A home built in 1884 for $4,800 and purchased in 2006 for $1 is coming apart in pieces, and revealing its share of secrets in the process.

Old brick that looks as good as new. Letters written by a dreamy young girl to a New York beauty school. Stories of a father so in debt to Helena creditors he fled the state with his family and was never heard from again.

Scott Nelson, who plans to rebuild the historic Shober house for his wife at the former state nursery west of Helena, has spent the past two months with volunteers, painstakingly deconstructing the vintage home, one brick at a time.

But the surprises found in the home run deeper than simple brick and mortar. They are surprises from the past, tales of a family that once called this structure home.

Tucked above the rafters in the center of the home, Nelson and company found several bundles of letters belonging to James Foote, the home’s initial owner, and his youngest daughter. She had bound the bundle neatly with string before affixing an 1889 Morgan silver dollar to make it pretty.

“That can tell you exactly how fast the family left Helena,” Nelson said, looking up into the rafters where the letters had been stashed. “His daughter didn’t even have time to get her letters or her silver dollar.”

In her own letters, the girl corresponds with friends back East, along with a cosmetology school in New York. One dispatch asks what it takes to become a beauty specialist.

Nelson also found a small frame with a tin-type photo of the two sisters, Elizabeth and Catherine. The girls look pretty and happy, Nelson believes, even though their father was in a spot of trouble.

“Not only did we find a huge collection of letters from Foote’s daughters, but also a collection of Foote’s letters from creditors around Helena wanting money,” Nelson said. “Foote had credit all over the place, but he wasn’t paying.”

The language is direct, even by 19th century standards. “We know you have the money,” read one letter from a tobacco shop. It seems Foote owed the proprietor $35 for tobacco products — nearly $400 on today’s market.

Another letter said Foote’s custom wagon was ready. So when was he going to pick it up and pay the bill?

“It looks like Foote was a wheeler and dealer,” Nelson said. “He even convinced Shober, who was a lawyer and an incredibly smart man, to give him the equivalent of $200,000 on a promise to build the house. No bank. No nothing.”

As far as Nelson can tell, Foote and his family left Helena in 1893 for the West Coast, most likely to San Francisco. Shober repossessed the house that has borne his name now for more than a century.

The home has anchored this corner of the city for 124 years. Each morning, it stands in the shadows of St. Helena’s Cathedral. On summer evenings, when the sky is clear, it basks in the warm reflection of the large cathedral windows.

Now, it will stand on the Nelson’s land at the old state nursery west of Helena. Access across Tenmile Creek will be provided by the old Craig Bridge, which the family removed from the Missouri River nearly three years ago.

Despite the work Nelson and company are doing to the home, Nelson himself is quick to note how close it came to being razed. St. Paul’s United Methodist Church owns the property and wanted the home moved to make way for progress.

“The Methodist Church has really done a lot to help us out,” Nelson said. “They gave us the time to get this ball rolling. They’re really allowing this building to be saved.”

Originally, the 1,800-square-foot home included just one bathroom and two bedrooms. A remodel in 1909 — long after Foote and his family left town — added another bathroom and bedroom.

It’s Nelson’s plan to reconstruct the home to 1884 standards, but with modern efficiencies and to contemporary building codes. Even so, he said, the home will look the same, even if moving it has turned out to be a challenge.

“The first thing we found was that the mortar was incredibly weak,” he said. “They must have done something wrong with the brick because there’s no mortar holding it together on the entire second floor.”

The weakness of the brick meant Nelson’s hope of moving the home “as is” wasn’t structurally feasible. Experts feared that moving the house down the grade on Lawrence Street could cause the upper floor to collapse.

A solid concrete pour between brick layers wasn’t possible either, at least on the second floor. So the bricks came down one by one, nearly 8,000 in all from the second story, until all that remained was a squatty one-story home.

“I had expected to be able to move it in one piece and set it on the new foundation,” Nelson said. “It’s been a lot of work, but we’re in so far already, there’s no point in turning back.”

Inside, the home presents itself in a dusty state of deconstruction. Lapboard sits stacked to the ceiling. Old green carpet covers the stairs, which rise sharply before curving back over the foyer, where they split supremely into dual staircases.

Down below, the cellar sits deep and dark. The downward descent is hardly wide enough to accommodate a broad-shouldered man. Nearby, scratched into rock, Elizabeth and Catherine Foote left their initials in 1885.

Reporter Martin Kidston: 447-4086 or mkidston@helenair.com