Requiem for the historic Balfour House

A long-standing silent witness to the history of Rayville has bitten the dust. 

About two weeks ago the Balfour House – reputedly Rayville’s oldest home – was torn down without any warning or ceremony. With no notification to any of the family members who still live in Rayville. So many of the town’s citizens are still not aware what happened. This sad event appears to have come like a thief in the night. 

The reason for the Balfour House’s demolition remains unclear. It had stayed vacant for many years, and may have been torn down for scrap, or recycling at best. The nearly 165-year-old building’s skeleton of beams and sills was constructed of cypress wood cut before the Civil War, around 1860 by Judge Potts, as the Richland Beacon-News reported more than once. 

In 1891, the Balfours bought the house and then extended it. The Balfours – hence the name by which the house was known – were a prominent agricultural family who owned and operated their farm near the Boeuf River, north of the Scales Road. 

“Charles Perry Balfour and his family were active in the religious, civil, social and political affairs of Richland Parish,” the book of the Balfour genealogy recorded that late grand-daughter, Stella Balfour Jack, with the help of her sister, the late Rosemary Balfour Davis researched and wrote. 

The antique wood used to build the house came in lengths much longer than what is available today. Perhaps they may soon be used in a new building, but their location and future are unknown. 

The house stood about 2-1/2 blocks north of the railroad tracks, the property originally occupying nearly a city block, but its quiet disappearance is hardly noticed. Yet, from it, family members could hear the electricity generating station a few blocks away. That station – a remarkable art deco or art modern concoction that complemented the Court House – was itself demolished fairly recently. The fate of these two structures is a sad reflection on Rayville’s sense of history and civic pride. 

Both buildings had seen events that marked Rayville’s history. The generating station was historic for providing power to the community and for its style. But before then, the Balfour House had silently witnessed the Civil War, specifically the supply trains on the town’s rails with troops, food, ammunition, and other necessities not just for the town of Vicksburg on the Mississippi, but for the rest of the Confederacy further east before Vicksburg was besieged and surrendered. The railroad was crucial to the war effort.  

To lose the key witness to such historic events tears out the roots of a community. Sadly, this is what has happened with the loss of the Balfour House. 

As Stella wrote back in 1980, 

In its day (it) was a grand old house the grounds of which originally occupied the greater part of a city block. Constructed mostly of cypress, the house sits high upon old brick (pillars). A porch trimmed with intricate gingerbread design extends across the front of the house to the bay window of the large parlor. Two large, well designed gables adorn the roof on either side of the front of the house. A center hallway extends about thirty feet and opens into a side gallery which extends about thirty feet further. Two bedrooms open off the right side of the hallway and the parlor opens off the left. At the end of the hallway another door opens to the left which leads to three more spacious bedrooms. At the end of the last bedroom is another gallery and across this gallery is the large dining room and kitchen. This gallery connects to the side gallery described above and continues on around the house to a bathroom. The ceilings throughout the house, including the galleries, are twelve feet high.

Stella, Rosemary and brothers Hugh and James moved there when Stella was about four, after her grandfather died in 1921. Along with her father, Hugh Ben and her mother, Ethel Toombs Balfour, they grew up in a residence which allowed “the gracious way of life prior to and at the turn of the Twentieth Century,” Stella wrote.  

Melba Hendrix, columnist for this newspaper, once lived in an apartment at the rear and wrote fondly of her experience there. Several times she noted the bad state of repair of the desolately empty residence. She also expressed the hope that it might be refurbished and turned into a museum, though she recognized the enormity of the task and the costs involved. 

This writer’s husband, Ron Davis (77) – Rosemary’s son – of Vicksburg, MS, expressed dismay when his son, Edward, told him of the fate of the Balfour House. Ron – then Ronnie – lived there in the 1950s with his mother and grandmother while his father, J.W. Davis worked in the oil fields. He speaks often of hearing and feeling the hum of the generating station during the night, of the clickety-clack, clickety-clack of the trains rumbling through town and shaking his bed, and of riding his bike back and forth on errands, to meet playmates or to see a movie at the Joy theatre. The house has always been a part of his life and for him to hear the news hit him like hearing of the death of a dear family member. 

Yet, after walking through the empty lot last week and recalling some of his childhood memories there, he said he could now see the end of his favorite childhood home philosophically. 

“It’s much better that it’s been torn down instead of being left to rot,” he said. “It may seem brutal, but razing it to the ground has given the Balfour House a much more gracious ending than if it had been left for the windows to sag, the glass to shatter, the roof to fall in and the building to have become an eyesore. Even though I can’t say I like it, I am reconciled to its loss.”