Vonnie West House

Macon County

Year: 2013

In 2013, Mainspring purchased the historic Vonnie West House house and the old West’s Mill Post Office in the heart of the Cowee-West’s Mill Historic District, downhill from the Rickman General Store and historic Cowee School. The house sold in 2015 through Preservation North Carolina to private buyers, who will restore the property. Aunt Vonnie, as she was known, taught for 35 years in counties across the State — a lifetime spent strengthening communities. When she came home to West’s Mill she also worked to support that community by teaching, by looking for opportunities to help her neighbors, and by assisting her postmistress mother as she ran the West’s Mill Post Office. Vonnie West died in 1976 at the age of 90.