The Vernon Project: Where It All Began

The house formerly known as 310 East Vernon Street.

The house at 310 Vernon doesn’t exist anymore. Torn down, erased. The porch is gone, the windows that watched the street are gone, the sagging roof is gone. Today it’s just grass. If you drive past, you’d never know it stood there. But I can’t forget it. I grew up inside those walls, and they never left me.

I moved in during the summer of 1980, right before my sixth birthday. My brother and I joined my stepfather, his three children, and my baby half-sister in that crowded house. Saunders Elementary became my school that fall, and Vernon became my world.

The house was already ancient — probably built in the late 1800s. It had slanted floors, peeling paint, and a porch that always seemed one storm away from collapsing. To me, it felt alive. And sometimes, it felt like it wanted us to know it was alive.

One night, my brother and I woke up at the same time. At the foot of our bed, we both saw it — the top half of a person gliding past. Another time, I dreamed something invisible was dragging me under my dresser. When I woke, I was actually underneath it. I don’t expect anyone to believe me, but those memories are why I’ve never been able to shake that house.

And then there was the other side. Life inside 310 Vernon wasn’t easy. My stepfather was an alcoholic. The house held as much trauma as it did mystery. Abuse, fear, grief — they all lived there with us. What’s strange, maybe even unsettling, is that the deeper I dig into the house’s past, the more I find those same patterns. Families who lived hard lives. Struggles, pain, and sometimes the same shadows we carried. It makes me wonder if houses remember.

Years later, I went back. The house was collapsing in slow motion, waiting for the end. I took a photo — the last photo I’d ever take of it. Not long after, it was gone for good. But something in me refused to let the story end there.

That’s the seed of the Vernon Project. Call it obsession if you want. I want to know who lived there before us. What lives played out inside those walls. Why that little corner of Mount Pleasant mattered enough to last for over a century — and why it finally disappeared.

I didn’t begin with deeds or census rolls. I began with newspapers. Old Mount Pleasant papers, full of fragments: obituaries tucked between ads, a stray line about a house fire, a name connected to Vernon Street. Fragments at first, but fragments are enough to build a trail.

The Vernon Project probably doesn’t matter to anyone but me. But through it, I’m piecing together not just my past, but a history that could easily be forgotten forever. Along the way, I’ll show not only what I find, but how I find it — so anyone can retrace their own steps into forgotten houses, families, and places.

Next time, I’ll take you into the newspaper adventure — the first real breadcrumbs that brought Vernon back to life.