Bruce Guthrie Photos Home Page: [Click here] to go to Bruce Guthrie Photos home page.
Recognize anyone? If you recognize specific folks (or other stuff) and I haven't labeled them, please identify them for the world. Click the little pencil icon underneath the file name (just above the picture). Spammers need not apply.
Copyrights: All pictures were taken by amateur photographer Bruce Guthrie (me!) who retains copyright on them. Free for non-commercial use with attribution. See the [Creative Commons] definition of what this means. "Photos (c) Bruce Guthrie" is fine for attribution. (Commercial use folks including AI scrapers can of course contact me.) Feel free to use in publications and pages with attribution but you don't have permission to sell the photos themselves. A free copy of any printed publication using any photographs is requested. Descriptive text, if any, is from a mixture of sources, quite frequently from signs at the location or from official web sites; copyrights, if any, are retained by their original owners.
Accessing as Spider: The system has identified your IP as being a spider. IP Address: 18.223.32.230 -- Domain: Amazon Technologies
I love well-behaved spiders! They are, in fact, how most people find my site. Unfortunately, my network has a limited bandwidth and pictures take up bandwidth. Spiders ask for lots and lots of pages and chew up lots and lots of bandwidth which slows things down considerably for regular folk. To counter this, you'll see all the text on the page but the images are being suppressed. Also, some system options like merges are being blocked for you.
Note: Permission is NOT granted for spiders, robots, etc to use the site for AI-generation purposes. I'm sure you're thrilled by your ability to make revenue from my work but there's nothing in that for my human users or for me.
If you are in fact human, please email me at guthrie.bruce@gmail.com and I can check if your designation was made in error. Given your number of hits, that's unlikely but what the hell.
Help? The Medium (Email) links are for screen viewing and emailing. You'll want bigger sizes for printing. [Click here for additional help]
Specific picture descriptions: Photos above with "i" icons next to the bracketed sequence numbers (e.g. "[1] ") are described as follows:
RIPPAV_971109_01.JPG: Spring Hill; Rippavilla
RIPPAV_971109_02.JPG: Spring Hill; McKissack House
RIPPAV_971109_03.JPG: Spring Hill; Ferguson Hall
Description of Subject Matter: Nathaniel Frances Cheairs IV, a French Huguenot descent, was born on the property on December 6, 1818. As he matured, he began courting a girl from Spring Hill. The object of his affection was Miss Susan Peters McKissack, daughter of Master William McKissack II. When Nathaniel IV announced to his father of his intentions of marrying Susan, his father had only one objection. All of the “Nathaniels” prior to Nathaniel IV had married girls by the name of “Sarah.” His father wanted him to carry on that tradition and find someone else to wed. Nathaniel IV wanted his father’s blessing on the marriage and persisted about marrying Susan. His father even offered his son a sum of gold worth $5,000 to find another bride, but Nathaniel IV would not accept. Then, Susan’s father made an offer that Nathaniel IV could not refuse. Being the owner of the brickyard in Spring Hill, Master McKissack offered to supply all of the free bricks and free slave labor needed to construct a house once Nathaniel and Susan were married. Being the wise businessman that he was, Nathaniel III saw that offer and gave his blessing upon his son’s marriage. Nathaniel Frances Cheairs IV and Susan Peters McKissack were wed on September 2, 1841. As a wedding gift, Nathaniel III gave his son the $5,000 in gold that he had previously offered his son.
For ten years, Nathaniel and Susan made their home in a two-story log cabin located at the back of the property. Susan gave birth to three of their four children while living in the cabin. In 1851, the smokehouse and kitchen house were completed. The Cheairs would reside in the upstairs of the kitchen before and during the construction of the mansion. Construction on the mansion commenced in 1852 and was completed in 1855. Completion of the mansion was delayed for three years because of Nathaniel’s own vision of the home. He stated that he wished the house to stand for over 100 years. Construction of the home was halted three separate times. The mansion was over 50% complete all three times that he had construction stopped, and each time the walls were torn down. The first occasion was when Nathaniel did not think that the walls were straight, the second occasion was when Nathaniel did not like how the mortar had bonded, and the third occasion was when a bit of cold weather had struck the area, and Nathaniel thought some of the mortar might have frozen. Fearing that it would lead to the downfall of the house, he once again had the walls torn down. Eventually, the mansion was completed, and Susan gave birth to their fourth, and last, child shortly after they moved in. The family resided happily in their new home for the several years that remained before the Civil War broke out.
Bigger photos? To save server space, the full-sized versions of these images have either not been loaded to the server or have been removed from the server. (Only some pages are loaded with full-sized images and those usually get removed after three months.)
I still have them though. If you want me to email them to you, please send an email to guthrie.bruce@gmail.com
and I can email them to you, or, depending on the number of images, just repost the page again will the full-sized images.
Connection Not Secure messages? Those warnings you get from your browser about this site not having secure connections worry some people. This means this site does not have SSL installed (the link is http:, not https:). That's bad if you're entering credit card numbers, passwords, or other personal information. But this site doesn't collect any personal information so SSL is not necessary. Life's good!