Black, Margaret, Farmstead (Additional Documentation)

Black Homestead Farm, near Carrollton in Greene County, Illinois, is a 123-acre farmstead built around a three-brick-thick brick house completed in 1823. The land was bought from the U.S. government in 1821 by Margaret Hobson Black and her brothers, making the family among the earliest settlers of the area. The house began as a Federal-style building with a central hall plan and Flemish bond brickwork. In 1855, her son Thomas Black added a two-story porch, wash house and carriage house, giving the new west front a Greek Revival look. Other buildings include a brick smokehouse, a hand-hewn horse barn from the 1890s, and a cattle barn, garage, chicken house and machine shed from the early to mid 1900s. The property is regarded as the oldest inhabited home in Greene County and shows how a Midwestern farm developed from settlement through the mechanization of the twentieth century.