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Undulata
"The Haunted House of Hartwell Hollow"
“Maple Nook”
Undulata, the Pewee Valley home
of American poet William Davis Gallagher,
was Annie Fellows Johnston’s model for the Haunted House of Hartwell Hollow.
This photo is from before the house fell into disrepair.
in the “Little Colonel” series. Photo from the Filson Historical Society,
Louisville, Ky.
Undulata was the setting for the Halloween party put on by Aunt
Allison for the children of Lloydsborough Valley in “The
Little Colonel’s Holidays” In
Chapter XI, Annie Fellows Johnston provides the following
description of the home that became known as “the haunted house of
Hartwell Hollow” to millions of her young fans:
From The Little Colonel's
Holidays (Chapter 11):
NOTHING worse than rats and
spiders haunted the old house of Hartwell Hollow, but set
far back from the road in a tangle of vines and cedars, it
looked lonely and neglected enough to give rise to almost
any report. The long unused road, winding among the
rockeries from gate to house, was hidden by a rank growth of
grass and mullein. From one of the trees beside it an aged
grape-vine swung down its long snaky limbs, as if a bunch of
giant serpents had been caught up in a writhing mass and
left to dangle from tree-top to earth. Cobwebs veiled the
windows, and dead leaves had drifted across the porches
until they lay knee-keep in some of the corners.
As Miss Allison paused in front
of the doorstep with the keys, a snake glided across her
path and disappeared in one of the tangled rockeries. Both
the coloured women who were with her jumped back, and one
screamed.
"It won't hurt you, Sylvia,"
said Miss Allison, laughingly. "An old poet who owned this
place when I was a child made pets of all the snakes, and
even brought some up from the woods as he did the wild
flowers. That is a perfectly harmless kind."
"Maybe so, honey," said old
Sylvia, with a wag of her turbaned head, "but I 'spise 'em
all, I sho'ly do. It's a bad sign to meet up wid one right
on de do'step. If it wasn't fo' you, Miss Allison, I
wouldn't put foot in such a house. An' I tell you p'intedly,
what I says is gospel truth, if I ketch sound of a han't, so
much as even a rustlin' on de flo', ole Sylvia gwine out'n a
windah fo' you kin say scat!
We know from a 1907 letter that real-life
Little Colonel Hattie Cochran wrote to a fan in Shelbyville and now
in the Filson Historical Society’s collection that the Haunted House of
Hartwell Hollow was a real place in Pewee Valley. Annie Fellows
Johnston’s 1929 autobiography “Land of the Little Colonel” also noted
that, "The cabin where Gay spent a summer and the Haunted House of
Hartwell Hollow had also burned to the ground." when she lamented the
changes that had taken place in the valley since the time of the Little
Colonel books.
Undulata was originally built by the James A. Miller family of
Louisville in 1850, according to “A Place Called Pewee Valley,”
published by the Pewee Valley Centennial Commission in 1970:
Beyond Rollington, in 1848, lived an
artist, William C. Allan, whose hillside setting so attracted a
visiting couple from Louisville, Mr. and Mrs. James A. Miller, the the
following day they purchased a nearby 40-acre tract and in the spring
of 1950 moved into their new log house, located on the north corner of
what is now the Central Avenue-Muir Lane intersection…”This,” wrote
Mr. Miller in his notebook, “constituted the nucleus and very
beginning of the settlement of what is now Pewee Valley.” The Millers
called their home Maple Nook.
By 1860, the U.S. Federal Census shows that poet W.D. Gallagher owned
the home and was living there with his wife, Emma, and four of their
children: Rebecca, Edward, Emma and Fanny. The following profile of
William Davis Gallagher is from "Biographical Encyclopedia of Kentucky
of Dead and Living Men of the Nineteenth Century," published in 1877:
 "GALLAGHER,
WILLIAM DAVIS, Editor, Author and Poet, was born August, 1808, in
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. His father was one of the refugees from
English vengeance on account of the rebellion in Ireland, in which he
was a participant. His father died when he was young, and, in 1816,
his widowed mother, with her family of four sons, emigrated to
Cincinnati. W.D. Gallagher spent several years on a farm near that
city, and passed his Winters in a desultory way in the country school.
At the age of twenty-one, he began to learn the printing business,
and, while an apprentice, began his career as an author by publishing
a small paper, the "Literary Gazette." From that time, his pen was
hardly ever idle, he becoming a contributing editor to many
newspapers...Since 1850, when not employed under the Government or an
editor, he has been engaged on his beautiful little farm, situated on
the Cincinnati and Louisville Short Line Railroad, about sixteen miles
from Louisville, chiefly in cultivating fruits, dreaming dreams of the
life to come, and in enjoying, with philosophic resignation, his very
moderate share of goods of this world...His prose writings have been
extensive, covering almost every department of thought; but it is as a
poet that Mr. Gallagher is most widely known. The larger part of his
poetical writings have not been published, and most of his published
pieces have bee "scattered to the four winds." One of his accomplished
daughters undertook, several years ago, to collect all his poetic
productions for publication in a permanent form, but finally abandoned
the attempt. His most considerable and, probably, most valuable poem
is "Miami Woods" -- commenced in 1839 and finished in 1856. Several
others were quite extensive, and are divided into different parts or
periods. His "Civile Bellum," or war poems, many of them, had a wide
circulation, and many of his separate pieces, as "The Laborer," "Truth
and Freedom," "The Promise of the Present," "A Hymn to the Day that is
Dawning," "Western Pioneers," etc., were long ago placed among the
most beautiful poems of the language; and those, with scores and
scores of others of great beauty and purity, have placed their author
among the first of American poets..."
A few examples of his poetry:
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Stanza from "Song of the
Western Pioneer"
"A song for the early
times out West,
And our old green forest
home,
Whose pleasant memories
freshly yet
Across the bosom come!
A song for the free and
gladsome life,
In those early days we
led.
With teeming soil
beneath our feet,
And a smiling heav'n
o'erhead!
Oh, the waves of life
danced merrily,
And had a joyous flow,
In the days when we were
pioneers,
Fifty years ago!" |
Oh, Think Not Less I
Love Thee!"
"Oh, think not less I
love thee,
That are paths are
parted now;
For the stars that burn
above thee,
Are not truer than my
vow.
As the fragrance to the
blossom,
As the moon unto the
night,
Our love is to my bosom
Its sweetness and its
light.
Oh, think not less I
love thee,
That thy hand I thus
resign --
In the heav'n that bends
above thee,
I will claim thee yet as
mine.
Though the vision of
life's morning
Ever flitted one like
thee--
And thou, life's lapse
adorning,
Shalt hence that vision
be." |
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Poetry of the Signal Corps Association 1860-1865
"Move on the columns! Hesitate
No longer what to plan or do;
Our cause is good - our men are true -
The fight is for the Flag, the State,
The Union, and the hopes of men;
And Right will end what Wrong began,
For God the right will vindicate."
--W. D. GALLAGHER. |
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“A Place Called Pewee Valley” notes that there were “numerous
rockeries, and snakes, in the yard,” just as Annie Fellows Johnston
describes.
By 1880, the U.S. Federal Census shows that the 71-year-old poet
was widowed and living with his daughters Emma, Fanny and Jennie
Cotton, as well as his granddaughter, Sally Cotton. He died in 1894
and had been in the grave seven years when “The Little Colonel’s
Holidays” was written in 1901. The home’s original site, as shown on
the 1879 map, is now the location of Central
Place Subdivision and there is, indeed, a deep natural hollow on the
property.
Even eerier from the haunted house aspect is that Gallagher didn't
escape the attention of Edgar Allen Poe, who analyzed his handwriting
in the
article below:
W. D. Gallagher
Mr. GALLAGHER
is chiefly known as a poet. He is the author of some of our most
popular songs, and has written many long pieces of high but unequal
merit. He has the true spirit, and will rise into a just distinction
hereafter. His manuscript tallies well with our opinion. It is a very
fine one, — clear, bold, decided and picturesque. The signature above
does not convey, in full force, the general character of his
chirography, which is more rotund, and more decidedly placed upon the
paper.
page by Donna Russell
As an interesting
aside, there was another Undulata in a town in the next county
(Shelbyville, Kentucky), that was owned by Harry Weissinger, the Old
Colonel's real-life brother.
http://clearcreekbeagles.net/history.htm
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The People & Characters:
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Knights of Kentucky,
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Their Final Resting Places
The Places: in Pewee (Lloydsboro) Valley:
Map,
Map 2,
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The Beeches
Edgewood,
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The Railroad Station,
"Lloydsboro Seminary",
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The Haunted House at Hartwell Hollow,
Confederate Home
Rollington,
Minor Places In Old Louisville:
The Culbertson
Mansion, "Home of a Hero" Elsewhere:
The Cuckoo's Nest (Indiana),
Lee's Ranch,
Camelback Mountain &
Hole-in-Rock (Arizona),
San Antonio and
The Little Town of Bauer (Boerne),
Texas,
The Gate of the Giant Scissors (France)
Letters from Annie
Fellows Johnston and "Mrs Walton"
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