There is a house in Hiram that turns 100 this year.
The light green house next to on Seaboard Avenue has had a few changes over the years. While the house was built as a three-bedroom home, a wall in one of the bedrooms was knocked out to create a living room/dining room combination. A screened-in back porch was added and part of that later was turned into a third bedroom, and a full and half bath were added as well.
“It’s been changed a good bit,” said Martha Oglesby, who now owns the house. “We wanted to keep the walls like they were. There’s one room that hasn’t been touched except we added a closet to it. It has same walls, high ceilings and an old closet like they used to have.”
The kitchen was expanded to around double its size. The original kitchen was very small and hard to work in, Oglesby said. That was something that Rosa Evelyn Sorrells Green, whose parents built the house, had mentioned.
“She said, ‘I don’t know how my mama cooked in here on a wood stove,’” Oglesby said.
Another change turned the hall into another room.
“It’s not a hall anymore because it’s been shut off,” Oglesby said. “At one time, that’s where the bathroom was. Now it’s kind of a library for me.”
The house was built with some doors having doorknobs installed at toddler height while other knobs were placed where they are today.
Outside, the house has been painted, and a retaining wall between the side yard and driveway has been removed. Out back, the old barn and smokehouse still stands, and a cement pad marks where the well was.
The home has only had three owners in its history of almost a century. It was built in 1912 by W. Esker and AddieBelle Sorrells. A gray, ranch-style house just down the street also belonged to the Sorrells.
“They owned a good bit of property here,” Oglesby said.
In the early 1950s, the Sorrells family moved to Florida to get into the orange-growing business, and they sold the house to J.T. Thompson Jr., who used the home as a rental property. The house eventually was sold to Oglesby’s in-laws. They later passed it down to their son and daughter-in-law, who have lived in the home since 1998.
In 1998, Green stopped by Seaboard Avenue to visit the house in which she grew up. She died this month at 102.
