Historic Monterey House Opening Dedication
On a gorgeous Sunday afternoon on July 16th, around 100 guests gathered at the historic Pinckney Jones House in Monterey for its opening dedication ceremony.
“My name is Hammill Jones – people know me as Skip Jones, or the tower guy. I am the great grandson of Charles Pinckney Jones and I’m trustee of the Charles Pinckney Jones Charitable Trust.”
“Let me take you back very briefly, 250 years, a young man named Henry Jones fought as a private in the Revolutionary War. He migrated to Highland County and built a log cabin on some land grant property on the upper Cowpasture River near Botkin Hollow Road. He died in 1807, but his son was Thomas Jones, and one of his sons was John Milton Jones, who migrated to Franklin and became the sheriff. And incidentally, he swore in the first death penalty jury in that area.”
“One of his sons was Charles Pinckney Jones, Charles Pinckney Jones came to Monterey at age 18 at the beginning of the Civil War, and enlisted in a cavalry unit here in Monterey. After that, he went to University of Virginia law school and in 1873, bought this house, and then basically expanded – and when you go through it, you’ll see the original house was a log cabin. And supposedly the upstairs was a hospital during the Civil War, and so forth. He was a lawyer, legislator, House of Delegates, state senator, he had large family all of which grew up here. One was Edwin Bunker Jones, my grandfather, who was a lawyer, legislator, bank president, Treasurer of Virginia. He had several children, one of whom was my father. And then Turner Jones, who many of you know as Commonwealth Attorney here for years. There were other children as well. Mabel Jones ultimately inherited this house. Her children were Elizabeth and Mary Hilley McCoy, who lived here for years. And then another child was Phoebe and one of her children is Margaret Hine, who’s here today and Margaret is the last surviving member of that generation. Margaret just celebrated 101.
Mr. Jones thanked the numerous people involved in the restoration, and explained the house’s light blue color.
“When we got started on the house after Mary Hilley died, I think my first contact was with Curtie Gutshall, because we had to decide on what to do with the color of the house. It’s the color of the dress uniform of the Confederate soldier and the dark blue on the shutters is the color of the Union soldier’s uniform.”
“Dean Beverage was our primary contractor, just did a fantastic job on everything. And I can’t name everybody to thank on this – there’s a list of everybody inside. But Donald Doyle’s company did great work; John Hevener did great work with the furniture; Joe Shell did great work. We had to dry up the lots because the foundation of the house was soaking wet, and Joe orchestrated all that; Daniel Hotts; Bill Rich helped us a lot with the architectural side of it; Anne Adams and Tammi at the newspaper have been very generous in their coverage.”
“All of the contents of the house were given by the Trust to the Highland Historical Society, which has done great work in cataloging and preserving them – you’ve seen them on display at the museum in McDowell. Carolyn Pohowsky did not want to be thanked, but she has been devoted to this – it’s unbelievable how much work she has done.”
“Mike Wolf was our construction manager, he supervised all of that; Kim Wolf did a lot of work with the gardens, as did Donna Bedwell, Lorraine White, Jim White; and special thanks to Celia Rutt, who designed all of these plantings, labeled them – they’re all basically local to this area and meant to survive well in this environment.”
He talked about some of the items found inside.
“I mean, there were 1000s of things we found in there, like $75,000 worth of government bonds, collection of around the turn of the century baseball cards. If you go into the bathroom, there’s a bathtub there, and we believe that to be the first bathtub in Monterrey.”
He concluded.
“I would like to now officially dedicate this wonderful house and garden to the memory of Charles Pinckney Jones and his family and to the countless volunteer hours of the Highland Historical Society. Thank you very much.”
Attendees were then free to tour the house. Pictures are available with this story on our website.
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