Dean Farm

Dean Farm sits on a slight rise near the road to Louisburg in Franklin County, North Carolina. Its two-story frame house has a center-hall plan two rooms deep, pedimented gable ends and a three-bay porch with fluted Doric columns. The front southwest room retains earlier Federal woodwork, suggesting the core of the house predates the Greek Revival expansion, which is thought to date from the 1840s. The front east parlor has an academic Greek Revival mantel with fluted Doric colonnettes, associated locally with the work of Warrenton builder Jacob Holt. Nearby stand a smokehouse, a corncrib of hewn logs joined in diamond notches, and a harness room with dovetailed plank corners, the latter two thought to be early nineteenth century. The Dean family, who bought the land in 1842, held the farm through the Civil War and into the twentieth century. The family cemetery, containing graves of Thomas and Martha Dean, lies at the edge of the highway. The farm is listed for its architecture and its illustration of a three-horse farm of the period.