Another Home in Wellborn, Florida
You may recall that a couple of months ago we wrote about the forgotten Walter house in Wellborn. We were surprised to learn yesterday that there is another home in Wellborn; a home very similar in design. This other historic home has been preserved and modernized, with every detail dedicated to its heritage, and it is for sale!
Since we don’t know anything about it yet, let’s call it the Adams House. Here’s a view from Google Maps dated May 2019 to compare with the current Zillow listing pictures so you can see how much work has been accomplished in the last two years!
Two homes in Wellborn
This slideshow of photos from both houses to see the many similarities.
Home locations
The Walter House is right in Wellborn, at the end of a brick paved road next to the railroad tracks, and the Adams House is located 4 miles out of town in the countryside.
A confession
We wanted to buy the Walter House, as if you hadn’t guessed that already! We conducted a lot of research prior to making an offer, but unfortunately, the ten days we took to research historic house renovation allowed someone else to slide in and buy the house!
Our three top concerns were: the foundation, the porches and the windows. We found several online resources.
For foundation repair, Old House Web offered a series of informative articles that gave us confidence to proceed with the project.
Ken Roginski of The Old House Guy has an excellent article on porch skirting, and we’re delighted to see that the Adams House was done right! Another informative article concerned repairing or replacing porches.
A previous owner of the Walter House had replaced the glass in the windows within the past few years, but the window frames were original and employed weights and ropes to open. The glass in many of the windows had already been broken so they needed to be addressed immediately. Aside from the security aspect, we knew it would be expensive to heat and cool this house without quality windows. The Old House Guy website offers a fantastic section about windows.
Were these two houses built by the same person?
In our article about the Walter House we theorized the house was built by Forest Walter. In the 1900 Census, 29-year old Forest lists his occupation as ‘Carpenter’. Forest listed his occupation as ‘Contracting, House Builder’ in the 1910 Census. The Walter House was built around 1895 and the Adams House was built in 1902. Certainly it is possible that after achieving his first successful house, Forest went on to build more houses.
Or is there another explanation about their similarities?
We have a second theory. Have you ever bought a car, and you suddenly see your same car everywhere, when you’d never noticed them before? After looking at the Walter House in December 2020, we’ve come across many others with a similar symmetrical design, tall windows, and two stories, with or without porches and balconies. Could these be mail-order kit homes?
About mail-order homes
Around the turn-of-the-century (the previous one), kit homes were very popular. They were also known as mill-cut houses, pre-cut houses, ready-cut houses, mail order homes, or catalog homes. One might be inclined to think they were small and cheap but they were not. This beautiful old home in the Solano district of Punta Gorda, once owned by Harry Goldstein, is a Sears and Roebuck kit home.
Sears and Roebuck is probably the most well-known producer of kit homes, but there were many other companies involved, including Montgomery-Ward, Aladdin, Liberty, Bennett and Harris Brothers.
More research needed
Sleuth Sisters will continue to research these houses in Wellborn, so stay tuned for updates!
About Wellborn
Wellborn (pronounced Well-bern) is located off US Route 90 roughly halfway between Lake City to the southeast and Live Oak to the northwest. It’s in north central Florida, south of Valdosta, Georgia.
It began as Little River, founded around 1830 by George McClellan, a plantation owner. A couple of decades later, the Pensacola-Georgia railroad line which linked Jacksonville to Tallahassee, was run right through Little River, bringing prosperity and more settlers to the area.
One new member of the community was Louis Wellborn DuBois, a civil engineer who worked for the railroad. He purchased 240 acres and was successful at selling lots. Shortly afterward, in the 1860s, he changed the name of the settlement to Wellborn.