The Wirick-Simmons House: stepping back in time

Kathrine Alderman
ECB Publishing, Inc.

The historic Wirick-Simmons House, located on North Jefferson Street. Right across from the post office, is currently owned by the Jefferson County Historic Association (JCHA) itself, and served as their headquarters as well as a museum before COVID-19 shut the world down.
The story of how the Association purchased the house is an interesting one. The house was going to be sold so that it could be torn down. “There were filling stations on every corner,” Beulah Brinson, a long-time member of the JCHA, said. “It would be torn down and a filling station put here. But in the Historical Association there was a lady named Ms. Conley, who had just came back from Washington—she had grown up here and just moved back. She was determined this house would not be torn down.” So, due to her persistence, the Historical Association bought the house.
After they purchased the house, Conley called the national trust to see who they could get for a preservation architect. “And they responded,” Brinson recalled, “'you're in luck. The best one in the country right now is from Albany, Ga., right up the road.'” So Conley called him and, as Brinson said, “the rest is history.”

Restoration of the house began in 1964, and was done by none other than Edward Vason Jones, a historic restoration specialist who has worked on places such as the White House and the State Department Drawing Rooms. As mentioned, he lived in Albany, Ga., and after Conley called him, he came down to have a look at the Wirick-Simmons House. After looking at the house, he declared that not only would he restore the house, he would donate his services free of charge.
Jones not only restored the house, he also donated a lot of antique furniture to them as well. The pieces he donated were ones he was saving for his daughter, who sadly died in a car accident. After her death, all the furniture he had saved to give to her, he donated to the Wirick-Simmons House on permanent loan. One of the things included in his donation is a piano, of which there are only about five others left in the United States.
One of the special things about the Wirick-Simmons house, is that everything in the house was donated to them. All the furniture and decorations in the house were given to the Association to be used in the house. Not only that, but every penny they've spent on the house was either raised by them or was donated to them by the community or people who were interested in the house. That is, until they had to repair the roof in 2017. They knew they wouldn't be able to raise the amount of money they would need to do that, so they applied for and received a grant to do so. However, that is the only money they've spent on the house that they didn't earn themselves or have donated.
The house itself was built in 1831 in the Greek Revival Style. The design is believed to be possibly copied from one of the books of the American architect Asher Benjamin, as the mantle in the North West room is an exact copy from one of his books, “Country Builder's Assistant” or “The Practical House Carpenter.”
It was built for Adam Wirick, a circuit rider originally from South Carolina. It is constructed of native heart pine and the piers and chimneys are made of brick from a local kiln. Very few changes have been made to the original structure of the home, but there was a large front porch added sometime after 1885. When they restored the house, Jones found the old foundations and removed the porch, to put it back to its most original state.
To modernize the house they did turn part of one of the porches into a kitchen and added a bathroom. Kitchens, back in the day, used to be detached from the house in case of a fire, so the original kitchen wouldn't have sufficed. However, they did build a building out back meant to replicate how the old kitchen would have looked from the house, except there is no chimney. There was also a two story servants quarters on the property .
Other than those few changes, the only other change made to the house was the removal of a hallway in the front room, to make it one large room, instead of two separated by the hallway. This was done because it was to be the JCHA headquarters, and they needed a bigger room to be able to meet in.
After Adam Wirick, the house was briefly owned by Dr. J.J Lawrence and C.W Gynni. In 1871, Thomas Simmons purchased the house and it remained in the Simmons family until the JCHA bought it in 1964 from Liza Clement.
Brinson believes that the Wirick-Simmons house is an asset to the county, and it's true. Not only is it another beautiful, historic house that adds to the homey, small town feeling of Monticello, but it is also a place that can be used by the people here. They rent out the house for gatherings and events, and, as mentioned, before the pandemic, it was open as a museum on Saturdays. It's important to remember the past, and the Wirick-Simmons house offers a wonderful place to step back in time and really feel the past.