Rediscovering hidden history

Frank Naccarato was a master hand with an ax. After more than a century, the skill he honed making railroad ties is once again apparent in a showplace of a house recently remodeled by the property’s current owners, Gayle and Paul Smith.

The home was featured earlier this winter in a segment of the television program, “If Walls Could Talk,” produced by the Home and Garden network.

Naccarato, a Priest River, Idaho, pioneer and one of the six Naccarato brothers who led the Italian migration to Priest River to build the Great Northern Railroad, built the home in 1896 out of squared hand-hewed logs. He brought his bride, Theresa Bossio, to the house and they raised eight children there.

The structure still sits on a hillside above East Settlement Road overlooking a broad expanse of the lush hay meadows that he cleared with a team of horses.

Gayle Smith bought the five-acre property in 1984 and raised two kids there. She’s been remodeling the dwelling ever since. But it wasn’t until Gayle and Paul were married in August 2002 that they decided to “go for it” and restore it to the spirit of the original home.

The process was labor intensive. The couple opened up the space by removing the walls separating two of the four main-floor bedrooms, and moved their own bedroom into the attic.

To expose Naccarato’s ax marks on the walls, they stripped three layers of finishes, wainscoting, carpet and linoleum from floors of solid fir. The wood was soiled from a century of use, and some of it had been charred by a fire.

Paul Smith used a grinder with a wire brush to scour away the dirt and debris. He rechinked the log walls and applied an acrylic sealer to protect the floors.

He framed doorways and windows in grayed barn wood, and used more of the same to frame the Naccarato family photographs that hang on the living room walls.

Gayle Smith furnished the house with period antiques, and some interesting discoveries came to light as the work progressed.

Loose mortar in a bedroom led to a letter dated 1928 written by the eldest Naccarato son, Rudolph, who grew up to be a Spokane attorney.

Along with it were a 1913 freight bill marked “bran” and a handmade prayer card.

Out of a knothole in another bedroom, Paul Smith pulled several letters, a wooden spinning top, a harness strap, an old valentine and a ring on a string.

An antiques dealer who is a friend believes the latter artifact might have been used to predict the sex of an unborn baby.

According to folklore, if the ring swung back and forth when held over the mother-to-be’s abdomen, it was thought the child would be a boy. If it moved in circles, the fetus was thought to be a girl.

“Since Grandma Theresa was a midwife, that seems logical,” Gayle Smith said.

Before she and Paul were married, she built a main-floor laundry room and a deck, and closed off the inside stairway to the basement.

The front porch was removed and a dining room was added. Later, the family constructed a patio between the house and garden.

The remodeling created a close friendship between the Smiths and Frank and Theresa Naccarato’s grandchildren, who shared their memories of the house and came to visit, and are delighted with what has been done.

“That’s really what’s been fun for us, all of the history we’ve gleaned,” Gayle Smith added.