GREAT SMOKY MOUNTAINS Walker Sisters Home Historic Structures Report, Part II & Furnishing Study

The Historical Data Section of the Historic Structures Report, Part II, and the Furnishing Study, Parts C and D, for the Walker Sisters Home and Complex, Great Smoky Mountains National Park, were prepared to satisfy the requirements of Historical Resource Proposal GRSM-H-6. Normally the Historical Data Section of the Historic Structures Report would have been issued independently of and separate from the Furnishing Study, Parts C and D. But in this case, the Furnishing Study was inadequate in itself to satisfy the requirements of such a study. As it chanced, the Historical Data Section incorporated a great deal of information that is needed in the Furnishing Study. In view of the fact that both studies were completed and submitted by Park Historian Robert R. Madden at nearly the same time it was possible to combine them in one report and thereby avoid the necessity of a revision of the Furnishing Study.

It must be noted, therefore, that the Historical Data Section of the Historic Structures Report, Part II, is to be considered a necessary supplement to the Furnishing Study, Parts C and D.

The Furnishing Study, Parts C and D, does not indicate the period of time to which the Walker Sisters' home should be furnished. We recommend that the period be indicated as 1900-1921. This is the period of the last 21 years in the life of John N. Walker. It was he who gave the house furnishings and the home and its surrounding complex of buildings their form, and which continued on substantially unchanged until the 1960s when the last of his daughters, the Walker Sisters, died.

Roy E. Appleman