Rows of nails, a security measure of old. Photo by B. Newman Bancroft
By Tom Poland
TomPoland.net
Old doors rife with nails. Rows and rows of nails. Studs. Like handsome lads, all in a row. All in precise order. I’ve come across two such doors. Brenda N. Bancroft, historian and co-founder of the North Augusta History Park, has come across three. Each door is the same. Row after row of nails at precisely the same height in age-darkened boards. It’s a bit of a mystery. What’s their story?
I reached out to some folks who keep up with the old days and ways. One fellow conjectured, “I’ve seen these kind of doors covered with tar paper and asphalt shingles that look like brick. I grew up in a house with this siding. Maybe the siding decayed and all that remains are the nails.”
Said a lady, “I saw on Mountain Men, a TV reality show, where nails were put in doors on the entrance way of houses to keep bears out.”
One reader told me she saw studded doors in Africa that keep elephants out. “It’s a cross-cultural thing.”
I researched this matter, hoping to hammer out an answer. One theory said nails were expensive back in the day, and rows of nails in your front door proved you were affluent. In other words, a way to show off. Having an outhouse with multiple seats provided a way to flaunt wealth too, but I find this nail theory to be unbelievable. When I read that nails were not expensive back in the day that theory fell apart.
The first time I came across this mystery was in Lincoln County, Georgia—an out building at the old Wright House site. Nails studded its door in fine fashion, same as other nail-studded doors. A stagecoach inn prior to 1840, more than a few strangers came through there. I’d think anyone able to travel by stagecoach and afford an inn would not turn to crime.
Brenda N. Bancroft, backroad explorer, visited the Wright House.
“The Wright House in Lincolnton has a detached structure with a nailed door. It was the kitchen. Near the Butler Historical marker in Saluda County, similar doors are on a two-story store. They are beautiful and I would consider them art now. The nails are placed perfectly in heart pine wood. They have worn well, and the person who nailed them would be very happy about the workmanship.”
Michael Bedenbaugh has helped preserve a lot of old structures. A former executive director of Preservation South Carolina, he proposes a theory that makes sense.
“Tom, these types of doors were usually created for places that had valuable goods stored, like a store. The wooden door filled with nails was an attempt to thwart, or at least slow down, any would-be robbers from cutting into the door. All the nails holding multiple layers of wood together also helped it hold up better to a large sledge hammer.”
I believe Michael nailed it.
The portals to our homes have long given rise to superstitions. Carrying a bride across the threshold of the new home is said to bring good luck. Back in the days of multi-nailed doors snagging the wedding dress was probably easy to do. A few careless husbands risked becoming “dead as a door nail.” That old superstition takes on ominous meaning here … old doors studded with nails portend of a massacre, but keeping thieves and bears at bay and elephants afar seems to be what they did. Those mysterious nail doors? They do one other thing for sure.
They make modern folk more than a tad curious.