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Nos Pone 70.90" OAB AWWW Nu.t2ris ' 4P.. &-") L� United States Department of the Interior National Park Service National Register of Historic Places Continuation Sheet Jacob Jackson Farm / Maple Hill Section number 8 Page 1 Orange County, NC STATEMENT OF SIGNIFICANCE: Maple Hill, the historic farmhouse on the Jacob Jackson Farm, qualifies for inclusion on the National Register under National Register Criterion C for the distinctive architecture of its vernacular Federal farmhouse block and Greek Revival wing. The Federal block was built ca. 1820 and readapted in a practical no-nonsense spirit of improvement and modernization when the Greek Revival wing was added ca. 1855. Despite repairs and renovations in the mid- twentieth century, these components of the house retain their basic character and thus provide a rare and important document of spatial priorities along with evidence of building techniques and materials used by an early-nineteenth-century Orange County farmer and his wealthier antebellum descendants. Additionally, the Jacob Jackson Farm qualifies for inclusion on the National Register of Historic Places under Criterion A for its associations with the development of the nineteenth and early-twentieth century agricultural economy of Orange County, North Carolina, from 1810 to 1940. Although several of the outbuildings have deteriorated and subsequently been removed, open land and forest on the farm today reflect the use patterns associated with Orange County's subsistence farming and diversified agricultural economy over the one-hundred-and-thirty-year period of significance. ARCHITECTURAL CONTEXT: Southern houses, like the Federal block of Maple Hill, are modified descendants of seventeenth and eighteenth-century European log buildings and English timber frame houses. Settlers from the mid-Atlantic colonies and from the Virginia and North Carolina coastal settlements brought with them the knowledge of the essentials needed for both methods of construction and combined and adapted them to suit the available materials, climate, and conditions in the Orange County area of the North Carolina Piedmont. A vernacular Federal style of architecture characterized by rectangular or cubical house forms, gable roofs, gable end chimneys, one story front porches, symmetrical fenestration, and interior hall and parlor or central hall plans had evolved by the late eighteenth century.' The Federal blocks at Moorefields (NR), built in 1785 and Sans Souci (NR), built ca. 1812 are frame but stylistically similar to the one at Maple Hill, built ca. 1820. These three are among the best early examples to be found in Orange County. It is possible that the Federal block of Maple Hill was patterned after the one at Moorefields for the two are similar. Both utilize the traditional two-story gable roof plan with end chimneys and a one story front porch. Moorefields, too, has a hall and parlor plan, and fenestration on the upper level of the main facade in the two outer bays. True massed plans 'McAlester,p.82.