April 2002 Homes Tour*
*(Taken from the Gazette-Virginian article with permission.)
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By Brenda Snead, Published April 19, 2002
Springfield is the home of Pat and Brenda Snead and their children, Nathaniel and Rebecca. Pat is the son of Ned Snead and the late Sally Coleman Snead. Located in the News Ferry community, the property has been owned by 8 generations of the Chalmers - Coleman family and the present house has been home to 7 generations of this family line. The original Springfield was a frame house built in 1799 by James Chalmers, a, Scottish emigrant. At his death, son Joseph occupied the house until 1834. Joseph sold the property to his brother, David Chalmers, and David and his wife, Sarah Embry Coleman, lived in the frame house built by his father. In 1841, David retained the services of Jeffersonian architect and builder, Dabney Minor Cosby, an began to build the Springfield we know today. David and Sarah continued to live in the frame house as the front portion of the new brick house was built. When completed, the family moved into the new portion, the frame house was rolled away on logs, and the back portion of the new brick structure completed. Springfield, a "T" shaped house, is built in the Greek Revival style with fluted Ionic columns supporting the front porch. There is no cellar. The bricks were made and burned on site, and those not deemed suitable for the house were used to construct the kitchen and dairy (neither has survived the years). The window and door sills are of stone quarried from nearby Sandy Creek. All of the exterior woodwork is locust, and was sunk and seasoned in the Dan River for three years to prevent warping. While Thomas Day of Milton, North Carolina is best known as a furniture-maker, Springfield boasts many architectural features created by Mr. Day. In the front hall, his signature "S" curve is crafted as the newel post. The staircase is also decorated with a carved decoration of his design on the stringer. He carved each of the four mantelpieces in the front part of the house. No two are alike, and the columns on the parlor mantelpiece are replicas of the front porch columns. The double front doors were also carved by Mr. Day in a style known as "chamfering". The windows in the parlor and dining room are triple-hung, rising to a height of almost ten feet. These rooms also feature unusual niches, which were built on either side of the fireplaces to showcase portraits of David and Sarah. Ceilings in the front hall, parlor and dining room are 14 feet high, and 10 feet high in the other rooms of the house. Each room has a fireplace, and unusually the upstairs bedrooms have closets on either side of the fireplaces. The floors are wide tongue and groove heart pine boards, and span the length of each room. Hanging in the front hall is an original oil lamp. The banquet table in the dining room came from the Sutherlin mansion in Danville from a relative who was also related to the Sutherlin family. Stretching to a length of 16 feet, there are 10 side chairs and 2 armchairs. On April 10, 1865, Jefferson Davis and his cabinet sat around this table and held the last official cabinet meeting of the Confederate States of America. Other furniture, glassware, china and personal posessions of those who lived in the house are mostly still there, and most are still being used. Pat and Brenda on't believe anything was ever frown away! The scope of the renovation encompassed the entire house. but by far the largest part of the project was the planning and construction of a kitchen/laundry addition to replace one built at the turn of the century. The, result is a large family kitchen and spacious laundry room with the exterior brick walls as decorative elements in these new areas. Pat and Brenda chose board and batten siding for the exterior of this addition. Pat's mother, Sally, was especially fond of the old Grace Episcopal Church in News Ferry which was finished in this style, and in this small way, Pat and Brenda honor her memory. Exterior work included replacing the original 1842 rolled-tin roof with a new roof of the same style. Brick masons tore the chimneys down to the roofline and rebuilt them, using the same bricks and adding birdcage caps. Old gutters were removed and replaced, and local craftsmen rebuilt the original cedar shutters for re-hanging. The Snead's chose to keep the original weighted windows, but had custom storm windows installed to prevent the loss of heat. The pillars, their supports and the flooring of the front porch had begun to rot and the entire porch had separated from the house. The porch columns were taken down, the deck was rebuilt, and new supports for the now-shortened columns were constructed. A portion of the porch roof, rotted because of leaking gutters, was removed and replaced. A wooden peg salvaged from the rotten portion is a reminder of the complexity of the building process those many years ago. Because the interior of the house had never been "remodeled," the work was made easier for everyone involved. The large rear hall provided a perfect spot for a second bath, a small powder room with a shower stall. This was the only wall added to the interior of the house. An existing bath in the upstairs rear hall, built in the 1920's, was completely gutted and rebuilt. The only fixture remaining as "original" in this room is the cast-iron tub. Once the wiring and plumbing fixtures were replaced and the heating and air conditioning installed, the remainder of the interior renovation was completed. The plaster walls were skimmed, and the ceilings were lowered by a total of 1' with the installation of sheetrock. All of the walls and woodwork were painted, and the floors were sanded and sealed. After five long years, it was moving day!. Pat and Brenda knew from the beginning of the project that retaining the historical character of the house was of the utmost importance, and they credit all of the craftsmen involved in the project with helping them meet this goal. Springfield will stand for another 160 years! |
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