Kinchen Holloway House - 4418 Guess

07.17.11

One of three nineteenth-century miller's houses surviving along the Eno River in Durham County, this well-preserved side-gable frame I-house was built on the north side of the river for Kinchen Holloway, miller of the Guess Mill. The house is typical of the substantial but plain postbellum farmhouses of Durham County with weatherboard siding, six-over-six windows, exterior end chimneys of fieldstone and brick. Wide hand-planed paneling and wainscoting found only in the northernmost parlor and the contiguous rear kitchen ell suggests that the house began as a one-story antebellum dwelling and was enlarged by Holloway when he purchased the property on which it stands in 1870. Window and door trim is plain, and the one-bay front porch is a replacement added by Drs. Howard and Eleanor Easley in the early 1940s. Recent owners have eliminated an interior wall on the first floor thus modifying the original center-hall plan to create a traditional hall-parlor plan.

Built by William Guess in 1848, the Guess Mill (now demolished) was located on the south side of the river. Guess was bankrupt at the end of the Civil War, and the mill was taken over by Fred Geer in 1874 some years after Kinchen Holloway became its miller. Holloway’s daughter, Ida Inez Roberts recalled that she, or one of five sisters and six brothers, would bring the coarse- ground flour or “seconds” home from the mill to their mother.

08.06.12

As of August 2012 this home is on the market (yet again). I feel like it was just a year ago it was on the market and I day-dreamed about living here  (it was).  Here's more info from the realtor:  4418 Guess Rd