By Jennifer L. Williams

Robert and Janice Dotson had no idea what they had just bought when they purchased property adjoining their Wilson Mountain farm in 2015.

The old wooden farmhouse on curvy Nat Key Road didn’t look like anything particularly special, but it soon revealed a historic past that they could not ignore.

“We had to really shove the door just to get inside,” says Janice, speaking about when they first toured the main house. “And the center of the house was sagging.”

Robert says he considered tearing down the house and other old structures on the property, but something stopped him.

“When I saw the glyphs on the chimney and started peeling back the layers of the history of the house and its property — that’s what stopped me,” he said. “We lose a lot of history these days because sometimes, people weigh personal gain against preserving history and the personal gain tends to win out.”

The Dotsons wanted to learn more about the home’s history and turned to members of the Hartselle Historical Society, who were only too glad to help.

The history that was uncovered predated the founding of Alabama as a state in 1819, and included stories of prominent past residents and underwent many facelifts and various uses. The petroglyphs Robert noticed on the home’s chimney stone even indicated an early Cherokee Indian connection.

Delving Deeper into History

Shannon Fuller Keith, the Alabama Chapter President of the Trail of Tears Association, spoke about the Indian connection at Down Memory Lane, a Depot Days event in September 2018. The writings on the chimney stone have been verified as Cherokee, she said, which aligns with the history of the area, and the house itself may have been built by Cherokee Indians before the state of Alabama was founded.

Thomas Crabb, one of the first titled owners and occupants of the house, served as an Alabama legislator, signed the Alabama constitution, and voted to make the territory a state in 1819, said Lee Greene, Jr., Vice President of the Hartselle Historical Society. Greene also said the house was likely used as a treaty house for the area and a stage coach stop on what was first known as Stouts Road, the first north-south road from the Birmingham area into what is now Morgan County.

The Morgan County section of the road was later renamed Nat Key Road, after another occupant of the historic home.

Mary Yarbrough, whose mother, Ethel Atheldria Key, was one of Nat Key’s children, recalls living in the old cookhouse when her family moved home to help take care of aging relatives. Remnants of wallpaper still line the walls of the cookhouse, which is said to have housed a post office and a store at one time.

Yarbrough, now a director with the Hartselle Historical Society, says her great-grandfather, Martin Key, had four sisters who were deaf and mute and who created their own sign language. “My mother learned a bit of it when she lived here with them as a child and she would tell me that their hands would just fly!” she said.

Three of those sisters are buried in the family cemetery on the property, along with other members of the Stewart and Key families. The last occupying family member, Eula Key, lived in the home until 2015, when she left to live in a nursing home.

The home likely started out as a two-room structure, with the kitchen, dining room and bathroom added on later as indoor plumbing became available in the rural area. Yarbrough recalls the dining room actually being a side porch when she was growing up.

Preserving History

The Dotsons started repairing and restoring what they could in the centuries-old house, starting with shoring up the home’s sagging center.

“There’s lots of work we’ve done that is not necessarily noticeable,” says Janice, who added that many people have volunteered their time and talents to help restore the house to its former glory.

Lee Y. Green, Senior is a woodworker who came out to match up the scrollwork on the front porch when it needed to be redone, says Janice. “He did such a great job—you cannot tell what is old and what is new,” she says.

One of the hardest things in fixing up the house and its outbuildings is finding old wood to match, adds Janice. “I’ve even learned how to stain wood to make it look old.”

Janice says she enjoys putting a feminine touch on the house, as a way to pay homage to longtime resident Eula Key, and frequents thrift shops to find unusual items to incorporate in the design.

Some family photos and a couple items of furniture were with the house when the Dotsons bought it, including an enormous wardrobe in an upstairs bedroom. It has been theorized that the wardrobe was built in that room, as it is too large to bring up or down the home’s narrow staircase.

“When we started redoing things in the house, its history came alive, and you could really see what it was like to live there years ago,” says Janice.

And while the Dotsons use the home primarily as a guesthouse for when friends and family come visit, they frequently stay at the house and come by on an almost daily basis. They also have a lot of help from their neighbors—“not much goes on there that we don’t get a phone call about,” laughs Janice.

Marking the Bicentennial

As Alabama begins its bicentennial year in 2019, the Crabb-Stewart-Key-Dotson house, as it now is known, is in line for a special historic designation.

The house currently is on the Alabama Register of Landmarks and Heritage, and is up for consideration for inclusion on the National Register of Historic Places, said Greene. The house is currently on the agenda to be considered by the National Register in April.