Burning HIstory - The Thomas B. Walters Home Gone

The Thomas B. Walters home, a tall, worn old Colonial Revival home that has guarded the mouth to Skinner's Creek since the 1800s, was burned tonight. It didn't catch fire from careless kids, or catch a stray bolt of lighting after all the years. It was burned on purpose by the local fire department with several local luminaries looking on.

This saddens me in ways I can't describe. Sometimes it seems as if the only people interested in preserving the history of our town, our state, and even our country, are people who have moved in way after the fact. This house needed a lot of work. It had some issue with fiberglass, I'm told, that made renovation expensive and difficult...but let's be serious. The land it stands on was bought by developers from out of town. They intend to plaster the bank of the river with million dollar waterfront houses, and the old Walters house was just in the way. They had the money, time, resources, and everything else necessary to fix it - and they chose to tear it down. It's the way things work. It's the way we forget the lessons we should remember, and disappoint generation after generation of our forefathers.

This home belonged to a prominent farmer near the end of the nineteenth century. It was two stories with tall square columns out front. It had a smokehouse and was backed up against the river. I think the developers missed the boat. At whatever cost, the best thing they could have made of that old home was a gateway - the offices, whatever -- the first thing people saw on the way into the new waterfront houses. People come to live in places like Hertford because they are quaint, historic, and filled with history. The more of that history they bulldoze and burn, the faster this whole town will shrivel up and become a memory.

I intend to do what I can to prevent it from happening. The new site is semi-live at:
Historic Hertford

Check it out...drops us a line, or a comment. Help us fill in the data and make it something to be proud of. Help us remember our past before that's all it is. Before it's too late, and there's nothing to save.

Here's to you, Thomas B. Walters. I'll be researching you, and I'll be writing more on this soon.

Until then...keep the memories alive.

If you know anything about Thomas B. Walters, or that house, I'd love to hear from you.

--David