The second in a series
He spent the better part of 15 years painting Stone Manor, but much of his life remains a mystery. For someone who left a literal mark on one of Fayetteville’s most distinctive homes, it seems that he departed the Southern city so far from his native Russia as quietly as he arrived. The Tyson family wanted to know more. They embarked on a manhunt through public records, newspaper archives, old clippings and books. We first met the Tysons as they restored Stone Manor’s extensive grounds. Now, they take us inside.
W
hen George J. Novikoff arrived in
America
sometime in the mid-to-late 1910s, he had
already carved out a fairly eventful life for himself. A member of the White Army during
the Russian Revolution, he fled the Soviet Union during the rise of the rival Bolsheviks. Novikoff was loyal to Czar Nicholas II, and he had been sent to the United States to inspect munitions purchased by the Russian government from American plants. Perhaps he did not know that as he crossed the Atlantic Ocean aboard a passenger ship he would never see his homeland again – his czar and the royal family would soon be executed. He certainly had no way of knowing that a good portion of his life in the United States would be spent in a house perched atop Fayetteville’s Haymount Hill. But then, little seems certain about the life of George J. Novikoff. The artist intrigued my parents, John
and Kirby Tyson, from the moment they took possession of Stone Manor last spring. For 90 years, members of the Pittman family owned and lived
CityViewNC.com | 27
