A once & future house: a richland family reaweakens the spirit of their 1886 homestead with help from the diaries of the original owners.

Houses that were built long ago never really belong wholly to the modern-day owners, whatever the deed may say. The current residents must share their living space with the spirits of those who lived and died within the same walls generations before. If they are friendly ghosts, the pleasure of their acquaintance can add immeasurably to daily life in an old house, and it is all the better if they left some written records while they were alive, so that all the occupants--past, present, and future--can get acquainted with one another. Linda and Robert Luckett are the contemporary caretakers of just such a legacy in their Richland home. Aided by the diaries of the original owners, they have preserved the past while adding their own whimsical touches to the 1886 structure.

The Misterfeldt Home Place, so designated in 1986 by the National Register of Historic Places, is located on seven acres a few miles south of Jackson in what was once known as "Plain." This late-Victorian clapboard farmhouse is the legacy of a hard-working, family-loving immigrant named Henry Carl Misterfeldt. Speaking little English, he emigrated to America in 1869 from Neu Levin, Germany, and eventually wound up down South with little money in his pocket but plenty of determination to work and make a life for himself.

Henry Misterfeldt was a farmer who raised potatoes, corn, and cotton and dealt daily with the travails of sick mules and bad weather. Sustaining the poor man through all was his Mississippi-born wife, Maggie, whom he called "Missie," and his bright hopes for a family and a prosperous future. One of his fondest dreams was of a house he could call his own.

"Traveling from Richland Creek to Steen's Creek," wrote his great-granddaughter Mary Alfreda Spell many years later, "Henry often passed the old Ware Place ... Of all the places in the community it was his favorite. As he rode by on his horse he would frequently stop and imagine how wonderful it would be to live under the shade of those stately trees ..."

In 1886 this dream came tree, although the old abandoned two-room house was hardly the country mansion he would have liked to provide for his young wife and their two children, Emma and Edgar. Edgar, who would grow up to serve in the Mississippi legislature from 1912 to 1914, kept a diary much like his father's, recording the daily weather, community events, and family milestones. Farming gave way to successful sawmill and lumber interests, and the Misterfeldt family prospered apace.

Over the next few decades, the ramshackle old property among the beautiful old trees blossomed into a wonderful, spacious family house, with rooms, porches, and upstairs space added to bring it to its present capacious grace.

In 1910, a charming feature was added to the family property: the playhouse. Edgar's little daughter Elise was tied for highest scholastic honors with a local lad. Modest as ever, and wishing to make others happy, Edgar told his daughter that if she won the prize and gave it to the rival boy, he would build her a playhouse. Elise had never seen a playhouse, but she knew that if her daddy built it, it would be something to see! She shook hands on the deal. She won the medal, turned it over happily to the boy, and claimed the debt of honor from her father.

Edgar Misterfeldt was a smart man: he knew that a promise made to a bright-eyed eight-year-old girl must be kept at all costs. The playhouse, still enjoyed to this day by a new generation of children, is an exquisite miniature of the "big house," with its curlicued porch, central gable, and sparkling glass-paned windows.

"My grandchildren have certainly spent lots of time out here," says Linda Luckett, ducking down to give a tour of the Lilliputian-scale quarters. "But I think I enjoy it more than they do!" She has furnished the little rooms with pintsize beds, an ironing board, and even a tiny crystal chandelier over the dwarf dining table. The visitor wants to quaff an Alice-in-Wonderland "Drink Me" potion and shrink enough to live in this place, where surely no grown-up problems could ever surface.

Back in the main house, the charm is just as plentiful, although the doorways are taller and the rooms are bigger. The house, which in floorplan is much as the Misterfeldts left it, features large rooms opening off a wide central hallway. On the left, there is the lavish master bedroom and a spacious bathroom fashioned from a small former bedroom. Here, an affectionate shrine to the Lucketts' parents has been fashioned, with photographs from WWII on proud display--their dads in Army and Navy regalia, morns looking young, pretty, and anxious.

To the right, a blush-pink parlor with a fireplace and 1930s London grand piano leads into a sunny dining room beyond, also painted a cheerful rosy tint. The windowpanes are the original hand-blown ones installed by Henry Misterfeldt. The furnishings are not original to the house but are true to the period: Linda Luckett's talented sister, Patty Gianola, was an enthusiastic helper in scouring antique auctions for just the right items to give life to the renovated interior. The sisters set off on many a jolly road trip throughout the Southern states, driving, in Linda's words, "down winding roads that seemed like forever, asking directions at every crossing."

"We learned quickly that antique dealers have no set hours," she recalls. "But it was a really great time, and we felt sad when the house was finished!"

Well, there's "finished," and then there's "finished." Old houses, especially when they acquire new owners, are always evolving, accumulating new stories to tell. Anyone meeting Linda, and seeing that unmistakable collector's gleam in her eye, would doubt that she will ever stamp "Finis" on her collection.

Upstairs, two airy bedrooms with beadboard-paneled walls are filled with old-fashioned furniture and family acquisitions. The Luckett grandchildren are frequent inhabitants of these quarters.

After faithfully refurbishing the formal rooms of the Misterfeldt family home with appropriate period pieces, Linda retreated to the rear of the house and gave free reign to her own particular passion: the 1980s. As in: Lucille Ball figurines. Jackson telephone books from the '50s. Formica dinettes. Elvis posters. A Parade magazine with a just-crowned Mary Ann Mobley as Miss America. Linda's own tutu sash from the Jo-Ella School of Dance. And on and on.

Many descendants of the original Misterfeldt family are scattered throughout Mississippi and have recorded fond memories of time spent at the old home place. Linda and Robert, while feeling perfectly at home in their beautifully restored old farmhouse, are aware that it "belongs" to others, in memory at least.

"You never really 'own' an old house," reflects Linda. "You just take care of it for a while. And then it kind of begins to own you."