We have written about the Rockbrook water wheel in the past but wanted to share this new photograph that we just came across while doing some research into the history of Rockbrook at the Transylvania County library. It is a great view of the water wheel from the perspective of the lake. We know the water wheel was in use from the founding of the camp in 1921 until Duke Power brought electrical lines to the camp in 1930. If you stand on the dam at the lake today and look down you can still see the stone remains of the water wheel foundation.
The Rockbrook water wheel, date of photograph unknown
The Rockbrook water wheel, by Elizabeth O’Neill Verner
The water wheel was such an important and certainly noticeable part of the camp in those early years that there was even a song written about it! Take a look at this earlier post to learn more about the Rockbrook Camp water wheel song.
There is also a beautiful etching by famed Charleston artist Elizabeth O’Neill Verner of the camp water wheel. Mrs. Verner was an art instructor during the early years of camp and her daughter Elizabeth Verner Hamilton was the first camper at Rockbrook! In this earlier blog post, you can see a photograph of Mrs. Verner teaching an art class at camp. Maybe they were drawing the water wheel?
A local rumor has it that when the water wheel was taken down it was given to another camp in the area at some point in the 1940’s. We have not been able to verify the story, however. Wouldn’t it be cool if we could track down the old wheel?
We also have a little bit of amazing video of the wheel in motion! This footage came to us from an alum and it was incorporated into a video about Rockbrook’s history. We’ve since made a more complete video about Rockbrook’s History, but it’s still fun to see this shorter version too. Enjoy!
You probably didn’t know it, but Jayne, who has, since 2015, helped Rockbrook girls enjoy adventure trips at camp, also teaches women’s backpacking classes.
You’ve seen Jayne at camp guiding rafts down the Nantahala, leading overnight canoe trips on the French Broad, leading groups through our zipline course, guiding backpacking and camping trips in Pisgah, and leading day hikes in Dupont, just to name few of her adventures with Rockbrook campers.
Blue Ridge Outdoors magazine has just published an interesting article profiling Jayne and the women’s backpacking classes she offers here in western North Carolina. Here’s a link so you can go read, Hard Fought: Backpacking Buff Empowers Women to Hike.
Go check out the article. You’ll learn about Jayne’s background, more about her outdoor adventure experience, and I bet you’ll notice several people in the article’s photos.
We were excited last week when the local movie theater began showing The Greatest Showman, not just because we love a good movie, but because of its connection to Rockbrook! As some of you may remember, Nancy Clarke Carrier, the founder of Rockbrook is the great-grandaughter of the famous P.T. Barnum- The Greatest Showman himself! Here is a wonderful old photograph of P.T. Barnum (seated on right) and to the far right is Julia Caroline Hurd, Nancy Carrier’s mother. Such rich history! For more on their family history check out this previous post.
In keeping with the P.T. Barnum connection, we have regularly heard from campers from the early years of camp that there was circus memorabilia in the Rockbrook house. The most frequently mentioned item was a small chair that was once owned by Tom Thumb, a star of Barnum’s circus. Campers mention getting to see and even sit in the chair. The chair is no longer in the home but its regular mention has led us on a multi year quest to track it down! The only clue we had was that a family member was pretty sure that the chair had been donated to a Barnum museum!
The first stop on the great chair quest was the Ringling Museum down in Florida which houses lots of Barnum and Circus memorabilia. Sarah and Jeff were on the road hosting camp reunion parties and made a point to go by the museum to see if they could find any information about the chair. Unfortunately they had no such chair in their collection but it was a good start!
Next up was to contact The Barnum Museum in Bridgeport, CT. We spoke with the curator of the museum who said they did have a few Tom Thumb chairs in their collection but none of them had any history associated with the Carrier Family. They did have one in the collection with no background information so our next challenge was to find a photo of the Barnum Rockbrook Chair. If we could just find a picture we may be able to make a match!
Carrier great grand children and the Tom Thumb Chair, circa 1970
We spent several months looking through the archives to no avail when out of the blue a set of photographs was donated to Rockbrook by Phillip Tucker who is a great grandson of Nancy Carrier. While flipping through the pictures we were THRILLED to see this photo:
We were ecstatic to find the photo and sent it promptly to the Barnum Museum for their inspection and were so happy to get the following reply:
Tom Thumb Dining Chair. Photo provided courtesy of The Barnum Museum. Anyone wishing to use the image must receive permission in writing from The Barnum Museum. (info@barnum-museum.org)
“…But it seems very likely that with the background story you stated previously, this chair came to the museum from Nancy Carrier’s grandson. Of course, the chair, being part of a dining room set, is not entirely unique, though possibly only one of two still in existence, that we know of. So it does seem likely that going back many years, the Clarke-Carrier chair was donated to The Barnum.” – Adrienne Saint-Pierre, Curator
So, while we can’t say with total certainty that this is THE chair, it sure seems likely that we have found the Rockbrook Tom Thumb Chair! Here it is in all it’s fully restored glory. Next time you take a trip to Bridgeport, CT, be sure to go by the museum and pay it a visit!
For more on Tom Thumb and The Greatest Showman check out this neat article by the Hollywood Reporter that compares the real people to the characters in the movie!
