Growing up, Linda Parish and her sister played with dolls. While her sister would sew clothes for them and create stories, Parish was busy arranging their houses.
Years later, she continues to arrange houses, now on a life-sized scale.
“It’s just what I always wanted to do,” Parish said.
When two women put an old home with 11 acres on the market in Oglethorpe County, Parish decided to make the move from Tucker.
“We came down and we made a deal and paid for that house by putting $101 into each one of those ladies’ savings accounts the first Saturday of every month,” Parish said. “That’s how we paid for it.”
Parish’s mother aided in the building of a subdivision and her father serviced HVAC systems. Interior design called her from a young age, and she felt drawn to a historic home.
“I always wanted to live in an older home because, to me, they had a soul,” Parish said.
The soul found in the Titus-Parish home in Lexington has taken 50 years to honor through renovations.
“You get that with an old house, you know,” she said. “You got to be dedicated to it. You got to love it.”
These renovations are meticulously planned and need approval from the Historic Preservation Commission. Lexington Mayor Evelyn Reece, who served on the HPC for 20 years, emphasized the importance of preservation through renovations.
“I felt like it was important for the HPC to kind of, for lack of a better description, put their money where their mouth is by actually doing real preservation work for the city,” she said.
Through this preservation, folks like Rosa NeeSmith are able to turn older homes into modern habitable spaces again.
NeeSmith grew up in Lexington and came back when a historic home with plenty of acreage became available. The house has been a project for the Nesmiths since 1979.
“We have, through the years, just put so much blood, sweat and tears into it that we really love it,” NeeSmith said.
NeeSmith, Parish and Reece all echo the sentiment that Oglethorpe County is set apart by its preservation of history.
“The buildings speak to the history,” Reece said. “They tell us where we came from. They are the story of who we are as a community, and how we evolved.”
This history and community is etched into the walls of these homes that cannot be found in such abundance in urban cities. Oglethorpe County is decorated with structures full of memories.
“Go to a modern city and come back to a small town that’s got something, and you feel a difference,” Parish said. “You feel a connection to the past, a connection to the earth.”