EUTAW, Ala. (AP) — For $6, you can get a guided tour of Everhope, a restored and furnished antebellum mansion and grounds. For $695,000, you can own it.
The home, a Greek Revival plantation house built in 1852, is for sale.
“This is not your typical ranch home with three bedrooms,” said Vanessa Lockhart of Advantage Realty Group in Tuscaloosa.
Lockhart, a real estate agent with 30 years of experience, said she has sold some historic homes before, including one in Eutaw built in the 1880s.
“But I have never had anything of this magnitude,” she said of Everhope, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Everhope is being sold by David and Pam Harmon, who bought the property six years ago after moving from Atlanta.
“David and I always were interested in old houses, and we came through Eutaw during our travels and met and became friends with the people who own Kirkwood,” another Greene County plantation house, Pam Harmon said.
During a visit to Eutaw, the Harmons visited Everhope, which was then a bed-and-breakfast called Twin Oaks Plantation.
“It wasn’t for sale at the time,” David Harmon said. But the couple talked the owners into selling.
Some of the antique furnishings came with the purchase, but David Harmon, who was in the antiques business, started furnishing the home with antique American furnishings typical of those found in 19th- century Southern plantations.
He also offered tours by appointment, but because of the museum-quality antique furnishings, he chose not to open the house for events like weddings or reunions, or continue the bed and breakfast operation — two of the more likely uses for the home if it is not used as a private residence.
David Harmon said he has had about 200 to 350 visitors a year since opening the home to tours.
Lockhart said Everhope most likely would be purchased by someone with an appreciation for a historic value who is looking for an investment property, a business venture or a lifestyle change.
“The (housing) market is what it is right now, but special homes like this fill a niche,” she said.
Since the home was listed for sale last year, Lockhart said she has had inquiries from potential buyers in other states. People from Kentucky, Indiana and South Carolina have come to look at the property, she said. Among them was an antiques dealer who is thinking of moving an antique restoration business to the plantation.
The Harmons said they decided to sell Everhope because they like to move every few years. Both grew up in military families that moved frequently, Pam Harmon said.
“Our e-mail address is southerngypsy,” she said.
Her husband noted that during their almost 30 years in Atlanta, they moved seven times.
Even so, the couple said they enjoyed the solitude and hospitality in rural Alabama and plan to stay in the area. Pam Harmon works as a nurse at DCH Regional Medical Center in Tuscaloosa, and said her drive to work is nothing like the long commutes she experienced while living in Atlanta. David Harmon is retired.
Everhope was built as the plantation home for Capt. Nathan Carpenter, an army officer who fought in the Mexican War and for the Confederacy in the Civil War. David Harmon said that before the Civil War, the mansion was the center of a cotton plantation that covered about 500 acres.
Several generations of the Carpenter family lived in the home for 122 years. The last descendant died in 1974, and the home sat vacant for about 20 years before it was bought and restored. It was listed on the National Registry of Historic Places as the Capt. Nathan Carpenter House in 1999.
David Harmon said the property was called Twin Oaks after two large oak trees in the front with hanging Spanish moss. But both oaks died soon after the Harmons bought the property — one died after being hit by lightning and the other split in half during the severe drought several years ago.
“We lost both oak trees within six months — two trees that had been there for over 200 years,” he said. After the trees were gone, the Harmons renamed the plantation Everhope.
Today, Everhope, which is about six miles northwest of Eutaw on Alabama Highway 14, includes 8 acres with formal gardens, fenced fields and pecan, peach, pear and fig trees. It has several original buildings, including a shed that was once used to shell pecans and a small one-room building that was rented to tenants as late as 1974.
The original mansion includes four second-floor bedrooms. The first floor has ladies’ and men’s parlors, a dining room and a fifth bedroom that is believed to have originally been used as an office by Nathan Carpenter. Wide hallways run down the center of both floors.
An addition designed to blend in with the historic facade of the plantation was added to the home in the late 1990s. It includes three private upstairs bathrooms that were used when the home was a bed and breakfast, plus the Harmons’ private living quarters, which includes a gourmet kitchen, breakfast room, family room, office, garage and screened porch.
on the web —
Picture of the home — http://www.tuscaloosanews.com/article/20110113/NEWS/110119873