McCown-Mangum House Decked out for Holiday Open House

The McCown-Mangum House Open House in early December 2017

as decorated by the Durham Croasdaile Garden Club. Photos by the Croasdaile Garden Club.

By Connie O'Neil
Croasdaile Garden Club

In 2016, Croasdaile Garden Club accepted the task of decorating the McCown-Mangum House for the “Victorian Christmas: West Point on the Eno” Open House. This December, the garden club continued its new beautification project for 2017.

History

The McCown-Mangum House in Durham is a restored 1850’s farmhouse at West Point on the Eno River Park. West Point may be the most persistently relevant site in Durham—a place of importance to Native Americans, early European settlers, and present-day residents of Durham. 

Herbert Sims and his wife Rachel Cabe McCown ran the mill starting in 1817. Her son John Cabe McCown took over the mill after the Civil War and built his Greek revival farmhouse residence at West Point in the 1850’s. In 1891 McCown’s house was sold to Presley J. Mangum, a postmaster and then his son, Hugh Mangum, an early photographer whose families occupied the house until 1968. In the late 60’s, the property and 700 acres along the Eno River were about to be developed into shopping and housing when the Eno River Association parlayed the property into a city park. Eventually, the 1840’s McCown-Mangum house was restored as a museum with period furniture.The first Festival for the Eno was held on July 4, 1980 and has been held every July 4th since.

Decking the Halls

When decorating the house, the Durham Department of Parks and Recreation requested that the decorations reflect a true Victorian Christmas. With that mission in mind, we created our original period decorations and used only natural objects or items that might have been available in the 1800’s. Members met at our President’s home and had a great time making handmade period ornaments that would be suitable for the tree and house.

The fresh Christmas tree was adorned with pine discs with wood-burned or painted designs from fresh wood cut on a member’s lot, raffia bows hand-tied by members, paper chains cut from wall paper borders, candy canes, cookie cutters, tin ornaments and pine cones. We decorated three fireplaces with fresh greenery, pine cones, candles, and holly berries. The stairway was decorated with pine roping and handmade stockings of burlap and lace. Six chests of drawers and tables were dressed with beautiful handmade centerpieces of fresh greenery, candles and fruit. 

In all, we decorated the living room, kitchen, hallway, master bedroom and stairwell.

The exterior was not left out of our decorating design. The entrance door, front gate posts, and front porch flower boxes all received special Victorian Christmas touches as well. The front door wreaths were made with elaeagnus branches and the following greenery was used throughout the house inside and out: magnolia, elaeagnus, holly berries, white pine, Leland cypress, holly and boxwood. When we were finished the smell of the fresh greenery and the beautiful decorations were all set for the Holiday Open House events on December 3-4 and December 10-11.

Twenty-two members of the Croasdaile Garden Club donated 82 hours of their time to decorating the McCown-Mangum House in 2017. Many of the materials and decorations were donated by Garden Club Members and cut from their yards.

The project expenses were taken out of the Garden Club budget each year. Because we created so many decorations by hand our expenses were less than $35. Our funds came from our membership dues and our bi-annual spring auction.

Besides receiving many positive comments about decorating “the old fashion way” our efforts were also recognized by the local newspaper. The decorations were described in the December 12, 2016 issue of the Herald-Sun in an article entitled “Victorian Christmas: West Point on the Eno recalls Yule-Past at Open House”.