Ghosts Under the Carpet: The Stories We Leave Behind
By Kimberly Roberts
Verna as an undergraduate student at the University of North Dakota, circa 1919. MSNC00151/2/4, Verna Stumpf Paterson papers, Nevada Historical Society.
You get to know the people who lived in your house before you. They lurk like ghosts under the carpets you pull up, revealing the marks of former walls, closets, cabinets, and bookcases on the floor. They leave pieces of themselves in nooks and crannies—rings dropped under the floorboards, Prohibition-era liquor bottles stashed in the walls, scraps of newspaper articles in the basement. We made such discoveries daily when we bought and began to restore our rather dilapidated colonial revival bungalow in the Wells Addition just south of downtown Reno, Nevada—but nothing prepared us for the moment we peeled away the layers of wallpaper in the bathroom, revealing the crumbling remains of hand-painted faux marble walls. The sheer extravagance in an otherwise modest house was shocking. At that moment, I felt a strong personal connection to the original occupants. They became people with personalities, with lives full of hopes and dreams, not just names on the pages of the city directories we had poured over while doing our house history.
Verna’s transcript from the University of Nevada, 1948. 1 and 1.5 represent A and A-; 2 and 2.5, B and B-. She continued to take classes through the mid 1960s. MSNC00151/2/4, Verna Stumpf Paterson papers, Nevada Historical Society.
My house was built in 1923 by Chester Paterson of the Paterson Construction Company for his bride, Verna Stumpf from North Dakota. Why she came to Reno and how they met is still a mystery. After attending the University of Nevada* to study engineering, Chester and his twin brother James went to work for their father Andrew, building prominent Reno landmarks including all the popular Spanish/Mission Revival elementary schools that once graced the Truckee Meadows. Of these, only McKinley Park remains, now on the National Register of Historic Places, repurposed as the McKinley Arts & Culture Center.
Clearly a woman of drive and intelligence, Verna attended graduate school at Nevada, studying science—physics, chemistry, and math—a rare achievement in an era when women were generally excluded from theoretical or hard sciences and pushed instead into applied science such as home economics. Her transcripts reveal that she was an A and B student who continued to take courses years after finishing her master’s degree.
Verna in the dining room, undated. Remnants of the blue wallpaper remain behind the radiator to this day, out of reach of the many paintbrushes that have touched the walls since. MSNC00151/2/4, Verna Stumpf Paterson papers, Nevada Historical Society.
Over the course of her career, she taught at Reno High, Verdi Elementary, and the University of Nevada. She also became intensely involved with local history, working on genealogy and researching historical markers. Among many other local clubs, she was involved with the American Association of University Women, especially in the lead up to WWII. An album housed in her papers at the Nevada Historical Society reveals the efforts of this group to prepare citizens for the sacrifices joining the war entailed, through outreach including research, articles, radio broadcasts, and educational lectures. This tremendous civic project shows that Verna was, like so many educated women of her era, an engaged and activist woman dedicated to the betterment of society.
As I continue to research the lives of the Patersons and the other families who lived in my house, I become more and more aware of how local and academic history intertwine, as the pieces we leave behind become the evidence that creates the context through which we understand our history. In the end, Dr. Who tells us, we are all just stories. What began as a house history has blossomed into some bigger, a larger, more important story that needs telling. As I move around my house working on my own projects and research, I imagine Verna doing the same. I still have a hard time seeing someone so driven, so seemingly practical and factual, with such a flamboyant, over-the-top bathroom but I am happy to call it my own.
The original faux marble in the bathroom, which has since been fully restored. Photograph courtesy of Kimberly Roberts.
* The University of Nevada, Reno (UNR) was called the University of Nevada, or simply Nevada, from 1906-1969 when the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV) became an independent university.
Kimberly Roberts grew up all over the interior West, mainly in Colorado. She studied literature and history at Colorado State University and received her master's in the history of photography, landscape, and science at the University of Nevada, Reno, where she served as the university’s photograph curator for many years. She has worked in museums, libraries, and archives across the country.
Photo by Susan Mantle.