Fred Travis has attended West Hunter Street Baptist Church for decades. But until Saturday, he had never visited the historic landmark next door: the Wren's Nest, the Victorian home of author Joel Chandler Harris. "No one ever invited me," said the 72-year-old Atlantan, who grew up hearing Harris' Uncle Remus stories in school. "They didn't used to allow black people in here."

Travis was milling around the backyard with 100 Harris descendants and friends of the house museum in the West End neighborhood. A family member he knew through work had invited him. As the loudspeakers pumped out music that Harris never could have imagined — at the moment, James Brown's "Papa's Got a Brand New Bag".

(ENLARGE)

Joel Chandler Harris enjoyed fame on a par with Mark Twain in his day. But post-civil rights sensibilities questioned a white author's fame based on African folk tales.

Marcus Yam/myam@ajc.com (ENLARGE)

Gil Watson impersonates the author with permission of the Harris family.

Marcus Yam/myam@ajc.com (ENLARGE)

Jeri McWilliams (right) gives family descendants and friends a tour of the Wren's Nest, home of Joel Chandler Harris.

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Travis took in the amiably interracial gathering with a smile.

"When I look around here," he said, "I don't see any color at all."

The occasion was not a typical one for a garden party; it was to commemorate the centennial of Harris' passing.

"Some might think it morbid to celebrate someone's death," Linda Harris, a great-great-granddaughter, told the guests. "We don't know the exact year of his birth, but we do know when he died." It was July 3, 1908.

At the time, Harris was one of the most popular American authors, right up there with his friend Mark Twain.

"He was the J.K. Rowling of his day," said Lain Shakespeare, a great-great-great-grandson, who now tends the Harris flame as director of the Wren's Nest. The death was front-page news, especially at The Atlanta Constitution, where Harris had worked as an editor and columnist for 25 years. "Joel Chandler Harris Summoned By Master of All Good Workmen," read the poetic headline. "Uncle Remus had been feeling po'ly," the story said, merging the author with his best-known character. It went on to report the reactions of Brer Rabbit and several other critters Harris had brought to life in his stories and columns.

Rebuilding the Nest

With support from rich and famous admirers like Andrew Carnegie and President Theodore Roosevelt, Harris' home became a museum just five years after his death. But his star eventually faded, especially after the civil rights era, when new sensibilities questioned the sticky situation of a white man becoming famous for telling African folk tales he had heard growing up on a middle Georgia plantation. The ladies who ran the Wren's Nest for years didn't help matters. They tried to keep the attraction segregated, even after laws changed in the 1960s. The fortunes of the house, where Harris lived from 1881 until his death, seemed to reflect the vagaries of his reputation. By the time Shakespeare took over two years ago, the number of visitors had dwindled and the museum was $115,000 in debt. But things finally seem to be on the upswing.

The debt has been whittled by almost two-thirds, and more than $100,000 in foundation grants have made it possible to start planning some overdue repairs and restoration.

Visitation, though still less than 10,000 a year, is rising with a full schedule of storytelling events and private parties. Harris' books are even selling better.

"Last year was the best I can remember," said Jim Grant, a descendant from Greensboro, N.C., who runs the Harris Family Trust, which disburses small royalty checks from the three volumes that are still under copyright. It helped when the Wren's Nest got a credit card machine. All in all, it seemed a good time to hold a family reunion, the first full-scale one anyone could recall.

"I've never seen some of these people," Shakespeare said, as kinfolk scurried around the backyard with jugs of bug spray. "Some of them I've only seen on Facebook."

Harris there in spirit

Harris and his wife, Mary Esther LaRose, had nine children, six of whom survived childhood. Three of their four sons went into newspapering, most notably their firstborn, Julian Harris, who continued his father's progressive views on race relations by winning a Pulitzer Prize for editorializing against lynching and the Ku Klux Klan. An elaborate family tree was printed up for the reunion. Linda Harris smiled when someone reminded her of one of the names on it: Remus Anthony Harris, one of the author's grandsons, who was a songwriter in New York.

"He sent me a gift when I got married," she said, remembering her shock when she noticed the card signed "Uncle Remus." The man at the root of the family tree made an appearance, too — after a fashion. Gil Watson, senior minister at Northside United Methodist Church, makes a hobby of portraying Harris. He showed up wearing the author's customary costume of gray frock coat, black bowtie and black Stetson.

"I thought Mr. Harris should be at his own family reunion," Watson said, straightening a fake mustache that kept slipping in the summer swelter. There was a short program under the shade of the massive oak trees. Family members read from Harris' works and recited the inscription on his tombstone in nearby Westview Cemetery, which begins: "I seem to see before me the smiling faces of thousands of children."

Wrens and neighbors

Then it was time to tour the house, which some of the descendants hadn't seen in years. Shakespeare, an English major in his mid-20s, led a group into the front parlor and told them how he had rediscovered his ancestor when he read one of his stories in an African-American literature class.

"I was like, hey, I know that guy. I'm related to him." In another sign of rebirth, Shakespeare told his group that wrens had returned to the Wren's Nest. Harris named the home for the birds that kept nesting in his mailbox. For the past two seasons, wrens have been laying eggs in a replica. Naturally, since this was a big reunion, there had to be a big picture. The guests assembled on the steps of the concrete stage in the backyard, where the ladies who once ran the house used to mount a lily-white pageant.

"Come on, everybody," Linda Harris called out, "we're all cousins now." She meant it. Among the Harris descendants posing in the picture were a number of friends and supporters of the house museum. Perhaps one in seven was African-American — including Fred Travis, the neighbor who had never been to the Wren's Nest.