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Nn soR,l6 -900-4
<br />(Rev 8.86)
<br />United States Department of the Interior
<br />National Park Service
<br />National .register of Historic Places
<br />Continuation Sheet
<br />Section number 8 Page 11
<br />OMB APV W Vd No. I024 -0028
<br />Holden- Roberts Farm
<br />Orange County, NC
<br />The agricultural census of 1880 showed that Addison Holden had forty -five acres under
<br />cultivation, and 108 acres fallow or in woods. The' value of his farm was given as $600.
<br />Fanning implements and machinery were valued at seventy -five dollars, and livestock, including
<br />one horse, two milk cows, two other cows, two calves, and two cattle slaughtered for meat, at
<br />$100. The total farm production was worth $710. Though this included 200 lbs. of butter, 200
<br />bushels of Indian corn, 200 bushels of oats, forty bushels of wheat, and 100 bushels of apples,
<br />the Holdens' main cash crop- was 1,700 lbs. of tobacco which was, no doubt, sold at newly
<br />established sales warehouses in Durham. But 1880 brought losses, too, for seven cattle strayed,
<br />were stolen, or died, and a peach orchard of seventy trees bore no fruit."
<br />Around 1900, Holden enlarged the house by enclosing the northern two- thirds of a large porch
<br />on the east elevation to create a parlor and a kitchen. At the same time, he also extended a
<br />shallow shed porch with a small gable- roofed structure at the north end from the east elevation
<br />of the enclosure. The original detached kitchen is said to have served as a wash house until it
<br />was destroyed in the 19508.50
<br />Although semi - subsistence farming in Orange County continued into the early years of the
<br />twentieth century, an abundance of cash crops resulted in oversupplies and further price
<br />declines. Whether for this reason, or because the rigors of fanning were increasingly strenuous
<br />for Addison and Bettie, now in their later years, the property was sold to George Cain Roberts
<br />for the sum of $2000 in 1908.51
<br />In his architectural survey report evaluating the St. Mary's Road corridor, Geoffrey B. Henry
<br />notes a shift from semi - subsistence farming and cash crops to raising chickens and dairy cattle
<br />among some farmers in the area during the early- twentieth century. Appropriate outbuildings
<br />were constructed, often according to standardized designs or plans supplied by the Agricultural
<br />Extension Service or Agricultural Experiment Station at NC State College (now NC State
<br />University).' Cain Roberts added four frame chicken houses to the farm ca. 1910, and George
<br />Washington Walker, Jr., a nearby neighbor on St. Mary's Road, constructed similar ones at
<br />about the same time's
<br />Cain and his wife, Carrie Bacon Roberts, made a specialty of raising chickens, typically keeping
<br />about 800 White Leghorn as layers `4 In 1917, they added thirty -eight acres along the
<br />northwest border of the farm, purchased for $716.25 when Cain's father's estate was settled.'
<br />Now with 191 acres of land and hens thriving, the Roberts's were considered by neighbors to be
<br />a hard - working and successful couple m By 1920 their assets greatly exceeded the Orange
<br />County averages of ninety acres and twenty -eight chickens per farm.57
<br />Cain and Carrie Roberts had no children, but took Edrie Martin, aged eight; Aubrey Martin,
<br />seven; and Vance Martin, four, to live with them after Virginia, their mother and Cain's sister,
<br />died in 1926. In 1930, Aubrey Martin helped his uncle remodel the kitchen and add the one-
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