I Just Want To Save My Town

Guide To Starting A Preservation Non-Profit

This is the ninth installment in my series on historic preservation entitled Grass Roots Guide To Saving What Matters.

When Miss Tillie Bond sold the Georgian woodwork to a group from up North in the year 1918, the people of Edenton, North Carolina decided it might be time to step in and save Cupola House before they woke up one morning to find the cupola missing.

In Miss Tillie's defense, times were hard. Her family, the Dickinsons, had held Cupola House for 141 years through good and bad, war and peace, and everything else in between. For whatever reason, she must have felt she had no choice but to convey the elaborate, original (as in 1758) Georgian embellishments in the house to the Brooklyn Museum.

In as fine an example of making lemonade out of lemons as I can recall, her desperation spawned the formation of the Cupola House Association (the first community preservation effort in the state) which went on to raise enough funds to purchase the house and save it for future generations.

Considering that this house is quite possibly North Carolina's finest early dwelling, Miss Tillie's despair has turned out to be history's gain. Cupola House is today the star of the show in Edenton - which is no small matter, as Edenton is populated by dozens of "stars" - each one of them worthy of a standing ovation.

And of course you can visit, and tour, and even enjoy the reproduction Georgian woodwork, thoughtfully replaced as part of the ongoing restoration of this stupendous old house. Those people in Brooklyn are still holding on to the originals, and while I'm sure Edenton would love to have them back (and they should be returned, in my humble opinion). Cupola House, it turns out, is doing just fine either way.

This story with the happy ending has been enjoyed by Southern Voice readers for years. It serves as inspiration for what can happen when a community pulls together in a determined preservation effort.

Thanks to the early pioneering effort in Edenton, many communities across the state are fortunate today to have preservation non-profit organizations in their own town or community. Perhaps you live in such a place. But if not, and if you have long felt the need for such an effort, this post will helpfully point you in the right direction.