Interesting Discoveries While Restoring the HSH

While restoring the home several items have been discovered. The above is part of the collection of items found.

Searching under the back dining room there is a root cellar underneath. Many of these items where found with a medal detector and by site when digging.

Quite a few river rocks have been dug up in this area. These rocks were used as the foundation for the house. Many left over for the original building of the home were placed on the dirt floor in this area due to flooding.

Display of unique items found in a shadow box. Some items were found in the house behind the fireplace mantels.

 While digging a garden in the back yard these plates, tea cup and a doll baby's arm were discovered.

 This is a Coca Cola button found while digging up the garden.
 

The strange looking item with the flare shooting up is part of a lightening rod found in the root cellar.

Solid Brass Fire Extinguisher all cleaned up. Was in the house when purchased.

Old Cooking Kettle restored

Things keep showing up in the driveway from the gravel brought up from the basement. This was found 03/12/11. It is a top to a medicine bottle. You can see a hand holding a vile with the letters S& D which must be the company that made it.

In addition inside the house recently a whole bunch of stuff was found behind several mantles in the house....

11/10

Mother of Pearl button.

While tearing out the walls to rebuild the master bedroom closet my work light just happened to shine on the bricks of the fireplace. Right there was a signature on one of the bricks. If you look carefully you will see the last name is Smith. First name...Claudia...this was one of Hardy Smith's daughters. I have been told that this was a popular thing to do.

someone put three Christmas seals on this board in the master closet...the dates are 1933, 1942 and 1944.

Above is a coupon from a local merchant. Below is a ticket stubb from the Bertha Theater in Dulblin. It burned down in 1918.

A real treasure....1896 Indian Head penny! This penny was put into a beautiful 14k necklace.

Gold filled chain.

Chewing Tobacco Ad. PH Hanes sold this tobacco company and then started what became Haynes Underwear!

Couple of playing cards from the 1920's

Envelope and receipt for Order of Eastern Star. A group associated with the Masons.....dues in 1927...$1.50.

Unkown hotel in the 1920s on a post card. Critters eat paper.

During the 1920's ...This was one of the finest Department stores.

Top is a tag for a Dublin merchant selling hay, grain and provisions. Second is tag for a Packard. Bottom is a post card of the Lagrange Cotton Mill.

11/9/10

While working on the Master Bedroom closet this button was found. At first it did not look very impressive.

However after a little cleaning it turns out to be a solid brass button. On the back it says Extra Fein. This was a German company that made buttons.

5/25/10

A Large Cent dated  1827. Hard to see but did some research on the design. This coin was found while sifting dirt from the basement.

05/23/10

A very small belt buckle....most likely for a doll.

5/10

A Marlboro lighter made out of brass was dug up during the preparation of seeding the yard. The flint still works and lit upon firing up.



041510

On the left is a hair tonic bottle that says Wild Root on it.......The white jar is a pond's jar and the green top was found also...It says Ponds on it......On the right is a bottle that has Carbona on the bottom.....This was a cleaning product..



Hardy Smith Yellow Pine Shingles, Dublin, Georgia.....Good for $1 in Merchandise Token Coin. Found in the mud of the basement on 03/25/10.

More Finds 0310


Starting on the left is an olive oil bottle...the brown bottle is a medicine bottle with medicine still in it. The blue bottle is a vick's medicine bottle and the white one is a Watkins cold cream jar.


Beer bottles and a coke bottle.....The coke bottle dates from 1926 and on the bottom is the Dublin, Ga. Coke bottling plant inprint!


More Finds...0210Various bottles and pieces of coal

Today's finds .....020410

Old Coke bottle dates from 1957. Bottled in Atlanta. States minimum contents 6 fluid ounces.

How bout some listerine? Note how small the bottle is with the nickel besides it.


Today's finds 012610

A little bit of coal....they heated with coal originally. A marble and a very interesting bottle with a unique glass. No medal detector...searched in the basement where a window had been sealed up. Dug around and found an area with a brick border...Dug down about 6 inches...it is deeper...stay tuned!




This picture shows a nickle plated 38 special bullet, a sterling silver item and a printing plate. As you can see the date on the plate is Thursday, July 20th, 1911.



Here is the sterling silver item. Don't know what it is yet. However, it could be a ladies hat pin or scarf holder. The front has an engraved initial.


The back has sterling written on it. You can see the clasps.

Found a lot of junk medal underneath the dining room. This item looked like a bullet casing. A few days after this item was found took some steel wool to it. The words kissproof shown through. It was then that it was obvious it might be some kind of lipstick holder. Sure enough got on google and there it was on E-Bay.

It is a 1920's lipstick holder. One of Hardy Smith's 10 children must have taken it in the basement and was playing with it. Momma must have always wondered where her lipstick was!

Note the intricate design on the lipstick holder. It is solid brass.

In this shot the words kissproof can be seen.

Below is a bottle and a spoon. Both were found when a base board was removed in the dinning room. They were found side by side. It appears that the bottle must have been a medicine bottle because of the spoon.

Based on research the spoon dates from 1928 and it is a silver plated Legacy pattern from a company called Rogers Brothers.

In removing baseboards in the upstairs hallway the following items were found. First is a can of Tetlow's baby powder. The date on the can is 1906. There is still some baby powder in the can.

The next item is a piece of glass with flowers on it. Next to that are a couple of old sewing thread holders.

Discovered while removing water from basement in the back part of the house is this old bottle. It appears to be a honey jar. Based on research with the patent number on the bottom of the bottle this bottle dates around 1935.

A envelope dated 1930 was found behind a wall in a closet upstairs. The inside of the evenvelope has interesting designs.

Several old mason jars were at the home

While working on the underside of the house this old Pabst Blue Ribbon Beer Bottle was found. It has a date of 1967 on the bottom of the bottle. It was empty...darn....of course there were obsticles to getting this bottle up to the surface :) The Black widow spider I met let me take it.

Claw Bath Tub Restoration

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Out in a field in Minter, Georgia near Dublin a claw bath tub sat for years on farm land with goats and minurature horses. It was found through an ad in a local paper and $150 was paid to purchase the old bathtub.

The first thing on restoring the bathtub was to grind off the rust on the bottom part of the tub.

After grinding down the tub and sanding the feet the tub is ready for priming.

All primed and ready for the top coat of glossy white.

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Done with the bottom and a little touch of gold on the feet!

Now for the inside of the tub. The porcelin finish was in really good shape on most of the tub. There were some worn areas and one in particular had a chunk missing. This is where the real fixin was to be done. A bondo type product was used to fix the area shown in the front.



Now the inside is painted with several coats of a special gloss white....




Final step to have it installed in the new bathroom. All restoration was done for about $30 of paint and supplies. To have a professional job done on a tub like this would cost approx. $1,000.



Note the attention to details on the restored tub with hot and cold handles.



Time to take a bath!

Dublin Family Connection and History

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In 1909 my grandmother, Myrtis Corker, was born in this house in Dublin, Georgia. It is one of the finest homes in Dublin. She was one of 8 siblings born to Frank Corker who was the mayor of Dublin from 1893- 1895. Frank Corker was a prominent citizen of Dublin was one of the founders of the First National Bank of Dublin in 1913.

May 2010 my mother Myrtis Bullard Hall came to Dublin and for the first time in her life had a chance to see and visit the home. Here we are standing under the widow's walk and then sitting on the front porch.

Today Frank Corker's picture hangs on the wall in Dublin city Hall along with pictures of each of the Mayor's of Dublin.

Myrtis Corker was a fine Southern Lady who married Ralph Bullard in 1930. This picture was taken on her wedding day.

Ralph Bullard was born in 1905 in Poulan, Georgia. This picture is from the Georgia Tech Year Book showing him on the National Championship Football Team in 1928.

Frank Corker's father was Stephen Alpheastus Corker. He was a Confederate Veteran who led the Third Georgia Regiment's charge at Gettysburg as a Captain. After the War Between the States he returned to his law practice and served in the 41st US Congress.

On April 26, 2017 I published a book on Captain Corker's Letters. Details on how to order are shown below.



To order a copy of Above the High Water Mark see the ad below:

See more detail in the blog post below:

Above the High Water Mark

My deep love and affection for my grandparents, especially my grandmother who we called Nana Bee, brought me to Dublin to restore the Hardy Smith House.

Power gets turned on

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Georgia Power came out yesterday 11/19/09 and brought out the heavy equipment to get the house hooked up with power.

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They dug a line from the nearest pole to the house.

Here they are hooking up the line.



The result is after probably 40 or 50 years the house now has power in every room. At night the charm of an Old South home is now a reality!

The Day The House was Bought

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The Hardy Smith House was bought from the Hardy Smith Foundation on October 15th 2007. Below are some shots of the house on this day. The foundation had saved the home from being torn down approximately 12 years before being purchased. For about 10 years work was done to preserve the home. The foundation did a wonderful job restoring the outside and some of the inside of the home. Then about two years before it was sold there was no activity. The yard was left to the elements as shown below.

A lot of debris had fallen from the trees and the yard needed some work.

On the right were wisteria vines taking over the house on the right side.

More examples of the yard work needed.

The home was almost hidden behind all the overgrown brush.

A view from the back of the house.



You could not even see the house from the back parking area of the Methodist Church.

One of the first things done to the house was yard work. A total of approximately 25 truck loads of brush and debris was removed from the property to clean the yard up!

New Construction

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Thanks to the Morris Bank in Dublin construction has begun on the Hardy Smith House to have electric service in the entire house, heating and air throughout and a new bathroom done.

Since September of this year the work crews have been showing up everyday.

The first thing done was to start cutting the floor for heating and air vents. There was no heating and air in the house. Each room had a fire place for winter and in the heat of summer you just opened up the windows or put in a window air unit.

The electric work starts with putting in the electrical outlets in each room. Previous to the electric work done the only power came from a front pole with with power cords. So it gets kinda dark in parts of the house with no power cord :P

The bathroom is going to be done in a 1920's eara look. This is the start of what will soon be...

Upstair guest bedroom was done....then came the electricians tearing out the baseboards to wire the room. Since this is the first go at restoration for your's truely I should have waited. However, won't be to hard to fix once they are done.

Amigos with the heating and air putting in some of the duct work for the house.

More to come!