Bibb County Probate and County Tax Assessor records indicate that a 75 acre tract of heavily timbered land that was formerly attached to the historic Vance-Ellison house on Birmingham Road in Centreville has been sold by the heirs. The land tract borders the Stewart-Wheeler Memorial Park owned by the City of Centreville on the North side and Bibb Medical Center on its South side.
To the casual observer this looks like just another timber sale. Another piece of land where hardwood and pine will be pulled off the land and sold for profit. Look in any direction in Bibb County and you will see more of the same. After all, timber sales and the production of timber products has been the mainstay of the Bibb County economy for more than 100 years.
But to this writer, this sale is different. The sale of this property signals the painful closing of another chapter in the long and glorious history that created the City of Centreville and strings that are attached to my youth. Painful, because it hurts to lose something that you grew up with, something that is attached to your past, and a lost opportunity for my hometown that will not return in this lifetime. Sad because some of the people in this story were my friends growing up; their journey through life has ended; and the sale of this property brings old memories flooding back once again as I sit down to write about a timber sale.
The 1899 builder of the Vance-Ellison house was Robert Vance, a sheriff of Bibb County from 1901-1903. The home was believed to be the first brick home built in Bibb County. The Ellison family purchased the property in 1903 and the Ellison sisters, Connie & Rhoda inherited the property when their mother, Eva Cooper Ellison died in 1975. Rhoda Ellison was a faculty member at Huntingdon College and noted for publishing: Ellison, Rhoda Coleman. Bibb County, Alabama: The First Hundred Years, 1818-1918. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1984.
The historic Vance-Ellison property passed to Howard Leon Cleveland III after the death of Connie and Rhoda Ellison, the last occupants of the Victorian style house on Birmingham Road. Howard Cleveland III grew up in Centreville and was known to his peers as “Little Howard”. Small in statue he was a gritty football player, quick, and harder to tackle than a greased pig. He was President of the student body and graduated from BCHS in the 1960 Class.
His father, Howard Cleveland Jr. was a well respected Centreville businessman who owned Cleveland’s Grocery on the Court House Square in the mid twentieth century and the last days of the court square retail era. He is a descendant of Howard Cooper, a former member of the Alabama State Legislature, for whom the bridge that spans the Cahaba River at Centreville was named.
The Cleveland family resided in the restored plantation style home that is now The Oaks, a wedding venue on Walnut Street in Centreville. Little Howard’s mother, Emily Cleveland, is remembered today as a fine teacher at the old Bibb County High School.
Little Howard died in 2013, 71 years old, and soon after inheriting the Vance-Ellison property. Rhoda Ellison died in 2005 at the age of 101, Connie Ellison was 96 when she died in 2003*. Both were born in the old house their parents purchased from Robert Vance in 1903. The unmarried and childless Ellison sisters reached out into the family tree looking for a family member to leave the family legacy to. The nearest were cousins Howard Leon and Frank Cooper Cleveland. If they were depending on Howard and Frank to keep the property in the family they would be disappointed today.
Howard Cleveland Jr. and Emily Cleveland, parents of Howard III and Frank died in 1997 and 1998. Within a few years their homeplace fell into disrepair and the sons divided up the property and sold it off. Neither had lived in Centreville since college and they seemed to have no interest in preserving the plantation style historic home where they grew up.
Now, with Little Howard’s death in 2013, the Vance-Ellison property passed to his children, Howard Cleveland IV and Amy Shoaf, both residents of Tennessee where Howard III lived his adult life. With no roots or connection to Centreville Howard’s children have liquidated their inherited property interests here for cash.
If Little Howard had lived a few more years things could have turned out differently for the wooded tract. His classmate, Patty Wheeler Smitherman (Class of 1961), donated the adjoining 160 acre tract to the City of Centreville in memory of her mother’s family (Stewart) and departed brother Alec Wheeler in 2014. Today it is the Stewart-Wheeler Memorial Park.
Teresa Suttle, who is a descendant of the original builder of the Vance-Ellison home, was able to purchase, restore and preserve the Vance-Ellison house. Teresa told The Bibb Voice that Robert Vance was her Great-Great Grandfather. Vance sired a daughter he named Teresa and she married into the Carlisle Suttle family.
The Victorian era Vance-Ellison home will remain a treasure for the people of the area to enjoy for many more years, but Teresa only purchased a few acres surrounding the estate house. A few of the Ellison acres were acquired by neighboring Bibb Medical Center. The Vance-Ellison home is on the Alabama Historical Register.
In the other interesting twist to this story, Teresa Suttle also acquired, restored, and is commercially using the original Cleveland Estate property on Walnut Street, the family home that Howard III and his brother Frank jettisoned in 2004. The Cleveland property, which may be the oldest estate home in Bibb County, has been turned into The Oaks, a wedding venue that has been historically preserved, tastefully added to, and the original Cleveland home has become a landmark for the community.
As for 75 wooded acres behind the Vance-Ellison house. It sold on March 13, 2019 to Harrison & Sons Logging Inc. of Maplesville, AL for $575,000. When I drove by there a few days ago the skidders and log trucks were dragging the huge hardwoods and straight old growth pines down the road to the mill. They will make good utility poles.
A grand opportunity to connect Bibb Medical Center, one of the finest rural retirement and medical care communities in this state, with the Stewart Wheeler Memorial Park, the finest rural youth athletic complex in this state, with wooded walking and exercise trails through an old growth hardwood forest passed us by. We talk constantly about economic development but we sometimes fail to see the valuable resources we drive by every day that could be leveraged to our own benefit.
And what is on the edge of the property that you see every time you drive into Centreville? The finest B&B you will find anywhere in this State. And it is on the Alabama Historic Register. Thank you Teresa. For Vance-Ellison and The Oaks.
That 75 acre timber tract was back there for more than 100 years. Slowly closed in by homes and roads, unseen by the public. Along with Alec Wheeler and Chuck Elam we roamed and occasionally hunted on that land. Boyhood memories of friends whose journeys have ended that are no longer here. I can keep the memories but the timber won’t be back in my lifetime.
We live in a small town in Alabama because we choose to do so instead of living in the big town where we don’t know the family history of those who surround us. We grow up in a small town, we put down roots. We leave school, we diverge, we lead separate lives. But if you are like most of us we never forget those early years and we have roots that bind us together, even when we have not seen people for years. That is what makes a small town what it should be. I am grateful that I can recall some of reasons that I would never trade having grown up in Centreville for an opportunity to do it over again and choose anywhere else to relive it.
But for me, the sound of chainsaws in that timber stand marks the closing of one of those happy chapters.
*Source: Probate Records Bibb County Courthouse Annex
