This Greek Revival cottage at 1115 First East Street was built around 1857 for William and Elizabeth (Eliza) Curlee. It is said to have been living quarters for nurses who aided Confederate and Union soldiers when the Duff Green house across the street was converted into a hospital during the Civil War.
William Curlee was a salesman with T. B. Wheeler. The Curlees owned quite a bit of property in Vicksburg and in Issaquena County and had four children, Willie, Daisy, Mrs. H. D. Carpenter (Louisiana), and Mrs. E. W. Newman (Washington, D.C.). Willie was a corporal in Warren’s Light Artillery in the 1880s and may have also been a fireman, because he played on a baseball team comprised of firemen. In 1895, he helped with smallpox patients at the pest house. He died after “an illness of a few weeks at thirty-eight years at his mother’s home” on First East on December 2, 1896.
Eliza died July 3, 1908, at her daughter’s house in Delhi. The funeral took place from the First East residence on July 4, with the Vicksburg Evening Post reporting that the respected woman was believed to be about 80 years old and that she was “one of our oldest citizens. Her life had been a useful, busy and blessed one.” Daisy continued to live in the house after her mother’s death. She was not married until 1916, at the age of 55, when she married Roland J. Williams, who was engaged in the wholesale produce business. Williams died in 1938 and Daisy lived in the house until she died in 1943.
In 1947, Mrs. W. H. Tucker lived in the First East house. She was followed by Alva Mae Murrah and Allen Lum, a sergeant in the U. S. Army. They were living in the house when the December 5, 1953, tornado carved a path across north Vicksburg. The tornado destroyed the eastern chimney of the house, which would not be rebuilt until 2003.
A number of people lived in the house after the Lums, including archaeologists who were excavating the Fort St. Pierre site in the 1970s. Dr. Ian Brown, a professor with the University of Alabama, and his students were housed there and they recounted a number of strange occurrences in the house. He said objects would often be mysteriously misplaced, or go missing, and eventually the team believed supernatural forces may have been at play. One researcher, Dr. Stu Nightsoll, who lived in the basement, returned home one evening to find all of his belongings piled in a heap in the center of the room, though no one could explain why or how they came to be placed there.
In 1975, Richard Rolfe, a speechwriter for politician George Wallace, and his wife, June, lived in the house and recounted strange activity as well. He believed there were two ghosts, one in the attic and one in the backyard. After Richard’s death, June remarried and lived in the house until around 2003, when attorney Ben Sheely bought and rehabbed it using the federal historic investment tax credits.
In 2013, Andrew and Ivy Cummings bought the house and lived there with their children, Silas and Jean-Alice.
– Nancy Bell, Vicksburg Foundation for Historic Preservation.
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