Charm and Elegance Retained in Old Home Where Love Abounds at Kingston All beauty, charm, and elegance are not to be found in the lovely modern homes now dotting the country side. Many families prefer to continue living in the old home place surrounded by the families' memories and their loved belongings of yesteryear. Such a home is settled among century old trees at Kingston. It is the one-time luxurious eleven-room home of Mrs. Cowan Yeary and daughter, Miss Katherine Yeary. The years have taken their toll on the structure, yet gracious living is still enjoyed in the mixture of the old and the new. The outside embellishments, fancy lattice work from the eaves, the shingled dormers, stained glass windows, wide banister porches surrounding the place, and a once romantic spot--a circular domed portico-like extension on one corner of the front porch, are showing the signs of sixty-five years of weathering. The lumber for the home was hauled from Jefferson, Texas, according to the late Miss Hattie Peoples (Peebles) of Kingston. At the time of the building of the mansion-like home in 1900 by J. W. Barr, a teacher in the Kingston School, neighbors would gather to watch the construction and discuss the Galveston Flood that happened at that time, Miss Peoples has told the Yeary family. Four rooms were the original house that Barr built onto. Those rooms were built sometime in the late eighteen hundreds, according to a son of Mr. Barr who attended a Kingston Homecoming two years ago. The Yeary family came to Kingston and to the large house in 1918 from Concord, northwest of Greenville, and used it as it was built until ten years ago when, two large rooms were torn away. The present dining room and kitchen are of the original structure. The wood carving inside and out was done by a local man, a Mr. Cole, who had a wood shop in the thriving town of Kingston. He was an artist at his trade. Evidence of his work is seen in the interior of the house in the original finished wood and on the outside the wood is intact with repeated coatings of paint. He used a hand-powered lathe with local young men to turn the wheel to fashion the carving of wood that included handmade furniture. The late Jim Porter, brother of Burr Porter, who now is a landholder in the area, told Miss Yeary of the work done sixty-five years ago in the Cole workshop. An artistic view of the Yeary home, "The Old Homestead" as Miss Yeary has named her painting of the place as seen from Highway 69 graces then entry. The entrance hall, fairly small compared with the spacious high ceilinged rooms of the rest of the house, is a small museum with the carved banister stairway leading to one large room. A Cole-made cabinet, an antique love seat, and several of Miss Yeary's paintings, including a still life, "Sunflowers," a prize-winning piece in a recent Festival of Art showing at Austin College, adorn the hall. Every nook and corner of the entire home is filled with loved pieces of the old and the new--the clock on the mantle in the mother's bedroom bought secondhand at the time of her marriage, a small glass kerosene lamp used during the Civil War by Mrs. Yeary's grandmother and brought here from Virginia, the study hand-woven basket in which Mr. Yeary carried his lunch to school back in Virginia, and the bedroom furnishings used now by Mrs. Yeary bought at the time of her marriage, December, 1907. The addition of bric-a-brac, lamps, milk glass, crystal, tables and furnishing, replicas of antiques blend the old with the new. The dining room has a heavy round oaken table, a sideboard, the property of Mrs. Yeary's grandmother, and antique tables. Glassware, china, and pictures are centers of interest there. The kitchen, modern in some respects, retains the old in a large walk-in pantry with an old fashioned safe (used for storing foods and dishes originally) and floor-to-ceiling shelves behind screen doors. This feature dates with the building of the first part of the house. A bathtub, set in a room apart from the original main house, is made of solid copper encased in a fancy wooden frame. It is six and one-half feet long and thirty inches wide. Miss Yeary plans to make use of the antique by having a lid made and using it for storage. Family Cowan Yeary and Addie Mae Burk each came to Texas from their homes in Jonesville, Lee County, Virginia. The young lady came with her family, but Yeary alone came to seek a better land. He was a student at Bristol, Tennessee studying law, business, and art in 190l. Medical students living in the dormitory "practiced their learning" by doctoring Yeary for granulated eyelids. Not succeeding, Yeary spent his savings on doctor's bills, sold his horse and buggy, spent sometime in Virginia, and finally made his way to Texas, a "promised land" for young fellows at that time. Old letters revealed some of these facts. In the Concord community, he met and married Miss Burk, a native of his own Jonesville, Virginia. They were married while seated in a buggy. The couple succeeded in farming and stock raising and found the location in Kingston "in which they would be near churches and good schools." The late Mr. Yeary, who was killed in an accident in 1941, was an active member of the community, interested in education and was trustee for the Kingston School for many years, continuing on as trustee after his five children finished there. Mrs. Years, now 84 and in poor health for the past three years, was a "homebody" as the daughters recall, though a regular attendant at church services. She was an artist at homemaking. Cooking, gardening, and the making of fancy work filled her days. As a girl back in Virginia, she was baptized by a Baptist preacher, a Rev. Bowen, an uncle of the Rev. Harrison Baker of Dallas. Mrs. Yeary and Harrison Baker are cousins and he often visits the family along with the local Methodist minister, the Rev. Charles Garrett, Miss Yeary said. The Yeary's four living children are Mrs. John Hartcock, Greenville; Mrs. Riley Pearce, Dallas; Mrs. Neil Williams, Celeste; and Miss Katherine Yeary, Kingston. The late Uless Ray Yeary died in 1952. Another son died early in life. There are ten grandchildren and ten great-grandchildren. Included in the life of the occupant of the old home now are three dogs, "castaways who adopted us," Katherine said. The three are Queenie, a large German Shepherd; Blackie, a Cocker Spaniel with one eye; and Whitey, a French Briard sheep dog. They are sleek, curly, and fat according to their type and as friendly as their benefactors. Miss Yeary was department head and buyer of gifts and foundations in Perkins Store, Greenville, for more than a decade, until the need arose to care for her mother. She finds time to continue her interest in art and is at present converting the upstairs room into a studio. Her talents inherited from her parents, have resulted in numerous paintings hung in every room. Many of them are in old frames from enlarged family photographs. In the past two years, Miss Yeary has exhibited briefly in the Austin College exhibit, winning the 1964 third place on the "Old Homestead" painting and in 1965, a blue ribbon first on "Sunflowers." Earlier her work had been commended. (By Mrs. Lois Lacy Lewis, July 9, 1965, The Celeste Courier)