We are in for a treat Thursday night.

At 8 p.m., tune your television to the UNC-TV network; Cable Channel 4 on most TV sets in Tarboro.

A documentary video titled "On the Tracks for Progress" is scheduled. It opens with a 20-minute interview with Mary Collins Powell.

She is in the ladies parlor at Coolmore Plantation, the Italianate villa built in 1857-60 for Dr. Joseph Powell from designs by Edmund G. Lind, an English-born architect working in Baltimore.

The large farm includes outbuildings designed to complement the house. The plantation was one of several dairy farms in the county.

Coolmore is on old U.S. 64, about three miles outside of Tarboro. It’s often included on various home tours, as it was last Saturday during History Days. It is owned now by the Preservation North Carolina and home to retired Air Force Maj. Gen. Joe Spiers and his wife Janet.

Preservation North Carolina is a private, non-profit statewide organization whose mission is to protect and promote buildings, sites and landscapes important to the diverse heritage of North Carolina.

Some of the money from the $15 Home and Garden Tour tickets is given to Coolmore to help keep it up.

Several NC Preservation NC members have told me they are trying to come up $60,000 to paint the structures.

Mary Collins, the last surviving grandchild of Powell, was Joe's aunt, the sister of his mother, Martha Whitaker Powell Spiers.

Ms. Collins, who never married, was a major in the American Red Cross during World War II and later became the dean of women at Wheelock College in Boston. She liked to travel in Europe and while there was able to match the drapes in the ladies parlor.

She also loved to play golf, which she did into her 90s. She spent winters on the island of Nevis in the Caribbean with friends from Wheelock.

Mary retired in the 1960s to Coolmore and lived there with her brother Joseph and his wife, Elizabeth Watkins Powell.

"She was delightful woman," recalled Edgecombe County historian Monika Fleming. "She told such interesting stories and loved to talk about her family's history.

"She could tell you what is like to live in the late 1800s from what her parents told her,” Fleming continued, “and what it was like growing up in the early 1900s, which she did.”

Mary Collins Powell died at age 99 on Oct. 10, 2002.

Coolmore has survived, for the most part, in original condition including its trompe l’oeil decoration, floor coverings, window dressings and furnishings. It is designated as a National Historic Landmark, the only one in Edgecombe County, and one of less than 40 in North Carolina.

"It is considered one of the finest examples of Italianate architecture in the state," Fleming said.

The documentary also includes a brief interview with author Allan Gurganus from Rocky Mount about the Savage House in Leggett, which is being restored by Jim Wrenn and his wife Mavis Stith. It was built around 1810, Fleming said.

The program is narrated by Charlie Rose, another Tar Heel.

“It’s a good film,” Spiers said. “I think you’ll enjoy it.”

 

W. Terry Smith is editor of The Daily Southerner.