Agenda - 01-04-1994-IX-E - Laserfiche WebLink

Browse Search

NPS Fame 10.900a OMB MPo.W ft.10140018 �Fw. &") 21 United States Department of the Interior National Park Service National Register of Historic Places Continuation Sheet Jacob Jackson Farm / Maple Hill Section number 7 Page 1 Orange County, NC GENERAL DESCRIPTION: The Jacob Jackson Farm stands on the crest of a hill overlooking the broad Eno River Valley 2.8 miles northeast of the town of Hillsborough in North Carolina's central Piedmont. The 63.15-acre farm, located on the north side of State Route 1002 (St. Mary's Road) .4 of a mile west of State Route 1538 (New Sharon Road), is a portion of a 381-acre tract of land that was granted to James Taylor in 1753 by John, Earl of Granville. The land was held by speculators until the nineteenth century when subsequent owners farmed it, producing a variety of crops and raising livestock. The farm is no longer used for the cultivation of crops, but its pastures and woodlands convey a strong sense of agricultural land use patterns of the nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. Thus, the Jacob Jackson farm is significant locally for its associations with the development of the agricultural economy of Orange County, North Carolina, between 1810 and 1940. The centerpiece of the farm is Maple Hill, a gracious dwelling that stands beneath lofty maple trees and faces south among intricate boxwood gardens at the southeast edge of the farm. Maple Hill evolved, like many rural North Carolina farmhouses, when the needs of its occupants changed and the wealth of its owners permitted. Jacob Jackson, a yeoman farmer of English descent, is thought to have built both a single-pen, hewn-log cabin ca. 1810,and a two-story, Federal, weatherboarded log farmhouse as a separate structure to the south ca. 1820. A single shouldered chimney, 6/6 and 4/4 windows, and a double-paneled entry door were likely added to the farmhouse ca. 1855, when a one-and-a-half-story weatherboarded log Greek Revival wing was built to the east of the structure by Jackson's daughter, Louisa and her husband, John Turner. Almost one hundred years later, in 1940, when the farm was sold by relatives of Jackson's descendants to T. H. Antrim, a frame connector ell was extended north from the farmhouse to the cabin and, in 1946, when Antrim conveyed the property to Florence G. Guild, a frame dining room/kitchen block was constructed incorporating the cabin and extending to the east of it. The house was completed in 1950 by D. E. and Marie B. Hollandsworth at the time the cabin/dining room/kitchen block was sheathed with vertical board and batten siding and the German siding on the connector ell was replaced with a brick veneer. The Hollandsworths carefully restored the Federal farmhouse and Greek Revival wing making them serviceable for twentieth-century purposes. Attention was given to conserving original materials as concrete reinforcements were made to stabilize badly spalled bricks in the basement and deteriorated porches on the main facade were replaced, saving and reusing the early posts and railings. On the interior, nineteenth-century woodwork was removed to facilitate the stripping away of multiple layers of flaking paint and reinstalled with each component returned to its original position. Modest room divisions were made to permit the installation of bathrooms and central heating. The restorations and renovations have not compromised the integrity of the nineteenth-century structures and Maple Hill is significant locally for the architecture of its Federal block and Greek Revival wing.