Northern Durham

Important as a rare survivor of a kind of dwelling once found throughout what is now Durham County, this one-pen log farmhouse with fieldstone and brick end chimneys was built in the early nineteenth century by Jesse Mangum. Mangum and his wife, Polly Parrish, raised twelve children in the house; three sons later served in the Confederate Army...

When Captain Addison Mangum, a cousin of United States Senator Willie P. Mangum, took over operations of the Flat River Post Office, he moved it in 1858 to this one-story two-room structure on his farm. There the post office and Mangum’s law office shared quarters with one room reportedly allocated to each purpose. The small frame building is...

Marcus Harris built a large story-and-a-half log dwelling with a large and prominent fieldstone and brick chimney southeast of Bahama ca. 1835. His son, Robert, is thought to have added the frame two-story wing at the end of the nineteenth century, utilizing four-over-four windows on the front facade and reserving six-over-six windows for use on...

W. W. Ellis, boiler operator at Orange Factory boarded mill workers and raised a family of nine children in a very late Triple-A I-house. Building in 1924 when most of his neighbors preferred the Craftsman or Colonial Revival styles, Ellis chose the traditional house form but gave token recognition to current fashion through open eaves and shaped...

A double leaf entry door and a quatrefoil vent on the center gable are special enhancements on the well-preserved Triple-A I-house built in the late nineteenth century at the heart of the Martin Van Buren Ellis farm. The dwelling also has two-over-two sash windows, single- shouldered brick end chimneys with corbelled stacks, and full-facade front...

Martin Van Buren Ellis, star of "Tobaccoland, Inc.," a movie distributed nationally by the Liggett and Myers Tobacco Company in the late 1930s, became the first member of the Ellis Chapel United Methodist Church when it was organized in 1900. Ellis, who died in 1940, is buried in a cemetery that surrounds the church on a lovely promontory...

Identified on the 1887 and the 1910 maps of Durham County as the A. Copley and A. R. Copley residence, this tri-gable I-house with simple Italianate and Greek Revival decoration has been beautifully restored by Phillip Latta who purchased it in 1976. Built over a fieldstone foundation, the house is weatherboarded, bracketed by single-shouldered end...

Around 1855, Allen Simon Carrington is thought to have constructed this fine I-house with simple Greek Revival trim on part of the land granted to his grandfather, Nathaniel, by John, Earl Granville, in the late eighteenth century. Three generations of Carrington’s family have since occupied the house, a daughter, Vena, and her husband Albert...

At the end of the nineteenth century, the little village of Round Hill gradually disappeared after the railroad was constructed and commercial activity moved nearer the depot in the newly forming village of Bahama. The area had reverted to small farms by 1911 when Marcus C. Ball constructed his one-story, single-pile, tri-gable dwelling, a house...

The well-maintained Triple-A I-house built by postman David Ball bears the year of its construction, 1906, inscribed on a rear chimney. Embellishments such as a double leaf entry door with glazed panels, pedimented window and door surrounds with sawn work ornaments, diamond-shaped vents on front and side gables, and a wide wrap-around porch with...