Loose Leaf Notes

-The following first appeared in a recent issue of The Floyd Press

Tour-goers of Glenanna, the historic home of Sam and Dolly Moore, got a close-up look at its original antique furnishings, pre-blight chestnut floors and a converted gaslight with a wire chain that was used to pull the fixture up and down for lighting.

They learned about the history of the home, which was built in 1849 for Dr. Tazewell Headen and his wife, Mary Tucker Stewart Headen, the sister of Civil War General J.E.B Stewart, who was born in Patrick County. “He’s bound to have been in the house because his sister lived here,” said Sam Moore, whose family has owned the property for five generations and whose mother grew up there.

The home was one of the featured Floyd treasures of a Community Treasures Tour, a historic properties tour hosted The Old Church Gallery, The Floyd County Historical Society, and the Floyd County Historic Preservation Trust on Saturday, April 22nd. About twenty people toured Glenanna.

In the parlor, Moore explained that the room was traditionally reserved for “greeting the preacher,” laying out the dead or for weddings, including his parents. He pointed out an old (1856) piano and told the story of how it came to be in the house, referring to it as “Floyd’s first piano.” He was not allowed to play in the parlor as a child, he said.

There were no original closets, but most rooms had built-in cupboards called “presses.” In one part of the house, Moore showed where Dr. Headen saw patients, who entered from a side door. Dr. Henry Howard, a later owner who bought the home at a foreclosure auction in 1869, also saw patients in that part of the house.

From a porch, which was added on by Moore’s great-grandparents in 1900 and closed in when Moore renovated the house (primarily from 2000 – 2002), Moore spoke about the property’s out-buildings, which include an outdoor kitchen, stables, a smokehouse and a well house. “Back in the 1800’s you had to be self-sufficient, cool your milk in the well house and raise your own food,” he said. There was also a large garden, about half-an-acre.

Moore grew up in Blacksburg, but frequently visited his grandparents at the home. “There was a menagerie of animals out here. When I was a kid I loved to come to see what was new, guineas, chickens and geese,” he said. They raised hogs and kept rabbits. Today the Moore’s have two horses, Moonshine and Debbie.

Other features of the tour, which took place in conjunction with the New River Valley Give Big Fund Raising effort, were The Old Church Gallery, Oxford Academy and The Ridgemont, Floyd’s first hospital, which today is home to Floyd County Historical Society’s offices and a museum.

Another tour of Glenanna is scheduled for June 24, which will benefit the Floyd Center for the Arts.  – Colleen Redman

Photos:  1. Glenanna was built by brick mason and Irish immigrant Henry Dillon. The bricks were made in Floyd, somewhere behind Slaughters, Moore said. The home is listed on both the Virginia and National Historic Registers. Moore did not know the origination of the name. “It was always called Glenanna,” he said.  2. The original gaslight still hangs in the foyer.  3. In the parlor, where Moore’s parents were married, Moore (in yellow) showed tour-goers Floyd’s first piano, made in 1856. Moore had the piano repaired but said that pianos weren’t perfected until later and that the early pianos never sounded good.  4. In the dining room, Moore spoke of the different colors of coats of paint that the home’s table went through before it was returned to its original wood.   5. Dolly Moore explains how this original bed, which was Sam’s mother’s, was stored in the attic in pieces and how she had to scrape off a black coating to refurbish it. Dolly has been the home’s chief decorator. She made the drapes in the home and keeps the gardens.  6. Sam Moore said the Glenanna phone was in use until 1955. He still remembers the phone number, “Floyd #67,” and how calls were made through operators.

_______Our World Tuesday