tender age of one month, she moved with her family to Waddle Mountain in Bohanney, an area in Jackson County, near Whitewater Falls. There she grew up and got married to Gus Allen, the brother of Jackson County’s Sheriff Frank Allen.
Four children were born to Gus and Edna, two boys and two girls. In about 1957, when their youngest child was only four years old, Gus Allen died and was laid to rest in the Salem, South Carolina, Baptist Church Cemetery. Edna was left to raise the four children, Virgil, Ruth, Janie and Rex. Mrs. Allen and the children moved to Cashiers and rented the old house which was owned by Chris Rogers, who himself lived a couple of doors down the road in the big McKinney house.
There was no indoor plumbing so water had to be drawn daily from the nearby McKinney Spring and then carried in heavy buckets back to the house. Mrs. Allen used a lot of water as one of her means of supporting the family was to take in washing.
With no modern washing machine in sight, this involved drawing water from the spring, filling a large black wash pot outside in the yard, building a fire under the wash pot and washing the clothes in the boiling, soapy water. The clothes were then transferred to tubs filled with clean water for a good rinsing.
Madge Dillard Merrell recollects that Mrs. Allen was eventually fixed up with a hand pump, a great improvement, which brought the water from the spring right to the back porch. Not only did Mrs. Allen hand wash clothes, she also did ironing for a great many people. She was considered the best ironer around and was entrusted with the most delicate of linens and cottons.
The wooden house had two stories, with one fireplace and long porches on the front and the back. Downstairs were the kitchen, living room and one bedroom. Heating the house was accomplished with the wood-burning fireplace, helped along with the wood cook stove in the kitchen. Stairs on the front porch accessed the upstairs, where the boys had their bedrooms. One could not go upstairs from the interior of the house. The driveway led to the back of the house, so it was from that direction that most folks entered the house. This led right into the kitchen, the heart of the house.
All the cooking was done on the wood stove and Mrs. Allen was known for being a good cook, as well as for her friendliness and generosity. There was always something cooking on her wood stove and in its oven. On any day, around 12 o’clock noon, one could find several Cashiers working men in Mrs. Allen’s kitchen, eating their mid-day dinner. Some were kinfolks and some were friends and all were welcome.
