Dr. J.J. Rone House
(ca. 1886)
The Dr. J. J. Rone House was the home of one of the Marvin community’s native sons to study and return home to practice medicine.
17909 Marvin Rd, Charlotte, NC 28277
The Dr. J. J. Rone House was originally situated next to the Banks Presbyterian Church on the New Town Road within the Marvin community, located in the extreme western corner of Union County about two miles southeast of the Mecklenburg County line. It was built circa 1886 for Dr. James John Rone (1855-1899), a country physician, and his wife Mary Levinia McIlwain Rone (1857-1922). Although both residents of Marvin, the couple did not meet until they were students at Erskine College. They married in 1878 and left soon thereafter so that J. J. could pursue his graduate studies at the Medical College of Vanderbilt University. Following his 1884 graduation and subsequent residency training, the couple returned home in 1889 so that Dr. Rone could begin his practice.
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J. J. and Mary’s grand country house became a center of social activity for the community almost immediately upon completion. The household had the reputation of providing the best in Southern hospitality to its guests including, on occasion, local children who would feign illness in order to be kept at the house for observation and treatment just to take advantage of the fine care. The Rones also partly raised their own two daughters there, Blanche (1878-1956) and Anabel (1879-1898).
About 1891, Dr. Rone and his family moved to Pineville, where he built a second house (that burned and was rebuilt) on some seventeen acres of land. He practiced medicine in that community until 1896, when – following a written request from an ill classmate to take over his practice – Dr. Rone and his family moved to the town of Doe Run, Missouri (about 50 miles south of Saint Louis) where he practiced medicine in nearby Desloge. The two daughters graduated from Carleton College in adjacent Farmington. After the 1898 death of Anabel at the age of 19, and Dr. Rone’s death the following year, Mary and Blanche Rone returned to live in the Pineville homestead.
In the meantime, the Ross siblings – Sallie A., Maggie A., and Dennis C. Ross – purchased the former Rone House in Marvin. The Ross family managed extensive farm holdings in the area and lived in the Rone House until their respective deaths after the turn of the century. In their nearly identical wills, the Ross sisters left the house to the neighboring Banks Presbyterian Church. The church used the house for a variety of purposes over the years. In 1964, church members decided to build a new structure on the site, thereby endangering the house. Sam and Jennie Ardrey purchased the Rone House and moved it in September 1964 to its present location in a pastoral setting in the southern part of the county, at the end of a long, winding drive leading from Marvin Road.