A Few More Added Odds and Ends

The Dennison House

This is not so much a coherent post (if you'll give me the benefit of the doubt that most of them are) as it is a showcase for a few unrelated items that I've recently added to older posts. None of them quite justify their own separate posts, but all of them are interesting enough to be saved from falling through the cracks. So far only one item has even been mentioned in a comment, while another has been posted over on the blog's Facebook page. Let's start with that one, because it's the coolest photograph of the group.

The picture, seen to the right, is of the Samuel Dennison House on Limestone Road. It comes to us courtesy of Jim Derickson, whose father Jim, Sr. was the last owner of the Derickson Farm along McKennans Church Road. Jim's mother was the former Mildred Dennison, daughter of Frank and Mary Dennison. She grew up in the home that now houses office space for the Summit Retirement Community. Mildred's brothers, Frank, Jr. and Howard, were the last of the Dennisons to work the farm. I don't know the exact date of the photo, but my guess is that it could be from the late 1800's. The aerial photo below is much later, having been taken in the 1950's. It shows the Dennison Farm, sitting on both sides of Limestone Road running up to the north.

The Dennison Farm along Limestone Road

The next item also fits in well with a recent post, this one with the story of the Lost Pilling Houses of Kiamensi. That post was about the September 1910 fire that destroyed one home and damaged another. However, our friend Donna Peters has found another newspaper article about the Kiamensi Woolen Mills written earlier that same year. Wilmington's Morning News ran the article below on March 5, 1910. It gives a good history of the company up to that point and a feeling for how it was perceived then. The Pillings, of course, are prominently featured.

 

 

The final item to be covered here is a set of new photographs of an old house. A 2010 post featured a home also recently mentioned (in the Derickson Farm story), which sits on the north side of Milltown Road next to St. John the Beloved Catholic Church -- the Thomas Justis House. It was recently brought to my attention by readers Bubblankatt and Dirk Harrington (thanks, guys!) that the house is currently on the market. The real estate listing includes a number of photographs of the interior, which unfortunately show that it's a "fixer upper". Hopefully and for all I know the problems are merely cosmetic, and someone will come along and buy the house and restore it. Below are a few of the new shots of the house, which I've also tacked on to the original post. The last two are of the same fireplace (in the rear kitchen wing), one old and one new.