Walnut Hill Historic District

Walnut Hill is a rural farming community strung along the Old Federal Road near Carnesville, Franklin County. It includes 27 contributing resources: farmhouses, barns, wagon sheds, corn cribs, a tenant house, a store, a doctor's office, a windmill and a community cemetery. The houses range from a hall-parlor dwelling of about 1850 to a Folk Victorian house of 1885-86, a central-hallway house of about 1880 with a 1930s Craftsman porch, and a Georgian-plan cottage of about 1910. The community took shape in the 1850s around Indian Creek Baptist Church, founded in 1850, and the Payne family, who came from South Carolina and farmed with tenants, raised cotton as a cash crop and ran a sawmill and gristmill. Most farms were small and self-sufficient. Farming declined in the 1920s and 1930s with the boll weevil and the Depression. The district was recognized for its architecture, agriculture and linear community development between about 1850 and 1946.