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Weekly News November 7, 2011Description
Southern Pines, North Carolina, 1935: The Weekly News of 3/10/08 and 4/7/08 barely scratched the surface of this week’s story.
Struthers Burt was a Philadelphia writer of fiction in the late 1920s and early 1930s, and as with many in his profession, it was “feast or famine.” Like Mark Twain, he had great success with his novels but soon got over-extended by following a lavish lifestyle. Probably just before the market crash in 1929, he built a modern mansion on probably 30 acres of land at the edge of Southern Pines in the sand hills of south central North Carolina, six miles from the golf, polo, and trapshooting resort at Pinehurst. The two communities were connected by one of the first dual highways in America. By 1935, Burt had to rent his estate as much as possible to stay afloat.
The Marshalls of Yorklyn lived well during the Depression years. For much of this time at Auburn Heights, my mother had help in the house in addition to Clifford Murray as an outside man. In 1935, the “inside help” consisted of a couple named Melvin and Viola Simmons. They lived above the garage (the present F.A.H.P. office) and took their meals in the kitchen of the big house. My parents liked Southern Pines, and we spent three months there in 1932. They promoted the idea of most of the Mancill family (Anna Mancill was Warren and Clarence Marshall’s only sister), and the Kennett Square widows Mary Chalfant, Sara Bowers, and Mabel Horsey (Sara was the daughter of Mary, and Mabel was their live-in companion) going with the three Marshalls for about six weeks to this southern location, where a place would be rented large enough for all. There would be ten in the party, including Norman and Anna Mancill and their twin sons, Alan and Bob, age 10 (son Norman was a sophomore at Penn State). The Struthers Burt home was rented from mid-January until the end of February.
For me, it was a time never to be forgotten. Also ten years of age, I enjoyed the Mancill twins, and we got along famously. The Burt home had an entrance hall with a spiraling staircase, a music room, a large office, a library, a dining room, an antiquated kitchen, and a ballroom 30’ x 42’ with an operating fireplace. Upstairs there were seven bedrooms, three baths, and three small servants’ bedrooms above the kitchen. A raised patio surrounded two sides of the house with an Italian fountain at one end, and the private driveway was ¼ mile long. There was an outbuilding large enough for the three Packards in which we traveled. On the second floor of this building in substandard quarters lived an elderly black man whom we seldom saw.
The three Marshalls and the three Kennett Square widows left home on January 11 in my father’s 1934 Packard Twelve seven-passenger limousine, stopping at the John Marshall Hotel in Richmond to break the trip at the halfway point. The next afternoon, we checked into the Hollywood Hotel in Southern Pines and made final arrangements for the transfer to the Burt property on the 15th. With Uncle Norman and Aunt Anna Mancill driving Mrs. Chalfant’s 1931 Packard Model 826 five-passenger sedan (with the twins in the back) and Melvin Simmons, accompanied by his wife, Viola, and another black lady who worked for the Mancills in Uncle Norman’s 1930 Packard Standard Eight coupe, the remainder of the party of ten plus three arrived in Southern Pines in time to move into the big house. I might relate some of the fun experiences we had during our six-week tenure in another edition. It could not have been much fun for the “help,” but those were different times.
Work Report: Bob Jordan and his elves continued good progress on the frame of the Model 607 and with Bill Schwoebel’s help got most of the springs attached. Kelly Williams and his helpers lifted the defective boiler out of the Model 725 on Tuesday, and our new volunteer, Tim Nolan, swaged the tubes in the top head of the new 16”-high boiler destined for this car. Bill Schwoebel, Jerry Novak, Jeff Fallows, and Richard Bernard did the same to the bottom head during Thursday night’s work session. Kelly and his helpers plan to drill and tap the fitting holes on Tuesday. Dan Citron and Tim Ward prepared the Model EX for the November 5 run, and Butch Cannard did the same for the models 87 and 71. Tom Marshall machined a new “H casting,” banjo bolt, and pilot screw for the pilot on the Model 735, and Steve Bryce fine-tuned it and made it fit in the burner. Richard Bernard and Ted Kamen prepped the Model 740 for the Saturday run.
The final run of the season on Saturday, November 5, featured a brisk, clear day, and the 39 participants seemed to have a very good time. Seven Stanleys from our collection plus Kelly Williams’s sporty Stanley roadster, Bill Schwoebel’s 1930 Model A touring, and Rose Ann Hoover’s 1940 Packard phaeton made the 41-mile trip with no problems. The most serious things that were reported were the pilot going out on the Model 87, driven by Butch Cannard, the outlet from the fuel tank on the 71, driven by Tom Marshall, slightly choking, and a cap on a water pump coming loose on the Model 735, driven by Jerry Lucas and Jerry Novak.
A large funeral at our water stop, Manor Presbyterian Church at Faggs Manor, changed the complexion of the place, but no one seemed to mind, and we watered the cars very satisfactorily. The 39 of us crowded into a small room at Perkins restaurant for a late lunch, and all had a chance to get warm and enjoy each other. All the cars were safely back at Auburn Heights just after 5 P.M. Auburn Heights cars participating were the models EX, 71, 76, 87, 735, 740, and 820 (15-passenger Mountain Wagon).
Anniversary of the Model 607 Project: In November 2009, the Marshall Steam Team launched the Model 607 restoration, and on the projects’s second anniversary, we commend all who have assisted in the first frame-off restoration undertaken by the volunteers with F.A.H.P. The current team are working diligently under the direction of Bob Jordan on reassembly, in anticipation of returning the vehicle to service in 2012.
