The Daily Southerner, Tarboro, NC

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  • W.TERRY SMITH

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September 25, 2009

HOMES TOUR

Oldest house in town will be open

W. TERRY SMITH

It is oldest house in Tarboro, dating back to 1797. It will be called the Guion-Dancy-Deberry House on Saturday’s Homes Tour, but many folks in Tarboro remember when it was DeBerry’s Colonial Dining Room.

The house was built in the1850s by Coffield King on part of the acreage deeded in 1760 by Joseph Howell to create the town, so some accounts refer to of it as the “birthplace of Tarboro.”

Mrs. A.S. “Ruby” Deberry bought it in 1942.

After his divorce, Bobby O’Neal stayed in it for $10 a week when it was a boarding house and antique shop. In 1976, he bought the house at 110 W. Park Ave. for $34,000 and went to work restoring it. It was appraised at $996,000 about 15 years ago.

Tropical Storm Ernesto visited Aug. 31, 2006, and blew two trees down in the Town Common across the street. One fell across the house, punctured the second-floor roof, knocked out some windowpanes and destroyed the front porch.

“The whole house shook,” O’Neal recalled. “It woke me up.”

O’Neal, 75, loves all things antique and it shows in the way the old house has been restored. Although there certainly are plenty of items in the house, it still maintains comfortable warmth.

“It’s been a hobby,” he said, “but I have overfilled it.”

The house’s some 5,000 square feet is filled with antiques although O’Neal said he was going to move some things out before the tour.

“People tell me I need to stop acquiring so many things,” the building contractor said. “I tell them, no, I need to buy another house.”

O’Neal tries to make as many yard sales, estate sales and auctions he can.

“When I got married,” he explained, “I bought furniture for $1 down and a $1 a week. It all fell apart before I could get it paid off.

“This,” he said, pointing to sturdy couch he’s had reupholstered, “is made well and keeps its value. I don’t think I have a piece of furniture that I couldn’t get more for than I gave for it.”

A converted oil lamp hangs in a den. There’s an old icebox over there. And one piece opens into a unique bar.

He remodeled the kitchen in 2008. The cabinet doors are from one piece of solid heart pine. The floors are reclaimed wood from an old place in Scotland Neck.

(O’Neal remembers where he acquired every thing in the house and what he paid for it.)

“But I got above my raising with that (granite) counter top,” he said.

Velma Eatmon and Margie Spencer, retired home economics teachers, are responsible for most of the decorating. His son Chris marbleized a fireplace and painted a bathroom.

“What it took for people to make some of these things means a lot to me,” he said. “The skill and how long it took to make it.”

O’Neal has heard the rumor that George Washington stayed in the house, but he does not know for sure. When Clinton was in town during the 1999 flood, he let the president know a president had stayed in his house.

“Clinton wanted to know who it was,” O’Neal said, “so I told him ‘George Washington.’

O’Neal plans to have a 19th century doctor’s carriage and buckboard parked in front of the house Saturday.

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