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2 One side of the 30-foot living room is home to one half of the twin fireplaces that give the home its name, “Twin Fires.” The beams in this room are from the original log cabin and date back to 1836. The ornate cupboard in the background is French and from the late 1800s. The painting to the right is a 17th century Flemish and the oldest painting in the Simpson home.
rowing up in Somerset, Mike Simpson always admired the old house on Monticello Road called Twin Fires. Today, he and his wife, Tammie, have been calling the historic property home for over 32 years. Called “Twin Fires” because of the two twin fireplaces at either end of the main living room, the home is a Pulaski County landmark. The Simpsons purchased the home in 1984 when it came up for auction. Originally it was the farmhouse of Stephen Smith, a Revolutionary War veteran who received the property as a 100-acre land grant from the state of Virginia as a reward for his military service. Smith and his wife built a two-story double log house on the property, complete with a large fireplace in each room, one on the northeast and the other on the southwest end. In articles that detail the time that Stephen Smith and his family lived in the house, descriptions of the property include another building that was used as a slave quarters in the back of the house, a deep well, a smoke house and a large orchard.
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By the 1930s, the original log cabin was in disrepair and no longer structurally sound. The owners at that time, Dr. and Mrs. A.B. Waddle, had the structure rebuilt to include two bedrooms in the main section as well as a bedroom and bath above the garage for their gardener. The design of this new home was done by Stratton Hammon, a well-known architect from Louisville, Kentucky. When the Waddles had the original log cabin taken apart to be reconstructed, they managed to salvage beams and other architectural details to be used in the new construction. Unfortunately the Waddles were never able to enjoy the new home; Mrs. Waddle’s aging father did not want to leave his own home and the couple sold the Smith property to another family. “Blanche Waddle always referred to the property as ‘Money sunk’ the rest of her life,” writes Simpson in a summary of his current home. “Blanche stayed in her family home place on Griffin Avenue in Somerset until her death many years later.”