Dickson, Roger, Farm

Set at the end of a long dirt drive in southwest Duplin County, this farm centers on a one-and-one-half story frame house built about 1815-1818 in the North Carolina coastal cottage tradition. Its tall gable roof and deep, full-width engaged porch suit the hot, humid coastal plain. Around 1850 a two-bay addition was added and the porch was given Greek Revival posts that encase the original chamfered ones. A detached kitchen and a c. 1850 corn crib survive nearby, within a 157-acre tract of fields and woods. The house shows a shift in building methods, with hewn timbers, hand planing and pit-sawn rafters alongside circular-sawn lumber and machine-made nails. It was long home to Robert Dickson and his descendants, a branch of a family prominent in the county's military, political and educational history, and it is the only surviving nineteenth-century Dickson residence. Vacant since about 1971, it remains structurally sound and largely intact.