Today it might be considered a “tiny house,” but 160 years ago the two-room house on Clay Street would have been considered a normal-sized home.

In fact, a family of 10 – who had eight children – lived in what Roanoke College is calling the Wertz Home or the Clay Street House. By fall, area elementary-school children should be able to imagine what family life was like there in the mid-1800s in the Town of Salem.

Roanoke College restored the former eyesore, a falling-down house that Dr. Whitney Leeson, professor of History and Anthropology at the college, gave insight into during a talk at the Salem Museum on Jan. 15.

The college is using period cabin furniture donated by Explore Park, she explained and is looking for certain items listed in the inventory when family head Christian Wertz died.

History professor Mark Miller has noted that the house ¬– which almost fell to pieces until the college began a several-year project which involved removing overgrowth, jacking it up, removing old asbestos siding from the 1950s, replacing the tin roof and restoring structural components – is significant because people are usually only interested in saving the big houses.

“Whole families often lived in one room,” Miller noted. When the Wertz family lived there, it had one room on the ground floor and another on top of it.

Two beds and a trundle bed will be moved into the upper story where the Wertz family probably slept. “Conveniences” such as toilet areas would have been outside. A restroom has been added for convenience of school groups. Leeson noted Mark Miller “has been on the job every day.”

The house, also known over the years as the Burke Cabin, started out as part of tanyard property and also lime kiln property on the corner of what is Thompson Memorial Drive. Much of the historical area around the house is now under that four-lane highway.

“To get an idea of what was there, we ran transecting lines,” Leeson explained and opened eight excavation units outside the house.

Then soil was carefully removed and finds cataloged by college archeology, architecture and history students and volunteers. “We found ‘domestic debris’ such as bottles, china and china dolls,” she said. “In unit five, right off the porch, we found lots of buttons.” She added the porch was where people probably sat to sew.

One entire summer was spent cataloging nails and flat glass, Leeson said.

The house was lived in by individuals over the years until about 20 years ago. She said a college employee recalls seeing one of the last residents, Jason Albert, sitting on the porch in 1983. One woman in the audience during Leeson’s talk said her uncle Altizer lived in the house in 1997.

The college got expert architectural advice from Mark Clark of Southwest Restoration in Roanoke, and tons of help from his daughter, Aerial Clark, whom, Leeson said, “led most of the job.”

“The place was in terrible shape,” Clark admitted when he saw it shortly after the college acquired the property in 2002 from the Burke family. “This was the worst house structurally I had ever been in 40 years.” He explained reconstruction had basically “built a box around a box” in order to maintain the structure.

Internal work also included stripping off 20th-century additions, such as seven layers of linoleum over wooden floors. “And there were termites in the first ¼th inch of 3/4th thick wooden floors” which Clark said were popular.

A sewer hookup had to be added to the house last year because, until 1985, all sewage from the house was dumped into the creek, Leeson said.

The Wertz House will be used in an 8300-level course for Roanoke College students. “Our goal is to work with Katie Elmore’s Education majors and minors to bring in area elementary students,” Leeson said. She anticipates starting elementary school learning labs in the fall.

Roanoke College students Mady Palmer and Katie Cleary, Elementary Ed students, are developing lesson plans for use with the house, something that will be interactive and interpretive for young children, Leeson said. Palmer has experience from interning at a children’s museum on Long Island, she added.

Leeson gave credit to Roanoke College President Mike Maxey for his support and vision for having the college involved in saving the Clay Street House. In 2015, Roanoke College received two grants totaling $100,000 to do necessary work to transform the house into a teaching museum, along with contributions from private and foundation donors. The college spent much of an additional $50,000 in college funds to remove asbestos, she said.