As the annual Christmas parade jingled by, a family new to downtown Lumberton’s elegant North Elm Street gathered on the front terrace of a stately home — some with tears in their eyes. Most of the cousins and aunts were visiting for the first time, but the house had, in a way, been in their family for decades. And at last, they were getting acquainted.

A few pressed their hands against the structure’s red bricks. They closed their eyes, concentrating on the weathered texture and on the connection to a man whom they’d never personally known, but whose legacy had brought them together.

Weeks later, Dr. Paul Baker treads through the broad backyard, and he, too, wells up with emotion. Today, a smaller crowd murmurs through the ornate Italian Renaissance-style house: It’s January 6, and Baker, his husband, son, and two aunts are celebrating Old Christmas, an ancient tradition still observed in some parts of North Carolina.

Dr. Paul Baker. photograph by Matt Ray Photography

Baker, a historian and museum director, glides his eyes from the towering chimneys down to the foundation. Nearly a hundred years ago, during the Jim Crow era, his great-great-grandfather, a mason named Joseph Worley, laid the foundation brick by brick.

“Historically, Black people don’t have a lot to latch on to as a legacy,” Baker says in a honeyed voice practiced in the discussion of fine art. “When you find it, it’s important to hold on to it.”

But Baker’s quest goes beyond reclaiming Worley’s legacy. Owning and remaking this opulent manor is also a tribute to the two women who, long ago, set the historian on his journey — like the Magi following a distant star.

• • •

You see, Paul Baker isn’t the first historian in his family. In a series of spiral-bound notebooks, his prim maternal grandmother, Sarah Worley-Thompson, recorded the details of her days as a minister’s wife — including exactly what she wore every Easter so she’d never be photographed in the same outfit twice. “She was a taskmaster,” Baker remembers, “but I wouldn’t trade her. She demanded that I learn to read at 3, that I could write by the time I was 4. She took everything I did as a reflection on her.”

His grandmother would sweep up the young Baker and take him along on trips from tiny Fairmont to Lumberton, where they’d lunch at Eckerd Drugs, shop at The Fashion Bar downtown, and motor past family landmarks. Here, Sandy Grove Baptist Church and the former Thompson Institute, which once trained African American teachers and pastors. There, Bethany Presbyterian Church and that certain home on North Elm Street. These were places, she told Baker, that his great-great-grandfather had helped build.

“Listen now,” she’d solemnly instruct. “I want you to be able to talk about your family with the same pride that other people have in theirs.”

“You’re an only child. You have to carry on the family legacy. You have no choice.”

At home, Baker’s equally regal mother, Minnie, an elementary school teacher, reminded her son, “You’re an only child. You have to carry on the family legacy.” Then she’d add with a smile, “You have no choice.”

In 2020, Baker, then a professor of history at North Carolina A&T State University, accepted an invitation from First Baptist Church in Fairmont to research and report on its storied background. Among the names of those who had contributed to the church’s various expansions, he found his great-great-grandfather’s. By that point, much had changed in Baker’s life. His grandmother died in 1998, followed by his mother in 2015. But new companions filled his days and his heart. He and his husband, Corey Leak, a teacher and musician, were raising a son, August.

While reveling in his new family, Baker thought of his forebears. His memories flickered back to his proud grandmother’s tours of Lumberton — specifically to the house on North Elm Street.

• • •

The old home was birthed during hard times. The Great Depression had crushed workers’ wages, gashed crop prices, and shuttered textile mills across North Carolina. But some in Lumberton maintained a bit of pep in their step. In 1932, manufacturing executive R.C. Adams — according to records turned up by a local historian — commissioned an esteemed contracting team, Burney Brothers, to conjure a flamboyant home three times the size of the average American house back then.

Adams’s neighbors included mill owners and some of Robeson County’s largest landholders. A few blocks southeast resided Angus McLean, former governor and, early in his career, a member of a group of prominent local businessmen that called itself the Lumberton White Supremacy Club. Laying the foundation, according to everything that Baker had heard as a child, was his own great-great-grandfather Joseph Worley. Born to formerly enslaved parents around 1870, Worley was well into both middle age and an exceptional career by the 1930s. “You had very few African Americans at that time who were accomplished artisans,” Baker says, “and who, at the same time, could land large project opportunities.”

Baker had long admired the details of the magnificent house, whose history is intertwined with that of his family. He’s now adding his own modern-day story to it. photograph by Matt Ray Photography

As for the rest of Worley’s life, Baker has pieced together fragments of fact and legend. He imagines a rugged man, chiseled by hard labor; a savvy operator who successfully navigated the harrowing dynamics of Jim Crow; a literate man who was a Mason; and a devout community leader who served as a church deacon in Fairmont.

Baker began driving out of his way to eye the house, which, by the early 2020s, had become a rental property. “I thought it was …” he begins, then shakes his head and softly pronounces, “magnificent!”

One autumn afternoon, as scarlet leaves danced on the lawn, there appeared along the home’s spiked wrought-iron fence a “For Sale” sign. Baker hurried to make an offer.

• • •

Gospel music gusts in from a stereo in the kitchen: “For every mountain You brought me over,” booms the choir. “For every trial You’ve seen me through. For every blessing, hallelujah!”

Old Christmas is customarily a day when all the season’s decorations come down, but for now, a Black Santa figurine still beams from its perch on a living-room end table. On either side of it sit Baker and his aunts, Betty Williams, 88, and Dorothy Jamison, 91, both visiting from Fairmont. “I never thought I’d see something like this,” Jamison says, lifting her hands in a gesture of abundance. “I’m just proud to be part of it.”

With that, the women adjourn to lay out a buffet of country-style steak, rice and gravy, mac ’n’ cheese, greens, and butter-basted rolls. Not missing a beat, 6-year-old August zooms into the room, sliding on his socks, eyes alight with holiday spirit. “Our castle,” he proclaims. “It’s our castle!”

The homecoming brought together Baker’s aunts, Betty Williams (left) and Dorothy Jamison, with his son, August. photograph by Matt Ray Photography

Baker lifts a weary smile. The “castle” is a second home. He mainly resides closer to CAM Raleigh, the art museum where he presides as executive director. The Lumberton abode still needs work, especially given Baker’s grand vision for it. His enraptured descriptions recast the scene the way a Christmas snow transforms a landscape.

In Baker’s telling, the well-worn, two-story carriage house and servants’ quarters will become an artist-in-residence apartment and studio. A grassy stretch behind it will be a compact amphitheater, where Leak and others can offer intimate concerts. The home’s commodious public rooms will transform into gathering places for symposiums on African American culture.

Baker and his family are committed to making that vision a reality. Patiently, piece by piece. Just as Joseph Worley assembled the foundation, brick by brick. “This house is a living artifact,” Baker says, surveying the hardwood floors, Doric columns, and wide windows, but seeming also to discern something beyond them.

“It’s telling a story that I’m in,” he says. “That my son is in. That my family can rejoice in. This is something that Joseph could hardly have imagined. But I hope he knows now. I hope he is elated and proud.”