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NP9Fo=10.90a -4t
<br />(Rev, &86)
<br />United States Department of the Interior
<br />National Park Service
<br />National Register of Historic .Places
<br />Continuation Sleet
<br />Section number _ 8 Page 10
<br />OMB Approval Nq 1021 -0018
<br />Holden - Roberts Farm
<br />Orange County, NC
<br />Addison Holden enlisted in the Confederate Army in 1861, serving as a private in Company E
<br />of the twenty -third Regiment, Virginia Infantry. He was stricken with "something so that [he]
<br />could not walk.i38 Though disabled in this fashion, he had recuperated sufficiently to serve as
<br />an attendant at a hospital in Danville at the time of Robert E. Lee's surrender at Appomatox."
<br />After the war, he returned to North Carolina and married Loretta Lyon, perhaps the daughter
<br />or relative of John Lyon, his father's former partner, on January 2, 1865.40 The couple had three
<br />children, Sallie Elizabeth, Loretta J., and Harry, when Loretta died in 1869. Five years later, on
<br />December 30, 1874, Addison married fifteen - year -old Elizabeth Edney Breeze, called "Bettie."
<br />This union took place just as he completed the farmhouse that was to be home to his family for
<br />the next thirty -seven years 41
<br />Victor Garrard, a son of Bud Garrard, lessee of the Holden - Roberts farm from 1947 until 1963,
<br />recalls that his grandfather, Wade Cates, then aged seventeen, helped to bring pre - constructed
<br />panels to the farm via horse -drawn wagon and to ' assemble the handsome I -house for Addison
<br />Holden.42 Usin %his grandfather's age as a guide, Garrard dates the construction of the house to
<br />1873 and 1874. Records show that Isaac Holden loaned his nephew $242.48 on October 14,
<br />1874, and received a mortgage against the land as security.' Garrard also reports that the
<br />stone for the chimneys was taken from a quarry northwest of the farm45
<br />After the house was completed, Addison Holden is thought to have lived quietly among his
<br />neighbors, wishing to avoid any unpleasantness associated with the unpopularity of his half -
<br />brother. Governor William Woods Holden was impeached in office, and family members are
<br />said to have been threatened on occasion by angry neighbors46
<br />Addison Holden made a payment of $158 in August of 1880 that settled the debt to his uncle.
<br />That year population and agricultural censuses, taken in June, give the only official records of
<br />his family and farming activities. The population census lists Addison as a farmer, aged 42,
<br />and Bettie, aged 26, as a housekeeper. Other members of the household noted were the children
<br />from Addison's marriage to Loretta Lyon: Sallie Elizabeth, aged sixteen; Loretta J., thirteen;
<br />Harry S., twelve; and Addison's sister, Maggie G., fifty -two. Two additional children, Ralph
<br />and Koma, are reported to have been born to Addison and Bettie Holden several years later.
<br />Diversified agriculture was the basic economic pursuit in North Carolina after the Civil War, but
<br />prices of agricultural staples such as cotton corn, and wheat collapsed because of over-
<br />production in the late 1870s. Crop liens, higher taxes, fence laws, and the development of the
<br />North Carolina Railroad that linked nearby Hillsborough with urban markets encouraged a shift
<br />from self sufficiency to the growing of cash crops such as cotton and tobacco. Profits declined,
<br />and indebtedness forced many farmers to take jobs in factories and mills springing up in nearby
<br />towns. By the late 1800s, nearly forty percent of all farmers in Orange County were
<br />sharecroppers working an average of twenty to sixty acres of land 48
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