Quincy Herald-Whig | Illinois & Missouri News, SportsUnique restoration efforts in 1840s house land Clarksville man in …

By MARY POLETTI

Herald-Whig Staff Writer

CLARKSVILLE, Mo. -- Richard Cottrell is living in a time capsule, a fact that overwhelms even him sometimes.

"Sometimes, when I come down from upstairs in the morning, I look around and I can't believe this is my house," Cottrell says.

At such moments, though, there are reminders of reality -- such as the distinctly 2011 dog toy lying discarded on the floor of a pristine, ornately decorated 1860s ladies' parlor.

As owner, curator and inhabitant of the Elgin/Cottrell House on the Clarksville riverfront, Cottrell shares his mid-19th-century mansion not only with his beloved beagle, Sissy, but also with tourists from all over the Midwest and historic preservation enthusiasts from all over the country.

The Elgin/Cottrell House will be featured in the March issue of Victorian Homes magazine, a national publication, for the second time in less than a year. It previously was the subject of a 12-page spread in the magazine's June 2011 issue.

Built in 1845 and expanded in 1860, the home has been lovingly restored and decorated in what might have been the 1860s splendor of a Southern plantation home, albeit on the banks of the Mississippi River in a slave state that never formally seceded from the Union during the Civil War.

Cottrell's is an interpretive restoration, derived from the study of books, magazines and other materials on what a home in the antelbellum period might have resembled. It's somewhat rare in that it incorporates not only 19th-century furniture, but also scores of beautiful antiques as decorative items, most from the 1860s and most collected in Cottrell's many years as an antiques dealer.

Although there are numerous historic homes open for tours in Northeast Missouri, the Elgin/Cottrell House is the only one in the quaint historic enclave of Clarksville, which prides itself on its image as an eclectic step back in time.

It's also something more personal to Cottrell, who grew up dreaming of calling a Southern plantation home his own.

"My vision is more Southern than this part of the world," he says. "My first love of historic homes was when I saw ‘Gone With the Wind for the first time. I wanted a house like that."

Although the Elgin/Cottrell House isn't quite Tara, nor were the Elgins quite the kin of Scarlett O'Hara, their heritage is rooted deeply in that of the nation.

Hazekiah Elgin, who owned the house, was a descendant of a Mayflower pilgrim, of a Revolutionary War soldier, of a cousin to John Adams. He came to Missouri in 1817 to claim a land grant from then-President James Monroe. Although Elgin prospered as a trader, with a trading post and his own riverboat, he came into far greater wealth when he married a widow who owned 25 slaves and 125 acres of land, along with personal wealth totaling $100,000 in 1860 dollars.

The Elgin home likely would have been palatial, Cottrell says.

"Mr. Elgin had a riverboat parked out front, and he had access to all the ports of the world," he says. "He could have had fine things like these."

The house stayed in the Elgin family for more than a century, until 1949. After changing hands a few more times, it became Cottrell's in 2006.

A Clarksville native, Cottrell already had lived in and restored five other houses. A former schoolteacher and florist, he was the curator of Hannibal's Garth Mansion in the late 1970s and early 1980s, planting the house's well-known rose garden and hosting Christmas tours. He also owns Richard's Great Stuff antiques shop on the historic Clarksville strip. But he had long dreamed of owning a museum house, ever since visiting Natchez, Miss., as a college student.

The Elgin legacy would be his final project, Cottrell decided.

"I figured this would be my swan song, so I went all out," he says. "I did a lot of things I never was able to afford before."

Cottrell spent three years restoring the house, living in it only on the weekends because of its lack of modern amenities, before he moved in full time in 2009. He refers to it now as a living restoration because it has modern bathrooms and a modern kitchen, although most of the house is period-appropriate -- complete with its lack of modern heating and cooling.

The Elgin/Cottrell House has had about 3,000 visitors in the years since its newest owner opened it to the public, and Cottrell received a bit of a boost and a lot of response from an unlikely step into the national home restoration spotlight last year.

A crew from Victorian Homes was photographing a historic house in the Chicago area and rented furniture for the shoot from an antiques shop owned by a friend of Cottrell's. When the crew asked whether there were any other homes in the region that they could document while they were there, the friend suggested they call Cottrell.

A writer and photographer visited last spring, and 12 pages of tribute to Cottrell's swan song appeared in print in June. And that was only for the first floor, with its formal dining room and traditional men's and ladies' parlors.

A follow-up in the March issue will take a closer look at the bedrooms, which feature such loving and unusual touches as a 19th-century rocking horse and a collection of Victorian wedding veils.

As Cottrell stands in the middle of his time capsule, he knows there's something special about his Southern house in the North, even among other historic homes. He's heard that from plenty of visitors, he says.

"Mine is their favorite because it has so many beautiful things," he says of some visitors. "They've seen houses bigger and prettier than this, but they don't have the treasures this one has."

-- mpoletti@whig.com/221-3385

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Quincy Herald-Whig | Illinois & Missouri News, SportsUnique restoration efforts in 1840s house land Clarksville man in ...