Yellow Pine

Yellow Pine Christian Church

Yellow Pine Bed and Breakfast Owned by Mary Bagwell McKinney and Bill McKinney

While we were waiting for the next tour of Yellow Pine Inn, I spied a lady walking across the grounds dressed in period costume. I said I had to get a picture of that lady and took off after her with my camera. When she turned around to face the camera I recognized Charlotte Smith Martin! She was the tour guide at the Inn today. By the way, the Yellow Pine Inn has been restored so well, it is breathtaking.

Submitted by Ann Mays Harlan

When Jannell and I went up on the porch at Yellow Pine Inn to wait for the next tour, we were surprised by a former classmate. Pictured, L to R:

Boyce Dickinson (1958).

Submitted by Ann Mays Harlan

(Yellow Pine Inn) today. We had a great time and visited with many Minden and Doyline friends. Pictured here is Jannell shopping at one of the many vendors' tables.

Picture taken during the Centennial at Yellow Pine by Mary McKinney April 1, 2006

Sherry, the photos that Mary sent of the blooming yellow roses, show her gorgeous

Lady Banksia rose. Everyone was raving about it. In the South, this rose is commonly called "Lady Bankshire."

Bill and Mary McKinney turned an old schoolhouse into The Yellow Pine Inn Bed and Breakfast. The building has been in Bill’s family since his grandfather bought it in 1923. This dining room adjacent to the kitchen is where guests are served breakfast. The oak pie safe belonged to Bill’s maternal grandmother. (Robert Ruiz/The Times

YELLOW PINE - ONCE UPON A TIME, Yellow Pine was a thriving lumber camp in Webster Parish with

All built with yellow pine.

The schoolhouse, erected in 1906, and church, built in 1902, still stand. Both are on the National Register of Historic Places. And Yellow Pine Christian Church still has services every Sunday. A year and a half ago, schoolhouse owners Bill and Mary McKinney turned the building, where classes were taught in one room, into The Yellow Pine Inn Bed and Breakfast. It is just a mile from the church, making it convenient for weddings and receptions.The bed-and-breakfast, via its Web site, has attracted people throughout the country to Sibley. And fans from just around the corner for meetings, eceptions, reunions, luncheons and a class cookout."We have had the homemakers club from Heflin, the Red Hatters from a local church, a wedding reception," Mary said

Nancy Wagner of San Jose and her mother, former Sibley/Gibsland resident Alberta Duckworth Mau of Santa Clara, found the Web site and made reservations in late October for a place to stay while attending a family reunion.Arriving in a rental car after dark can be apprehensive, but the two drove merrily down rural Yellow Pine Road and, at a curve in the road, the front of the house was all lit up and glowing with pumpkins."It was storybook," Wagner said."The food was very good. She cooked us a nice hot breakfast."Wagner especially liked that the McKinneys live across the street, so she and her mom had the house to themselves. "But he came in the morning and turned the coffee on for us and stayed in the big front room in case we had any questions."

The old schoolhouse has been the family home for Bill's clan since his grandfather W.S. McKinney bought it when the Yellow Pine school consolidated with a school in Sibley in 1923.Bill grew up in the house and his mother, Lula Belle McKinney, lived there until she died.They heeded his mother's wishes to preserve the house, but turned it into a bed-and-breakfast and a place to rent out for meetings so it would pay for itself.Classes for grades one through eight were held in the big room that stretches across the front of the house, said Bill, whose mother and father, Gene McKinney, attended the one-room school.

The Murrays have turned that room into the "big room," where luncheon/dinner meetings are held.A second room was used for the school auditorium and community meetings. When Bill's grandfather bought it, he added wall dividers in creative ways to make the house a home."We redid every square inch of the house," Mary said. "We repainted and put molding up, redid the kitchen."That remodeling included removal of paint and using a natural finish on one wall of bead board so you can clearly see the yellow pine.The floors are fashioned of bead board turned upside down. And the narrow brick chimney, which no longer protrudes through the roof, in the big room is original to the house.

"We found the bricks were made in Heflin. We found a mark on one of them," Mary said.They also discovered chalk notations on a bookcase that revealed it was school furniture."We found a crate in the barn with some original schoolbooks. They are readers," she said.And there was a piece of a bracket that research shows is part of a lamp holder.The small rooms are painted for different themes: blue for summer, green for spring and peach for autumn."The green room is our favorite. It has five windows looking out on the place," Mary said.The peach room is the coziest of the trio and has an adjacent porch you can step out on.It is the only one with a private deck," Mary said.But the blue one has its own charm with an antique iron bed, old family quilt, cloakroom and rocking chair.Because a historical house is the sum of all its parts, there are other interesting notes:

A Hoosier cabinet and an oak pie safe belonged to Bill's maternal grandmother and a family buffet to his mother. All are in the dining room adjacent to the kitchen, where guests are served breakfast.Hardware hanging from the ceiling in the big room are quilting hooks.A lineup of eight doors were originally hinged to divide two rooms in back when the building was a school. Bill's grandfather unhinged themand nailed them together to provide a wall between the dining room and the rest of the house.Mary created the bar with pieces of broken or chipped china to separate the dining room from the kitchen.

The island in the kitchen Bill created from a large table that his maternal grandmother brought from Ireland. "It was so rickety, so we recycled it," Bill said.A three-part folding mirror was separated and arranged above a small table in the blue room. It was bought for $15 at First Monday Trade Days in Canton, Texas.Two cloakrooms in the two rear rooms are made distinctive because they are half as tall as the 12-foot ceilings.

Although the church has been on the National Register for quite some time, the McKinneys did a lot of research to get the old school building included.hat cost us a year and a half of work. To get on the list is very hard to do," said Bill, who is proud of their accomplishment.The school was opened in 1906 in a community started about 1840."(The area) was part of a belt of yellow pine that stretched from Texas to Mississippi, but most was gone through clear cutting by 1913," Bill said.The area was the site of three lumber mills from 1891 through 1913.At the turn of the century, Yellow Pine had grown to about 2,000 and boasted a butcher shop and an ice houseWhen the last mill disbanded, it tore down most of the buildings and sold the lumber in lots.

But left the school and the church.The school building has the strong feeling of an early 20th-century rural school, the McKinneys point out in their history submitted to the National Register.As Bill explains, there were long tables with benches and 50 to 60 country youths attended classes. "The teacher went to one long table at a time to make assignments and then to the next table," Bill said.
"As built, the plan consisted of a large square room in front and two large rooms of unequal size in the rear. The two rear rooms connected via a broad opening cut in the wall and fitted with multiple folding paneled doors," says the history.The porch built around three sides of the building is original. However, the wood columns were replaced with brick and the wooden gallery floor with a concrete raised floor in 1963.Whether you go to board for a night or two or just to enjoy dinner, wander around outside, too.

Right about now, you might pick up some hickory nuts or take a turn on a swing.Or just wander down Yellow Pine Road.

You might even plan a hayride at your next high school class reunion with Mary and Bill at the Yellow Pine Inn. .