Harmony Hall undergoing restoration in White Oak

WHITE OAK – Located in the little town of White Oak (population 370), 12 miles from Elizabethtown and a little over a mile to the Cape Fear River, there remains one of the oldest residences in North Carolina.

Harmony Hall was a home built before the American Revolution by a British Colonel, James Richardson, who came upon the property while making lemonade from lemons. Richardson, who was highly decorated and served courageously in the French and Indian War under famous British General, James Wolfe.

Although Richardson had settled in Connecticut, a shipwreck near Cape Hatteras detained his journey while his ship was undergoing repairs in Bladen County. As many who have come to visit Bladen County, he fell in love with the area and decided to use a land grant given to him by King George III (given to him for his military service) to establish his permanent residence.

After his two-story framed gable-style home was built, the rumors of war became reality and Richardson was enlisted for service once again to the British militia. He escaped his draft and ended up joining the Continental Army. He began by joining the Bladen County militia where he became a trusted and valuable leader.

Richardson married Elizabeth Purdie and the couple had two children together. She was originally married to Hugh Purdie who died in an uprising in Barbados. They had one child together. She managed to escape the coup and come to North Carolina where she met Richardson.

Harmony Hall remained in the Richardson family until 1865 when the property was sold to the Layton Family who owned it until 1962 when the property was gifted to the Bladen County Historical Society as a memorial to his family and also to the original founder of the land and property.

The property has come to be owned by a private 501c3 nonprofit which has a goal to restore, refurbish and to perhaps develop a museum.

Amy Sanders who is the current president of the board of the nonprofit has some lofty goals for the refurbishing of Harmony Hall.

“I haven’t really been here that long,” Sanders said. “My husband is military we moved to North Carolina about three years ago and into this area about two years ago. I have always loved old places. I grew up in houses that were 150 years old or older. With that love for history that I already had, finding a place like this when we were out exploring and finding that they were really in desperate need of people, it was up my alley for things to do.”

Sanders decided to join the cause and rolled up her sleeves and began to make an immediate difference.

“I learned a lot of the history by doing my own research,” Sanders said. “Also listening to some of the other volunteers we had. It’s quite intriguing. It has a connected history with pretty much every war that was fought on United States soil.”

According to Sanders, the land grant that Richardson was awarded was 1200 acres.

“At the time, he really didn’t know what he wanted to do with it,” she said. “He went on to own a ship with the East India Trading Company. During one of his voyages, he ended up coming up the Cape Fear River while his ship was in Wilmington. It was here that he found a place that he absolutely fell in love with and decided to settle his land grant here.”

Richardson developed the 1200 acres from the site of his home to the river and also built a landing on the river that he owned. River travel at that time was the most preferred way to go as there were no roads inland. It was all flat bottom river boats and barges that made the Cape Fear River a very popular and populated place. Richardson eventually sold his ship and sacrificed his sea legs for a business that manufactured and sold pine tar, pitch, turpentine created from the yellow long leaf pine tree. Richardson eventually harvested every one of those trees and ended up having to look for other ventures.

“After all the trees were drained of their sap, they would be cut down and sold for ship masts,” she said. “There was nothing about that tree that couldn’t be used. He remained quite wealthy even through the war and retained all of his land. He eventually became a justice of the peace for the county and raise a family that continued his legacy and fared well. One of his sons went on to be a minister.”

Sanders said that a fire in Elizabethtown wiped out a lot of records that prevented the historians to put all the puzzle pieces together about Richardson and his family and they are still trying to gain more information.

Currently the house and many other donated buildings what have been donated and transported to the site sit on 97 acres of land.

“According to the 1794 census, it’s always been named Harmony Hall,” Sanders said. “In the 1900s it was owned by the Tatum family and it was lived in all the way up to the 1940s when the family retired and moved down to Florida. The property sat empty until the late 1980s-1990s when they were able to come back and fix that house. It thrived for a while.”

“Right now, the property is privately owned by Harmony Hall Plantation Village, Inc.,” she said. “As a privately owned 501c3 we rely heavily on donations from other people and grant funding. The grant we have, we don’t really have a lot of time with it. We are hoping by November of next year, we are hoping to have all of our contractor work done. Anything left over is up to us. That is where we rely heavily on volunteers. We are going to need volunteers and donations to get everything done. I don’t know how much of the project will be covered by the grant, but I think the large portion of the inside is on us.”

The original grant that they were given totaled $130k. It is in the process of being spent on current renovations and restoring the house.

“After reconstruction, we are hoping to hold events and have reenactments,” Sanders said. “We really want to evolve the house more. Basically, we want to just give people a look at a piece of history that they are, quite frankly, never going to see again.”

The other buildings which sit on the land such as the old Colly school, the turn of the century church, The Wanda Campbell home which currently being utilized to meet and perhaps host overnight stays and various other buildings were donated to Harmony Hall and relocated from other areas within Bladen County.

“With the donated buildings, our job is to upkeep them as best we can,” Sanders said. “We want to restore them if that’s what they need. There are some buildings that, unfortunately we can’t do a lot with such as the cabin that collapsed. The proposed museum is not 100% totally put together yet, but technically that would be the big general store up front. Not much has been done there as all our focus has been on the house. My goal is to bring in as many volunteers as I possibly can. We are also trying to find any grant that we can to be able to get all of it updated.”

Others on the corporate board are Robin Erler Gieniewski who acts as the secretary and does the grant writing, Ray Carter who is the vice president, Sunday Allen who is the treasurer. Most of the others involved are board officials.

On Dec. 7-8, Harmony Hall is going to host an open house complete with a colonial tea tasting, Christmas carolers at the church, a 4-H presence which will be making edible décor for wildlife, youth activities in the schoolhouse and pictures with a Christmas Pony.

A hurricane which came through and flooded the area in the early 2000s once again caused the home to be gutted due to the possibility of mold. Through it all, she stands. Good bones, four fireplaces and a lot of history. History that hopefully others can learn from and be a part of as they help to write the next chapters of Harmony Hall.

More pictures of Harmony Hall can be seen in this week’s Bladen Journal picture page (page 11).