The early plat of Jamestown that was recorded with the county register of deeds about 1813 shows the name “Scientic” on a street now known as “Scientific.” Many of us can remember driving north on that street from Kivett Drive and then, at the Main St. stop sign (before there was a light), slowly inching out, peering to the left around the sloping rise of ground that hid oncoming traffic. If it was clear, there was a quick look to the right and another to the left before making a mad dash out.
On top of that inconvenient little hill to the left was a dilapidated wooden house that has a very long history. The structure was cut in half and hauled away in 1983, the low hill was leveled and an office complex was built on that corner. The old building was carried slowly and carefully on a big flatbed a short distance east to a spot at the end of the Mendenhall Plantation parking lot, where it came to rest under the care of the Historic Jamestown Society.
Location really is important, so the house seems diminished now without its prominent elevation and corner spot. However, it is upright. Its two halves are reattached. It is whole, safe, painted, and heated. It performs several useful functions, too. It provides a good meeting room, for one thing. For another, it now has a furnished 19th century-style physician’s office, which represents one of the building’s historical functions. It demonstrates a long continuum of Jamestown’s history. And it’s a really interesting example of early 19th century architecture and construction practices.
Experts have made estimates on when it was built, some saying as early as 1800, and others being more cautious and guessing no later than 1820. Studies conducted in 1997 say that the house is made up of two buildings spliced together. The earliest part contains the larger rooms at the back. Attached to it was another building of two stories, with four smaller rooms. This study suggests that one or both buildings may have been moved to the Scientific St. site. Both sections were built of horizontal wooden boards.
The lot it was standing upon was purchased by 1813 by Jno. Charles. He was probably the John Charles who was the first Jamestown postmaster, appointed in 1811. So, it’s possible that the lot—perhaps the house—was the site of Jamestown’s first post office. In 1819, the lot was sold to David Lindsay, who had set up his store house cater corner to it on land purchased in 1816 from another member of the Charles family.
1819 is the year that a former boarder at the Lindsay home, a young man named Marmaduke T. Mendenhall who had been reading Latin with his kinsman George C. Mendenhall, left Jamestown to read medicine with a Dr. Watson in Greensboro. He then went to Philadelphia to attend medical lectures for a year. He returned to Jamestown in 1823 and was probably the first doctor in the village. Here we have another probably-possibly-maybe situation: perhaps he set up his office in that corner house. After he married in 1825, he moved to South Carolina.
The new doctor in town was Dr. Isaac James Madison Lindsay, a nephew of David Lindsay. Madison, as he was usually called, was just twenty-one in 1825, a doctor who was probably very new to his profession. Since he took students to read medicine under his care, he earned local fame as the director of a “medical college.” The phrase calls to mind something grander than this establishment actually was, but in those early days it may have been appropriate. It was short-lived, anyway. Dr. Lindsay moved his practice to Greensboro about 1830. Part of the legacy of the school was rumors about graves being robbed in the nearby churchyard to provide cadavers for study.
Four of his students are known to have become doctors: Shubal G. Coffin, John Milton Worth, Joseph A. Weatherly, and George D. Mendenhall. Two of these, Coffin and Worth, later attended medical lectures at the new Transylvania University Medical Department in Lexington, Kentucky, so their training under Dr. Lindsay was not considered complete, apparently. Another student, Dr. George D. Mendenhall had set up a medical practice in the same building by 1838, and sometime after 1840 moved to Virginia. That may have ended the old building’s use as a doctor’s office, because Dr. Shubal Coffin was the next town doctor, and he lived and practiced medicine in his home, which was a short distance east.
David Lindsay sold the old corner property to Alexander Robbins of Randolph Co. in 1857. Robbins’ daughter, Martha Robbins Tilden, who was born in the old house, said that her father had come to town to be the secretary and treasurer of the building committee of Jamestown Female College, which began construction about 1858 just off Scientific St., south and west of the house. Many of Dr. Lindsay’s old medical books remained in the house, she said, and she recalled looking at them as a child.
In 2001, James Mills, a Thomasville police officer with a special interest in medical history and artifacts, helped the Historic Jamestown Society to develop materials for a 19th century physician’s office replica.
Among the many tenants of the old house prior to 1983 were Mary and Rhodema Horney, who were private nurses, and lived there during the 1920s, earning a good reputation for their care for new mothers and babies.
The late Martha Tilden Hay was a descendant of the Robbins family who took a special interest in the study and restoration of the building after it was moved. She was instrumental in having it taken on as a project by a UNCG Architectural Conservation class headed by Prof. Jo R. Leimenstoll. Students examined everything in the old place, counting the number of paint and wallpaper layers, and noting their colors, patterns and styles. They found locations of old “ghost marks” that show former partitions and chair rail traces. They produced measured drawings of floors, ceilings and walls, windows and doors. The very interesting results of their work are packed into a thick binder. Many of the old wallpapered areas have been left ‘as is’ so that visitors can see the patterns. There are also areas where the old construction details can be viewed.
Walls can talk, after all, and can tell some good stories, too.