With its new interior restoration, the Calvin Jones House graciously welcomed the approximately 1,500 visitors who took a step back in time on the cold, rainy December day of the 2014 Wake Forest Christmas Historic Home Tour.
The nearly 200-year-old historic home, furnished with newly acquired antiques mixed with significant items from the museum’s existing collection, gave guests a taste of what life was like in 19th century Wake Forest.
Visitors toured the downstairs parlor and dining room before entering the “prep kitchen,” a small room adjacent to the formal living spaces that was used as a staging area for servants. This is where food from the original outdoor kitchen was finished before being brought to table.
A winding, narrow staircase leads to the home’s second level. These upstairs rooms, fully restored to represent the most significant moments in the shared history of town and college, tell four distinctly different stories. The Calvin Jones Bedroom, dedicated to the physician and community leader who sold the property on which Wake Forest College was founded, dates to the 1820s. The Samuel Wait Bedroom tells the story of the school’s first president and is set during his tenure in the 1840s.
The remaining bedrooms are outfitted to resemble the quarters as inhabited by a 1920s medical student and a college boarder from the 1950s.
Each setting is immaculately reproduced, thanks to extensive research and continuing efforts from members of the Wake Forest College Birthplace Society Calvin Jones House Restoration Committee, headed by Cassandra Baker and Elizabeth Melvin.