167-YeaivOld Homestead Houses Family Heirlooms The front room of the Aurand homestead features a Vic trola from the early 1900 s, a reverse painting lamp on the left, and a Tiffany-style lamp, made in the 1890 s, on the right that once belonged to Nancy’s great grandmother. Display With For a bold decorating atatement, combine collections such as agateware with old tins and other treasured items. When artfully grouped together, the display adds eye appeal rather than pack rat disarray. Lancaster Fai^mg /y^//yy/^y And Decorate Collectibles GAIL STROCK Mifflin Co. Correspondent LEWISTOWN (Mifflin Co.) There’s no better way to dis play and enjoy family heirlooms than in a house that’s been in the family for 167 years. That’s what Nancy Aurand of the Ellen Chapel area of Mifflin County loves about her house. “This board-and-batten house was built around 1833.1 remem ber my great grandfather living here, but until I moved here, the house was vacant since 1972. My dad is the only one of six genera tions not to have lived here,” Nancy said. Nancy’s father, Lynn, took photos of the restoration pro cess, starting with a photo of the weather-beaten vacant house surrounded by overgrown trees. Nancy describes the restoration process as she steps from the LOU ANN GOOD Lancaster Farming Staff EPHRATA (Lancaster Co.) Maybe your collectibles aren’t officially considered an tiques, but the pieces are defi nitely treasured. Ignore the age-old debate of what defines a true antique and boldly decorate with collectibles. Instead of timidly setting a piece here and there in your decorat ing scheme, group items to gether for dramatic effect and eye appeal. Collectibles lend themselves to all decorating styles, from 18th century English to contem porary. Cindy Wegaman of Exerter and Judy Kurtz of Denver have an eye for displaying items to their best advantage. In fact, they go into client’s homes and arrange the home owner’s col lections. Both Cindy’s and Judy’s homes contain collections in terspersed among family heir looms and handcrafted items. For them, there is always room for another flea market find. “Don’t seek perfection in every purchase,” Judy’s said. She believes the more primitive a piece looks, the better. Worn areas on wooden boxes, battered tin ware, and a dented milk pail recaptures a past era. An old quilt with tattered areas can be folded to hide the worn area and stacked in an open cupboard for display. Or, a piece can be cut from a worn quilt and framed, turn into a cushion cover or used to dress a tea-stained muslin doll. When attempting to capture a bygone era, Cindy said, “You don’t need all old stuff. Put to gether things that you love.” Old wooden boxes, tinware, and agateware are some pieces that can mix well with newer (Turn to Page 825) Lancaster Farming, Saturday, February 17,2001-823 new 28x28-feet kitchen and bed room addition into the old part of the house. “There’s no plumbing in the old part. We rewired the elec tricity. The fireplace mantel had been exposed but the opening was covered. You could see the different ways the families had heated the house through the years. The cookstove, which is still here, was the main source of heat. Then there was terracotta pipe put in at one time. Then a heater was installed in the front room.” Nancy points to the ex posed beams overhead. “These are character holes,” she said laughingly as she pointed to the nail holes. “We put on a new roof and reinforced the floor. The old part of the house was good structurally. Even the shutters were in place.” Nancy said the old basement features hand-hewn logs and a stove fireplace that was once painted pink! Nancy uses the small summer kitchen to display a family Hoo sier and her grandmother’s gathering baskets for collecting eggs, her egg scale, and egg trav eling case made of tin. In the front room of the house, two chairs original to the house flank the now open fire place. At the opposite end of the room stands her grandmother’s floor-model Victrola, built around 1904. On one wall hangs the framed marriage certificate of her grandparents (Betlyon). Up stairs in the old part of the house, Nancy uses one room to store childhood toys her mother, Dottie’s, baby carriage, her own dollhouse, old dolls, the hutch her uncle built her, and her child-size set of china dishes. In what was once her grand father’s bedroom, Nancy points to the linoleum on the floor and room-size pieces in several rooms that were found during remodeling. Nancy chose simply to clean and polish them. The brass bed in her grandfather’s room once belonged to her tf** 1 * Nancy Aurand uses the old cookstove to show off her grandmother’s pie rack, ladles from the farm, a scale and bolt of twine from her grandfather’s store, a nut grinder, square-handled liquid measure, and kerosene light. mother’s aunt. “I call this my bee room,” Nancy says about the next room. “There were always dead bees in here, even when our grandfather lived here. About IS years ago, they put a bee box outside and that took care of the bees. So I decided to decorate in the bee motif.” Her father’s childhood brass bed is along one wall while the dresser is covered with Nancy’s aunt’s hats and jewelry. In the next room, Nancy points to her mother’s grandfa ther’s desk and some artifacts kept from the store/post office her great-great-grandfather op erated across the road. A huge double globe oil lamp from Nancy’s Grandmother A (Aurand) sits on an antique wicker table that once belonged to her Grandmother B (Bet lyon). On two walls in Nancy’s bedroom hang two quilts from her Grandmother Betlyon. Earlier last year, Nancy cele brated her finished house by hosting the Aurand family re union. More than 100 people, some from Kansas, came to hear the 167-year history of the Henry Aurand family, (which included Issac who had 11 chil dren and from whom all of the Ferguson Valley Aurands de scend), and to tour Nancy’s (Turn to Page 824) #* * Nancy Aurand
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