Edgewood

Edgewood is a mid-nineteenth-century plantation seat in Granville County, North Carolina, surrounded by cultivated fields and a dozen log and frame outbuildings. Samuel and Martha Venable Morton built the two-story, double-pile house around 1858 on land given by Martha's father. It is a mortised and tenoned frame box on a handmade brick foundation, covered in weatherboards, with a low hipped roof, crossetted window surrounds and a center-hall plan. Bracketed eaves bring an uncommon Italianate touch to an otherwise Greek Revival design, and the interior keeps its original mantels, fluted cornerblock door surrounds and an unusual rear stair hall. After the Civil War the property operated as a bright leaf tobacco farm, and early twentieth-century log and frame stables, corn cribs, chicken houses, a brooder house, an ice house and a tenant house survive. The district was recognized for architecture and agriculture, with a period of significance from about 1858 to 1937.