Sam Hall Farm

07.16.11

A large rectangular vent on the center gable adorns the well-preserved Triple-A I-house built by tobacco farmer Sam Hall at the turn of the twentieth century. With plain weatherboard siding, two-over-two sash windows, full-facade hip-roofed porches front and back, and single shouldered brick end chimneys with corbelled stacks, the dwelling resembles many of its type built in Durham County at about the same time. A long rear ell, added in several phases, has a full-length porch that abuts the back porch of the main block at a right angle. The interior has a miscellany of decorative features of the period. Narrow board sheathing covers walls and ceilings, mantels are simple post and lintel combinations, square newels and balusters line the stairs, and doors have five or seven panels.

A public roadway bisects the Sam Hall farm, dividing the dwelling and its domestic dependencies, a frame smokehouse, a frame well enclosure, and a ca. 1940 garage, on its north from the tobacco-related outbuildings. On the south side of the road, six log tobacco barns surround a two-story pack house, an ordering house, and a strip house. Beside the pack house, a dirt farm lane leads to a one-story gable-roofed, log structure with a fieldstone chimney said to have been a rural school. After consolidation in 1913, this building was enlarged by a wing and rear shed and improved with a columned and mirrored Colonial Revival mantel to serve tenant farmers. Tobacco culture continues on the Sam Hall farm now operated by James Spell, but early twentieth century outbuildings have been adapted for modern equipment storage and curing is

done in metal bulk barns.