The history of
The Russ House
Jackson County, Florida
by
Merritt Dekle
July 2000
All rights reserved!

The Nursery

Around 1921, in anticipation of the birth of Frances Russ Dickerson's first child, Bettie Philips Russ, a portion of the upper gallery was enclosed with casement windows to create a solarium. This room adjoined my grandmother's bedroom, and thus it made a perfect nursery for my mother and for her brother, George Clark Dickerson, Jr., when he was born five years later. Later, after the children were old enough to have their own rooms, the room was used as a sitting room on cold, sunny days. In the early 1990s, during my own years of residency in the house, I took advantage of the bright sunlight of the room and used it as an artist's studio.

The Nursery was the room that everyone seemed most curious about when they inquired about the home. It's expanse of wrap-around windows, nested behind the Corinthian columns and balustrade, created an intriguing impact to onlookers. The fan-shaped layout of the room offered a panoramic veiw of the front grounds from the interior. Though it was recognized as a historic architectural feature of the home by the National Register of Historic Places, and though it was a common feature of Neoclassically styled homes of the period, the Chamber of Commerce decided to remove the room during it's 1996-8 rehabilitation.

Frances Phillips Russ 1904

Bettie Philips Russ 1925

George Clark Dickerson Jr ca. 1929

"The Magic Nursery"

During those last years I spent in Marianna, my mother and I started work on a children's story called "The Magic Nursery"; we were collaborating on the story and I was going to do the illustrations. It stemmed from something that really happened to me as a child.

By the time I came along, the house already looked pretty much as it did until they began the work on it.....weathered, but bewitching. I would go there for a month each summer. Big Mama worked during the day, so I'd be there alone with her maid, Lily Mae. After her children had left home, Big Mama moved downstairs, and upstairs was virtually deserted.....she was elderly by then and never climbed the stairs anymore, so it was like a "lost world" up there. I wasn't supposed to go up there, but of course, it was irresistible to me, so the moment she left for work, I'd be up there in a flash. Over the years, I'd come to know this private world of mine like the back of my hand....I knew what was in every drawer, every wardrobe, every nook and cranny. All except one room which was nailed shut. This room was Big Mama's old bedroom, and off that room was the Nursery.....the room that was the section of the upstairs porch enclosed by casement windows. It was the most beautiful room of the house, and both my mother and my uncle had been born in this room. I could see it from the outside but could not get into it, which frustrated me to no end.

Finally, one summer when I was a little older and braver, I resolved to get into that room by hook or crook. After Big Mama left for work, I went upstairs and I realized the only way to get in was from the outside. In the old photo of the house you can see what used to be the "porte cohere"; a one story carport like structure over the driveway. This was removed when I was around 2 or so, because it had become unsound and Big Mama couldn't afford to fix it. So to get to the bedroom I'd have to go out on the upstairs porch, and crawl around the ledge where the porch had originally met the deck of the porte-cohere. It was only like 10 inches wide and there was no rail there, so it was quite a drop to the concrete steps below, but you know how determined children are. I overcame my fear, and slowly made my way to the bedroom window, which opened with little effort. It was like breaking into an ancient tomb or something....so exciting to finally get in this "forbidden" room.

I explored the bedroom, but it was when I went out to the Nursery that I saw something that I cannot explain to this day. Sitting in the corner of the Nursery, was a small children's table with little chairs to match. In the chairs were sitting various old, faded doll's and teddy bears, and on the table was a children's tea set for the dolls tea party. Certainly this was a charming sight to behold, but this was not what has held me spellbound for years. That was due to menu of this little tea party, for sitting on the table with the time tainted teaset was a birthday cake! A fresh poundcake, sitting in the forbidden Nursery in a nailed up bedroom that no one had entered for twenty years!

I told my mother this childhood memory from so long ago.....and that's when we decided to write this book; in it the old toys come to life and befriend the little boy and help him to break the evil curse put on the house by the evil fairy queen who lived in the pond....In the end,of course, they break the spell, and the house is restored to it's former beauty, and they "live happily ever after". (My mother loved fairy tales and always said "I love anything that starts with 'once upon a time'. That's what I had inscribed on her headstone at St. Lukes). I put the book away after she died, but thought that, in a way it was all coming true.....the house would be returned to it's former glory in the end after all. The Nursery was removed during the rehabilitation by the Marianna Chamber of Commerce.