Agenda - 01-19-1993 - VIII-H - Laserfiche WebLink

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houses are plain, vernacular houses that use locally available materials and have no stylish ornament. The Herbert McCauley House [OR 391], Vance Daniel House [OR 374], and Matthew Strowd House [OR 441] are the best-preserved examples of farm- houses constructed after the recovery from the Civil War, in the 1870s to 1890s, by upper middle-class farmers. Each is a substantial frame I-house with a double-leaf front door and a stylish front porch. These houses mark the height of development of the vernacular farmhouse in the late nineteenth century. These center passage, single-pile houses with open-string staircases represent a complete break from the one-room log house in which the majority of farm families lived. By the 1890s, more elaborate store-bought millwork began to be used on doors, windows, and porches. Two vernacular farmhouses stand out because of their lavish use of store-bought millwork. Perhaps the most fashionable house is the Cole House [Or 371], built about 1900, presumably by William Cole for his daughter when she married. The L-plan farmhouse has a front-gabled wing with a bay window with pendanted eaves, an L-shaped front porch with sawnwork brackets and a drip course, and cross-gables with imbricated wood shingles and diamond-shaped ventilators. The Pritchard-Poythress House [OR 375] was built in the 1890s for grist mill owner Pritchard, and is an I-house with a front cross- gable, a fashionably bracketted front porch, and a side bay window with pendanted eaves. Another stylish feature is the construction of the chimneys, which are of brick rather than the usual fieldstone. About 1910 three different affluent farmhouse types appear in the township: the pyramidal cottage, the two-story foursquare, and the bungalow. Charlie and Sophie Minor, a black farming couple, had a pyramidal cottage [OR 388] built on their farm about 1910. It has the high hipped roof, tall interior chim- neys, and front cross gable that characterize this popular house type. Claude and Ola Neville had their two-story frame foursquare farmhouse [OR 385] built in the 1920s. Claude was a prosperous farmer who supplemented his income with a grocery store in Carrboro. Around 1918 Brodie Lloyd had a spacious bungalow [OR 446] constructed for himself. He was an affluent farmer who supplemented his income with a lumber company in Carrboro. His house is one of the largest and best-preserved bungalows in the township. NOTES _ 1 This summary is drawn from Kinship and Neighborhood in a Southern Com- munity: Orange County, North Carolina 1849-1881, by Robert C. Kenzer. (Knox- ville: University of Tennessee Press, 1987). 2 Kenzer, 34.