Tag: Charlotte-Mecklenburg Library

#OnThisDay: Missed Opportunity on August 24

Earlier this month I saw a photograph of a beautifully restored octagonal house located at Cedar Point, North Carolina. It reminded me of the hexagonal house designed by my distant cousin, Harriet Abigail Morrison Irwin.

I was a little fuzzy on the details, so I reached for a copy of They Married Confederate Officers: The Intimate Story of Anna Morrison, Wife of Stonewall Jackson and Her Five Sisters, by Kathy Neill Herran.

It was then I discovered I’d missed an opportunity for an #OnThisDay blog post on August 24, for it was on that date in 1869 that Harriet Morrison Irwin was granted U.S. Patent #94,116 for the architectural design of a hexagonal house. It was the first architectural design patent issued to a woman in the United States.

Harriet’s Background

Harriet Morrison was not quite three years older than her more famous sister, Anna Jackson. She was born September 18, 1828 at her parents’ home on Derita Road in Charlotte, NC during her father’s pastorate of Sugar Creek Presbyterian Church.

Though not educated in the realm of architecture, Harriet graduated from Salem College in present-day Winston-Salem, NC. She married James Patton Irwin in 1849, and the couple settled in Charlotte.

In addition to being the mother of nine children (four of whom died before the age of four years), Harriet was a gifted writer. Her husband teamed up with her brother-in-law, Harvey Hill, to publish a magazine called The Land We Love. Harriet contributed many articles to the publication, which was sold to the New Eclectic Magazine of Baltimore, Maryland after three years of publication, according to Mrs. Herran’s book referenced above.

It is said that Harriet suffered from some physical problems that necessitated her being somewhat of a homebody and not as active in civic activities as some of her sisters. She was an avid reader and enjoyed a wide variety of reading materials.

Harriet’s Interest in Architecture

Perhaps it was her delicate physical condition that prompted her interest in architecture. She sought to find a more practical and healthful home design than the standard two-story rectangular houses that dominated the cityscape. In particular, she came to believe that better air circulation in a home would result in a healthier family.

A typical house design in the mid-1800s. Photo by MORAN on Unsplash.

Descriptions of Harriet’s Home Design

Harriet’s patent in 1869 was for a hexagonal two-story house. The house was still standing on West Fifth Street in Charlotte in 1962 when Marie Adams wrote an article about it for the Charlotte News. In her December 7, 1962 article, Ms. Adams described the house as including a “central tower, mansard roof, and an arched porch,” according to Mrs. Herran’s book. (Due to the public libraries being closed due to the Covid-19 pandemic, I wasn’t able to read the newspaper article myself.)

To see a photograph of Harriet and James Irwin’s hexagonal house in Charlotte, go to https://www.cmstory.org/exhibits/robinson-spangler-north-carolina-room-image-collection-hornets-nest/harriet-morrison-irwin

Mrs. Herran’s book quotes the following from Architecture of the Old South: North Carolina, by Mills Lane:

“The six-sided home featured a central chimney, no hallways, and “lozenge-shaped chambers enclosing more useful area with the expenditure of less materials, labor, and money than conventional rooms.” Mrs. Herran added this about the house: “The rooms were joined by doors providing a circular traffic pattern around the house. Doors and specific windows were also placed with easy access to the outside. They provided comfortable airflow in the warmer months, but could be efficiently closed during the cold temperatures.”

Harriet’s grandson, Hall Morrison Irwin, Jr. reminisced about the house in 1962, remembering his visits there and the marble mantle and beautiful staircase. He also connected two other hexagonal homes in Charlotte to his grandmother. One was at the corner of Cedar and Trade Streets and the other one was on West Fifth Street at Clarkson. (Such an intersection no longer exists due to changes made in the streets in the neighborhood.)

Publicity for Harriet’s Home Design

Harvey Hill became editor and publisher of The Southern Home, a weekly Charlotte newspaper. One of his earliest article was an interview with Harriet Irwin. The article predicted Harriet’s house design would “create a new era in architecture,” according to Beverly Heisner’s April 1981 article, “Harriet Morrison Irwin’s Hexagonal House: An Invention to Improve Domestic Dwellings,” in North Carolina Historical Review.

It is said that Harriet no only extolled the practicality and healthful benefits of her design, but also urged the public to see its potential for being more beautiful than the run-of-the-mill two-story houses of the time. She also made a point to tell people not to confuse her hexagonal design with the octagonal design that had gained some interest.

James Irwin and Harvey Hill teamed up again after selling their magazine. They formed a real estate company and often advertised Harriet’s floor plan in Mr. Hill’s newspaper.

In Conclusion

It’s unfortunate that none of Harriet’s hexagonal houses in Charlotte survived into the 1990s. Someone didn’t recognize the value of what they had when those three houses were demolished, at least, one of them being torn down in the 1960s.

In 2020, when the world of architecture is still male-dominated, it’s remarkable to consider that Harriet Morrison Irwin was born in 1828 and died in 1897. In 1870 she was recognized as a female architect in Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony’s newsletter titled, “The Revolution.” I hazard to say that 150 years later news of an architectural patent held by a woman would probably be equally newsworthy.

Since my last blog post

I’ve been busy formatting my 174 local history newspaper columns for self-publication. I hope to publish my work in electronic form and as a paperback book. I’ll keep you posted. This is something I’ve wanted to do since 2012, so I’m excited to finally have the opportunity.

Until my next blog post

I hope you have a good book to read. I’m reading The Book of Lost Names, by Kristin Harmel. I highly recommend it!

If you’re a writer or other artist, I hope you have quality creative time.

Thank you for taking time out of your busy schedule to read my blog post today. Don’t forget to wear a mask out of respect for others during this Covid-19 pandemic.

Janet

“On a third-floor ledge, threatening”

“On a third-floor ledge, threatening”

Do I have your attention? Good! That’s the purpose of a hook in a novel. I made a note of this one when I read Tricky Twenty-Two, by Janet Evanovich in 2015:

“Ginny Scoot was standing on a third-floor ledge, threatening to jump, and it was more or less my fault.” – Tricky Twenty-Two, by Janet Evanovich

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Tricky Twenty-Two, by Janet Evanovich

After reading that opening sentence, you have to keep reading. The next sentence clarifies things a tad for any reader who has not read any of Ms. Evanovich’s previous 21 Stephanie Plum novels:  “My name is Stephanie Plum and I work as a bounty hunter for my bail bondsman cousin Vinnie.”

I read Janet Evanovich when I want something light and amusing to read. She did a good day’s (years’?) work when she came up with the characters in her Stephanie Plum series. Great character development!

Fans of the Stephanie Plum series know there is a story to follow that hook, no doubt filled with numerous missteps by Stephanie and probably at least one blown-up car. The opening sentence introduces Ginny Scoot to you and tells you she is in dire straits. You wonder what has happened to push her to the edge. What in the world did Stephanie Plum do to cause this crisis?

A good hook grabs you. It gives you just enough information that your curiosity is piqued and you are compelled to keep reading. The first sentence doesn’t have to carry the whole load; however, if the reader isn’t hooked by the bottom of the first page, chances are he or she won’t read the second page. That’s a lot of pressure for a writer!

Since my last blog post

I was fortunate to find one copy of The Carolina Backcountry On The Eve Of The Revolution:  The Journal and Other Writings of Charles Woodmason, Anglican Itinerant, edited by Richard J. Hooker in circulation in the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Library System. It has been useful in my research for the historical novel I’m writing.

More letters have been sent to independent bookstore owners to encourage them to place orders for my vintage postcard book, The Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina, as spring is finally approaching in western North Carolina.

I’ve continued to hone my new skill of creating graphics for Pinterest using www.Canva.com. In fact, someone at www.Canva.com saw my last blog post and contacted me. She was complimentary of my blog but requested that I give the whole URL (www.Canva.com) instead of “Canva.com” as I had in my blog. I corrected that in last week’s blog post.

Last week’s blog post, How Can a Writer Use Pinterest?, has only been liked by four other WordPress.com (or WordPress.org) bloggers, so Pinterest doesn’t appear to be a popular blog topic for me. I have gained several new followers via email, though, so perhaps it was of interest of a few people. I’ll be watching my Pinterest analytics to see if my original graphics get any attention.

I read on www.Goodreads.com that Jennifer Ryan is considering writing a sequel to The Chilbury Ladies’ Choir. I commented on how much I liked it in my April 1, 2017 blog post, The Authors I Read in March. I look forward to reading the sequel, if it comes to fruition.

Going off topic

The highlights of my week were seeing several birds that make rare appearances in my yard. First came a male scarlet tanager to get a drink of water on Sunday. Two days later, two male indigo buntings, and a rose-breasted grosbeak came to eat. The grosbeak usually stops by our bird feeder every spring, but he’s just passing through. The indigo buntings graze on the ground under the feeder.

Sometimes the rose-breasted grosbeak stays for two or three days, but this year I only saw him once. He feasted for a good 15 minutes before flying away. Other birds came and went, but he was not deterred. This is much different behavior than is displayed by the northern cardinal. The northern cardinal is the most skittish bird I’ve seen. We have them in abundance.

I’ve only seen indigo buntings a few times in my life, but this was only the second time I’d seen a scarlet tanager. I didn’t get any photographs this time, but I found it interesting when I looked back in my photo files that the indigo bunting and rose-breasted grosbeak showed up on the same day in 2007. I photographed them on May 9 that year. It was the first time I’d ever seen either species.

This year they showed up on April 24. Concluding that the two species apparently migrate together, I did a little research. I learned on https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/indigo_bunting (The Cornell Lab of Ornithology) that indigo buntings “migrate at night, using the stars for guidance.” Perhaps it is coincidental that they and the rose-breasted grosbeak both show up in my yard on the same day.

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Male Indigo Bunting, photographed March 9, 2007.

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Male Rose-Breasted Grosbeak, photographed March 9, 2007.

When I chose the topic for today’s post, I had no idea I would include a segment about birds. I selected the above photo of the grosbeak because it was the best picture I took of him. It just occurred to me that he sort of illustrates the title of this blog post. Okay, use a little imagination. Work with me here!

Until my next blog post

I hope you have a good place to watch a variety of birds.

I also hope you have a good book to read. I’m reading the 2018 Pulitzer Prize in Fiction, Less, by Andrew Sean Greer. I’m usually years behind in reading award winners, so I decided to jump right on this one.

If you’re a writer, I hope you have productive writing time.

Feel free to share my blog posts on Twitter, Pinterest, Facebook, or via email.

Thank you for reading my blog! What birds have you seen recently, and what are you reading?

Janet

Thomas Lee Dulin’s Daybooks

One of my great-grandfathers, Thomas Lee Dulin, kept a daybook almost every day from 1891 until 1914. Perhaps the roots of my desire to be a writer can be found in that part of my gene pool. Being born in rural North Carolina in 1842, Great-Grandpa did not have benefit of a great deal of education. For that reason I especially admire him and appreciate the fact that he sat down with his pencil and ledger and wrote nearly every day. He seldom used punctuation and his spelling was not perfect, but he probably did not have a dictionary. He made the effort almost every day, and by doing so left a great example for me to follow suit.

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Great-Grandpa wrote about the weather (which was of utmost importance to him as a farmer) and what was being done on his farm in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina. He noted the going price for a pound of cotton in Charlotte and surrounding markets because cotton was his main cash crop. If a neighbor stopped by to visit, he made a record of that.

According to official records, Great-Grandpa enlisted in Company H, 35th Regiment, North Carolina Troops in 1861. He gave his age as 21, although he was just 18. As a veteran of our country’s civil war, he made note of the anniversaries of the two main battles in which he participated – New Bern and Richmond. He was wounded in the left shoulder at Malvern Hill in the seven-day Battle of Richmond.

Some years ago, my mother and sister painstakingly hand-copied Great-Grandpa’s daybooks. Without realizing that today was the 154th anniversary of the Battle of New Bern, I checked that transcription to see what was going on in Thomas Lee Dulin’s world through the years on March 14. It was sobering to read his daybook entry for March 14, 1899: “37 year today I was in the Battle of Newbern, N.C.” Although in the interim he had married, been widowed at the age of 38, and left to raise his six surviving children, March 14, 1862 was forever engraved in his memory.

As the years went by, Great-Grandpa almost never failed to mention on March 14 how many years it had been since the Battle of New Bern. Oral history is valuable, but sometimes the stories get changed as they are passed down from one generation to another. The written word, especially when kept daily in a daybook, journal, or diary is a powerful record that we can hold in our hands and refer back to in order to make sure we get the facts right. My great-grandfather’s daybooks are a family and local treasure housed in the North Carolina Collection at the main branch of the Charlotte Mecklenburg Library in Charlotte, North Carolina.

Reading challenges

Some public library systems or branch libraries within larger systems issue reading challenges to encourage diversity in reading. A branch of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Library that I frequent, the Mint Hill Public Library, has issued such a challenge for 2016.

The library in Mint Hill invites patrons to “Celebrate 2016 by reading 12 different kinds of books.” Bookmarks are provided listing 19 kinds of books from which to choose 12 types.

I enjoyed selecting the 12 kinds of books I wanted to make a conscious effort to read this year to satisfy the requirements for meeting this challenge. No matter where you live, you might enjoy participating in this exercise. It will be a good way to make yourself read some books (or at least one!) that you might not have otherwise chosen.

Here are the 19 categories of books in the Mint Hill Public Library Reading Challenge:

A book that became a movie;
a book published in 2015;
A book with a number in the title;
A nonfiction book;
a Pulitzer prize winning book;
A book more than a hundred years old;
A book that might scare you;
A book set somewhere you’ve always wanted to visit;
A book set in the future;
A book written by an author with your same initials;
A banned book;
A book from your childhood;
A book with a color in the title;
A book based on a true story;
A popular author’s first book;
A book set in a different country;
A funny book;
A mystery or thriller; and
A book with a one-word title.

How many of the 19 will you read in 2016? I’ve already checked off three categories — a book with a number in the title, a book with a color in the title, and a nonfiction book. I invite you to join me in this reading challenge.