The Carney House

At the end of the 19th Century, most of the businesses in Atlanta were doing well – crops were high, lumber was plentiful and the population was growing. Trains were stopping several times a day at the depot to drop off passengers and cargo, then reload and head on down the line.

Porter and McWilliams Livery was one of the many booming businesses in town. Co-owner R.H. Porter had worked hard to make his stables the biggest and best. Many of the wealthier business owners relied on him to board and care for their horses, and he could be counted on to keep the animals in excellent shape and ready when needed to pull their masters’ buggy.

Porter had been saving up for his dream house, and he knew right where he wanted to build it – at the end of East Hiram, among the biggest homes. When he finally had enough to purchase eight whole acres, right across the street from Judge Smith, he knew he had finally “arrived.”

The house at 613 East Hiram Street was completed in 1906 with every amenity Porter could fit on his land: a carriage house, stable and barn, servant quarters, chicken house, garden area, fenced area for the horses and a few cattle, and a small orchard of fruit trees. The Porters were looking forward to spending many evenings on the balcony, where they could wave to the Smith’s across the street.

But it wasn’t long until Henry Ford’s new contraption, the automobile, made it’s way to the streets of Atlanta. As more people became comfortable with the new form of transportation, carriage houses were converted into garages and livery stables were needed less and less.

The Porters put their dream home up for sale, and in January 1912 attorney Hugh Carney moved his growing family into the stately home. According to a manuscript written by Carney’s daughter Louise Carney Ament, he paid $3,000 for the estate.

“Daddy paid $1,800 down and made three notes of $400, payable annually to Frank Bivins” she wrote.

It is unknown why the payments were made to Bivins, a sawmill owner from a few miles South on Highway 43. It begs the question: Did Bivins buy it from Porter and then sell to Carney? Or did Bivins finance the home for Carney?

Louise further wrote that her mother, Willie Matthews Carney, “really didn’t want it or like it that well.” Willie made many changes to the home during her life there, starting with adding electricity.

The Carneys had six children, five of whom were born before the move. Willie’s mother, LuAnne Cocke Matthews, had lived with the family since her husband, Y. A. Matthews, died in 1907. She would live another 30 years in the home.

Louise was only a year old when she and her older siblings, Robert Carney, Ruth Carney McWilliams, Howard Carney and Kathleen Carney Hughes moved in. Younger brother Hugh Carney, Jr. was born in the house in 1913.

Carney was born in Tennessee and had a series of short-lived positions before he started working at O’Neal and Figures Law Office. He was a quick student of the law and soon he was the County Attorney, as it was called at the time.

When Carney became the District Judge, his office moved to New Boston, where he would stay during the week because the commute was too far to come home every night. Meanwhile, Willie took charge of the kids, the servant’s and the constant house renovations.

According to Louise’s manuscript, those changes included: adding underpinning; widening the porches; changing the path of the curved stairway and closing off the hall; combining the two front parlors into one large room; adding on a new, larger kitchen and dining room; and later adding another downstairs bath when Hugh and Willie moved into Mamaw Matthews bedroom after her death in 1937.

The change Judge Carney was most proud of, though, was the cedar wood he had Grogan’s mill make into wall paneling for the sitting room after the kitchen was moved into the new addition. He said it reminded him of his childhood home in Tennessee.

For the next 100 years the home remained in the Carney family. Three babies were born in the home, and four couples were married there. With her writing, Louise painted a portrait of a happy family doing the things that people did during those years: milking cows, churning butter, planting a garden, slaughtering hogs for the meat, and celebrating holidays together.

Louise outlived the rest of her family, passing away in 2007 at the age of 96. The house was sold, then abandoned and left to ruin. The people who had bought it stripped it and left it looking much like it had suffered the ravages of war.

Then, one day in 2016 a young couple in Washington state happened to see the home posted online as a foreclosure. And even though neither of them had family in Texas, Dustin and Jennifer Whitman bought the home sight-unseen and headed South.

Though most of the original fixtures had been removed from the home, they are methodically replacing each item with antique or replica pieces. While it’s taken the last five years to make the visible changes, they plan to keep up the pace until they have restored it completely, according to Texas Historical Committee guidelines.

Much like Willie Carney, Jennifer is raising four children between the ages of two and eight while doing what she can to the home as Dustin works out of town. The new coat of Wedgewood Blue paint, the opened balcony, the new bricked front stoop and winding walkway have been noticed by neighbors and passersby.

All of the bricks used so far have been found on the property, and the majority were made at the old brick foundry here – those they placed upside down so “Atlanta” can be seen. There are several more piles of them under the huge old oaks on the corner, waiting to be cleaned and used to extend the walkway, a few feet at a time.

Also like the Carneys, the Whitman’s have chickens, and a garden. Emma and Brodie, the two eldest of the children, proudly show off each of the plants and name them, announcing their favorites. It is clear the Whitman children are thriving, just as the rejuvenated house is.

“This was never a fine house, just good and solid and big,” Louise wrote. “Mama made it what it is with all the changes and additions. Daddy always hated the confusion of change and the smell of fresh paint, but, always, after it was done he would say how much better the changes made the house.”

There is no doubt that Judge Carney, and the rest of his family, are looking on in approval of the recent changes, just as the rest of us are. How much better, indeed, have the changes made the house.