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When visitors tour Berwick’s historic Jackson Mansion, Jim Stout said, they‘ve been known to leave in tears.
“We’ve had people leave crying. It really touched them,” said Stout, who is executive director of the Berwick Historical Society. “As it was put to me, it was because of the sheer beauty of the mansion.”
If you take a Candlelight Christmas Tour, scheduled to start between 4 and 8 p.m. Dec. 13 and Dec. 14, you’ll see for yourself how lovely the restored mansion is, with ornate woodwork, grand chandeliers, a Steinway piano and, in honor of the season, live musical entertainment plus 40 holiday trees, including one fashioned from goose feathers.
Yet there’s another reason to feel moved, when you hear the story of the man who built the home.
Col. Clarence G. Jackson enlisted in the Union Army as a second lieutenant in 1862 at age 20, and participated in some of the heaviest fighting of the Civil War.
The Confederate Army captured him twice — first at the Battle of Chancellorsville and later at the Battle of the Wilderness. Each time he was held as a prisoner of war in what historians call “the infamous Libby Prison” in Richmond, Va., a confiscated tobacco warehouse where food was scarce but illness and vermin were not.
“He asked a guard for a pencil and paper,” Stout said. “And he sketched out plans for a dream mansion, not knowing if he would live or die. It was a way to pass the time.”
One of several hundred officers transferred to Charleston, S.C., reportedly to serve as “human shields” against the Union shelling of the city, Jackson eventually was released in a prisoner exchange, and served with Company H through the end of the war.
After surviving his war-time travails, Jackson returned to Berwick and married Elizabeth Seybert in 1866. But he didn’t build his dream mansion right away.
“He needed to save up the money,” Stout said, pointing to the next decade as “that long period of time where he had to work very diligently.”
Jackson worked for his father’s railroad equipment business, Jackson and Woodin Manufacturing, and also served in Pennsylvania’s newly formed National Guard. He accepted positions of responsibility as a director of the First National Bank of Berwick, a school director and a trustee of the local Methodist Episcopal church.
By 1877 he was ready to begin work on the mansion. The Jacksons watched the construction from the vantage point of a smaller house across the street, where they were living.
“They could oversee every detail,” Stout said.
In 1879 Clarence and Elizabeth finally moved into their dream home with their daughters, Henrietta and Jane. Then, in 1880 Clarence Jackson was gone, at age 38.
“It wasn’t even a year later that he died, of complications from his war injuries,” Stout said. “It’s very sad.”
But there’s something comforting about the beauty of the mansion Jackson planned, said Susan Reagan, who has served as a volunteer tour guide since 2011.
“I get excited every time I give the tour,” said Reagan, a retired school secretary and life member of the Berwick Historical Society. “It’s just stunning. We start in the carriage house and we take small groups through the house, room by room.”
“We get a lot of out-of-town people, from New Jersey and Lancaster and Georgia, from Wilkes-Barre and Scranton,” she said. “We’ve even had people from New Zealand. People can’t believe how nice our mansion is. They’re overwhelmed.”
Reagan, who earlier this week took a break from putting up garlands and lights at the mansion to answer a reporter’s questions, said she sometimes imagines a conversation with Clarence Jackson’s widow, Elizabeth, who lived in the mansion until 1913.
“I say to her, ‘Mrs. Jackson, do you like what we’re doing?’ ” Reagan said. “I think she does approve.”
