Falmouth Painted Stairs – Jockie Loomer-Kruger
Now into my 89th year, I feel an urgency to complete the story of the backstair risers I painted in 1992, in the Falmouth house my husband, Herb Kruger, and I, owned for ten years-from 1985-1995.
Growing up, I’d known this century home as the F.H. (Frederick Hamilton) Manning house. My father told me it had been built prior to the devastating Windsor fire of 1897. And he also told me that the story was that Mr. Manning had insisted it be sturdily constructed with what my father called ‘double framing.’ I remember huge timbers in the basement and very even floors throughout the house.
According to John Duncanson’s book, Falmouth, A New England Township in Nova Scotia, Mr. Manning was born in 1867, and died in 1955. He had seven children by his first wife who died fairly young, and two more children by his second wife. The older second family son, Fred C, started a franchise of service stations called Superfine, which became Fina and later Petro-Can. The other son, Arthur, established the local radio station in Truro, NS.
