Lots of people make the move to the country, but not many
can say they took their house with them. The Huffs can.
Charles and Tweedie Huff moved from a home in the country to
Yazoo City, Miss., in 1979. The nine-room house they bought
in town belonged to the Wise family, owners of a department
store, and was built in 1904. The Huffs lived there for 20
years until the country called again. Tweedie says they just
couldn't stand the thought of leaving the house.
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The Huffs bought property along the
Mississippi bayou in
1996 and began talking about moving their house from Mound
Street in Yazoo to their new acreage. "We wanted to move it
but just didn't know anybody who could," Tweedie notes.
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Then they happened on a newspaper
article about a house the
size of theirs that had been moved. So they contacted the
man who did it. "He came out and said it could be done, but
it would have to be moved in pieces," she
says.
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Every window and door had to be taken
out for the move. Nine
fireplaces were torn out as well, but Tweedie wanted as much
of the original material back in the house as possible. "We
cleaned brick for days in the boiling hot sun because I
wanted to use all that I could from the old house," she
says. Chimney brick from the original house is now in the
foundation and the new location's brick back
porch.
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The house was moved in four pieces over three weeks in
October 1998. The move itself went smoothly, until the last
piece. "It was the biggest," Tweedie recalls. The piece was
loaded on a truck and moved through the heart of Yazoo City.
"They came by the high school and had six flats
simultaneously because of the weight. That night was Yazoo
City High School's homecoming, and the house blocked one of
the entrances. But they were so lovely. They opened a
different gate."
After months of renovation and retooling, the Huff family
moved into the house just before Thanksgiving in 1999. The
structure turns 100 years old this year. "Old houses just
have a lot of charm that you can't get in a new one,"
Tweedie says. "I don't believe we could have ever built this
for what we spent redoing it."