Do You Love Her?
Here is one our most exciting discoveries at the Devil Queen, 117 year old graffiti. It is scrawled on the wall just to the right of the bay window. We taped a trash bag and a dire curse over it to keep anyone from accidently painting this little bit of history.
I had a hard time taking a good picture of it, but here it is.
The pencil is so faint that I couldn't see it through the camera's view finder. I tried to zero in on some nearby nail heads, but I was a little off. This says, "Dan, Do you love her?" and beneath it says "Yes" with a heart drawn around it. We are a baffled about Dan. To the best of our knowledge, no one named Dan lived here, ever. The most popular theory is that Van Boswell (full name, Ransom "Van" Newton Vandorn Boswell, Jr.), the Devil Queen's builder, was nicknamed Dan, perhaps? It's the only thing we can think of for the moment.
Next to it in the same handwriting is this.
Next to it in the same handwriting is this.
Terrible pictures, I know.
This says "Van Boswell/ painted by / [undecipherable name?]" At first I thought maybe it said Daniela, but now I'm wondering if it says Amelia. That would make more sense on two counts. One, that is the name of his first wife who lived in the Devil Queen from the time it was built until her death 6 years later. And, we know his wife was an artist and sign painter based on The History of Pope County, Vol. 1.
This is pretty exciting stuff for us. We're going to paint around the writing on the wall and have picture frame with glass mounted over it. A window to the past as it were.
Labels: Boswell Family
posted by John | 5:33 AM
6 Comments:
What a cool way to preserve some of the past!
We just today got our abstract and title for our house we bought in January. We're going to have fun looking through it. Already found out that the fellow that built our house was from Hungary.
I would absolutely keep them...that's really neat.
Figure out who they are and you can be on "If Walls Could Talk"
(my kids want to look for "history" in our house, but heck, it's a 1975, we ain't finding anything interesting here!)
That is WAY cool -- props to you for saving it, and then decidig to frame it. Excellent
Your house is looking so good!
So if I write some graffiti on the TinyCabin, it'll take over a hundred years before it is cool?
Some asshole scribed a big marijuana leaf and "Motley Crue" inside my cave. That must have been in the 70s. Still uncool.
Thanks all.
Felicia, how much do we need to know about them? We have some good info on the Boswells: names, dates, family trees, etc.
Tarr, I don't know if 100 years is the gold standard for cool, but I think we'd have to be dead for our graffiti to be cool.
Well, perhaps Dan is ... Daniela. Evidence of unmentionable love (well, back then) is what you have there on your wall, my lad.
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