Bobby Covey is a mover, but not a shaker. He lives in North Carolina, and he comes to the Northern Neck when a job calls for his level of expertise in handling a big move. He has a capable crew of employees, but no moving van, because Bobby moves houses, and not personal property.
Digressing for a few words, in 1904 Jeremiah Dawson, a local carpenter, built a home for his own family in the outskirts of the metropolis of Remo. The following year, he came across the road and built the house where our family has lived for the past half-century. Perhaps with the money he had earned from building our house, he proceeded to build an addition on his own home.
Jeremiah’s son, the late Jerry Dawson, once told me that his father had charged about $500 to build our house, but that was in 1905. After Jeremiah’s death in 1931, Jerry and his wife, Mary, continued to live in the house until they died over 40 years ago. Thereafter it passed through a series of owners, until it was donated to Habitat for Humanity, which planned to tear it down to be replaced by a modern building.
Inspired to save the building, the Elder B.E. purchased it for $1 with plans to move it to a wooded property we own a hundred yards up the road. Enter Bobby Covey, who was well-recommended by reviews on the internet. The recommendations were well deserved. Bobby came up to inspect the project, review what he would need, and submit a proposal. Clearly, this job was not his first.
He told us that he had been moving buildings, first with his father as a teenager, and on his own thereafter. He told us exactly what to expect, and what the cost would be, all in great detail. We set a date, and he arrived with his equipment and crew as prescribed.
He spent the first day raising the building and blocking it underneath. The second day he moved his enormous flatbed trailer under the structure, which he eased on to it. At every step, he moved the house with the same level of care that one would move a box of fine china. Once on the trailer, the house, which we named “Dawson Hall”, left its site, and headed down the road.
The trip was short, both in distance and in time. He undertook the turns out of the old location and into the new one with great precision. He went up the slight incline and placed the building on a temporary base. The project then turned to Bob Ramsey, who put the foundation in and built its brick facing. When Bob was finished with that part of the job, Bobby returned to move the house the final 50 feet to the new foundation. He set it down in complete alignment with the base Bob Ramsey had built.
At present the framing of the addition and the porches is getting underway. Our family has enjoyed watching and working with the respective crews. My initial comment focused on Bobby Covey’s attention to detail in moving a century old structure without any shaking or slippage. The building sits now atop a diminutive slope, commanding the site exactly as it had its previous location.
Lastly, when I told Jeremiah Dawson’s grandson, Curtis Sampson, what we were doing to his grandfather’s house, he replied, “My grandfather built only one house, but he built it 30 times.” Jeremiah liked to work alone, from the foundation to the roof, and he built well, as attested to by the large number of those 30 houses that are standing to this day.
