Historic Monroeville, Alabama home burned 84 years ago in January 1940

'Sook' Faulk and young Truman Capote.

This week marks 84 years since the Faulk family residence on South Alabama Avenue burned to the ground. This residence, where Truman Capote lived between 1927 and 1933, was located on South Alabama Avenue, just north of Mel’s Dairy Dream in downtown Monroeville. Capote, who would have been 15 years old at the time of the fire, also spent several summer vacations in the house.

The fire occurred on the night of Jan. 19, 1940 and was big news at the time. Under the headline, “Faulk Residence Destroyed By Fire Last Friday Night,” a story about the incident prominently appeared on the front page of the Jan. 25, 1940 edition of The Monroe Journal.

According to that story, “the home of Misses Jennie and Nannie Faulk, just south of town, was completely destroyed by fire last Friday night. Practically all the furniture and household effects were burned.”

The Journal reported that the fire began around 10 p.m. and was thought to have started in the kitchen.

“But it is not definite because the occupants of the house had retired when the blaze started,” The Journal reported. “Passersby discovered the fire in the house and aroused the family.”

The Monroeville Fire Department was “promptly summoned and every effort was made to extinguish the blaze. On account of the temperature, ranging from 11 to 15 degrees, and a stiff north wind, it was impossible to save the building, but firemen and people of the town turned their attention to saving adjoining property.”

Jennie and Nannie Faulk were sisters, and they operated a successful millinery shop on the downtown square. Millinery shops are now largely a thing of the past, but in their heyday, they were women’s stores that mostly sold women’s hats and other accessories. Sources say that a second house was built on the site of the burned house and that it was demolished in 1988.

Interestingly, the Faulk house fire occurred during one of the coldest winters on record. In the Feb. 1, 1940 edition of the paper, it was reported that “Monroeville is just thawing from the hardest freeze in 41 years. Through Monday, freezing temperatures had been recorded for 11 days, the mercury dropping as low as eight.

“Old timers remembered the freeze of February 1899 when all the blue birds in this country were killed, all fig trees and many other fruit trees were killed, but the freeze lasted for only a couple of days.

“For the past two weeks, people have spent most of the time here in Monroeville repairing or trying to melt the ice in water pipes and bath tubs with running water were a novelty. Few families were able to get water on their premises for cooking. Many of them gathered up buckets and any other vessels that would hold water and went to the springs, the only hole of water not covered with ice.”

In the end, if you stroll down the sidewalk to the site of the old Faulk house, you’ll find an Alabama Historical Association marker that mentions the 1940 house fire. It also notes that Nannie “Sook” Faulk was the inspiration for characters in Capote’s “The Grass Harp,” “The Thanksgiving Visitor” and “A Christmas Memory.” It also tells readers that Monroeville remained important to Capote throughout his life and that he returned to the area many times in the years before his death in 1984 to visit relatives.