Published: June 28, 2008 10:31 pm            

Storied history: A look at the house at 812 S. 5th Street.

TERRE HAUTE — Many of Vigo County’s historic homes are a work of art. Michael and Jackie Carrell’s home in historic Farrington’s Grove once housed its own artist. And as an artist herself, Jackie Carrell thinks that’s pretty interesting.

The Carrells’ home at 812 S. Fifth St., built in 1906, was the longtime residence of Mary Alice Hadley, whose pottery is well-known in artistic circles. According to Carrell, Hadley’s family lived in the house when Mary Alice was born in 1911, but by that time, the property already had a storied history.

“[Hadley] has a big pottery place in Louisville, Kentucky, that her husband bought her for her birthday,” Carrell said. “She was an artist, she did oils and watercolors, she had exhibits in museums, and then she came up with this pottery idea and made pottery for a luncheon she had on her yacht … and people liked it, so her husband bought her an old factory for her birthday, and she started making the pottery, and she’s world-famous. You see her pottery everywhere. And so now I’ve taken up a collection — I was never into the pottery until I found out she was born here and lived in my house,” she laughed. “And I’m kind of an artist myself, I do oil painting and watercoloring, so it’s kind of cool.”

Hadley Pottery is still in operation in Louisville. According to the company’s Web site, HadleyPottery.com, Mary Alice Hadley worked with the company until her death in 1965.

According to Carrell, Hadley’s former home is on property that once belonged to Col. William Edward McLean, a Union Army officer during the Civil War. Carrell said that McLean’s original house was torn down sometime between 1903 and 1906, and that the current house was built in 1906.

McLean died Nov. 2, 1906, and is buried in Highland Lawn Cemetery in Terre Haute.

“[In] Colonel McLean’s will, he gave money to everybody, including the monument that’s in front of the building on Third Street, the city building,” Carrell said. “He gave money to everyone, and he lived on this property, so I’ve got his will. … It was really interesting, he married his wife who died, her cousin who took care of him, about six weeks before he died, and left her everything. And I guess his kids had a fit over it and took her to court. There’s a lot of stuff like that in the [home’s] abstract, so it’s kind interesting to read the abstracts of these old houses …

“We’ve tried to turn [the house] back to the way it was,” Carrell said. “We’ve redone the porch, which had ’50s wrought iron on it, so we’ve taken it back. We’ve tried to work on the house to make it look like it originally did …

“People are really surprised to hear that Mary Alice Hadley lived here,” Carrell said. “Harmonious Hedgehog sells a lot of her pottery, and when I went in there, and I’ve gone to Louisville, too, to where they still have the pottery factory even though she’s been dead for quite a while, and they were just shocked that she lived right here in Terre Haute. They were so surprised. We’re gonna have a special plaque made to put on the house that says ‘Mary Alice Hadley’s birthplace’ or something like that. And they were so surprised, and they looked at a picture of the house and they can’t wait until September because Mary Alice Hadley pottery comes here in September and does an exhibit out in the yard of the Hedgehog. So they invited me to come in September …

“I just found out a lot of this information because I’m the coordinator for Farrington’s Groove, which are [a group of] middle-school kids, and our project right now is doing historical homes, the homes that they live in, and we’re doing research on their homes so that they take pride in their house,” Carrell said. “So when I went to the museum, I found all this out along with them, and they’re finding out information on their homes, and I was just astounded when I saw [Hadley’s] name in the obituary of her father and a little information, and then I dug deeper and I was like, wow, she really lived in my house! I can picture her walking down the stairs now and everything, and painting here,” she chuckled. “It’s so cool for me, because I like to paint, to know that an artist lived in my home, y’know, it’s kind of thrilling for me.”

        

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