A Couple of Newspaper Articles

We settled into the old house on 219-A; growing gardens, raising chickens, having a cow and a horse and three children.  As we met our neighbors, we found out the Seminary part of the house's name meant school.  (Several of the older neighbors had actually gone to school there.) When Jenny Wren was in second grade she interviewed one of those neighbors and found out that the schoolhouse was located in what was once the community of Rex and the old hand drawn well had water so good families would come back to the school just to take a drink. ( Even though this well is still right next to the house I can not verify this fact-I never dared to  test it. )

The Godwin Seminary House needed lots of restoration. ( It had been changed from a school into a home used by tenant farmers for many years until Sidney Godwin and his wife decided to make it their own.)  There was a good reason the lights were low and the curtains were closed when we first saw the house;  but, we were not deterred.  We tore off old siding, broke down walls and then put them back, lived for years with tar paper where jalousie windows had once been  installed until the correct era of window could be located.

As the years passed, an interesting fact or two relating to the old schoolhouse would appear:

then, a newspaper article appeared in the Gainesville Sun  written by Mary Godwin:
My husband, Ernest, born 1902, remembers Christmas when he was a little boy in Rex, a rural settlement between Hawthorne and Orange Heights in this county.  His fondest memories center around the Community Christmas program held at the schoolhouse.  This was the Godwin Seminary, an old-fashioned county school where students started in first grade and graduated some 10 years later, ready to take examinations for teaching certificates.  It was run by Ernest's father, Prof. Jacob J. Godwin.  At Christmas, a ceiling-height green tree was erected in the larger room of the schoolhouse, which was heated by a pot-bellied stove.  Ernest says a large, symmetrical holly tree was sometimes used, although usually it was a cedar.  Most of the decorations were made by the children.  He remembers his sisters cutting strings of paperdolls holding hands.  In his memory it "gave a lovely light" when all the candles, clamped on in little tin holders were lit.  There was a gift for each child as well as "store-bought" candy, and oranges and pecans were always in great abundance. 

It made us really excited when a few years later another article appeared in the Gainesville Sun written about the winner of the sate of Florida's AIA top architectural craftsman award and the owner of our homestead, along with a picture of our kitchen.

Our kitchen in 1987.



Michael, specialized in restoring historic homes and was recognized as the best state craftsman, when he was presented with the Mellen C. Creeley Craftsman Award.

The last paragraph of the article read:
One project Michael would like to spend more time on is the home he and his wife, Martha, share with their three children, Jennifer, 15, Molly, 9, and William, 7.   "It's about 70 percent done,"  he said.  "It takes a lot of money and lots of time and I never seem to have enough of both at the same time," he laughed.