The generation that survived the Great Depression and then lived through the Great War (that would be World War II for you youngsters) learned some life lessons that served them well. My parents were experts at picking good friends, and keeping them. For a long, long time. Even the guys that my Dad served with in the Navy (1939-1954) that I never met were his friends for life, and he kept in touch with them in his retirement years.
I thought you might enjoy a little history of the White House By the Howard Cooper Bridge in Centreville because you drive by it every day and most of you don’t know anything at all about it. It has been unoccupied recently and not well maintained. In fact, it is becoming an eyesore and somewhat of an embarrassment.
My Dad’s Mother died when he was a teenager in the 1930’s. After that he ended up living with the Cottingham family in this little white house by the river, nurtured by Hassie Cottingham and getting through high school with her daughters Rose and Marguerite Cottingham. Rose later became Rose Bain and Marguerite married Vernon Medders.
Friends for life, Rose & Sis were around when Belcher Hobson came home and married Sparkie Hobson and posed for a picture in front of the little white house by the river bridge in 1941, just before the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor.
After the death of Hassie Cottingham the property has passed down through the family to its present owner, who is a grand daughter of Rose Bain.
97 year old Rose Bain, at the time of this writing, is a patient at the West Alabama Hospice Center in Tuscaloosa.
According to the tax office records in Bibb County this little house by the river was originally constructed in 1865. Rose told me that her grandfather was J.B. Fair and that she lived with him when she was a child, in this same house.
Tax maps show that the state right of way comes right up to the front porch. When she was living in the house Rose said a surveyor drove a stake into the ground by the steps and announced that the state right of way came up to the house. She told him the state should do a better job of cutting the grass and pulled up the stake.
According to the records of the City of Centerville Fairdale was added by survey by Mr. J.B. Fair and that survey is recorded in Map Book 1 of the City. Almost all of what we call “Four Points” is in that survey named Fairdale.
Pictured here is 96 year old Sparkie Hobson and 97 year old Rose Bain (friends for life) with her 3 daughters.
Thanks Rose for being such a good friend to our family.
