Huffman, George, Farm

This 17.4-acre farm near Conover, in Catawba County, centers on a two-story, mortise-and-tenon frame house that Major George Huffman built around 1810. It is one of the oldest surviving houses in the county. The hall-and-parlor dwelling has stone chimneys, rear shed rooms, a front porch and a Federal style mantel and overmantel with sunburst medallions. Milton Herman altered the house in the early twentieth century, moving the stair, adding exterior siding and extending the eaves with brackets. The property also holds a contributing storage shed, several later outbuildings and the Huffman Family Cemetery, with about fifteen gravestones dated 1831 to 1873. Huffman was a farmer, wagonmaker, cooper and militia captain, and his son-in-law William Punch farmed the land later in the nineteenth century. The property was listed for its vernacular craftsmanship in the house and gravestones and for its place in the county's agricultural history. Most of the former farmland is now wooded and overgrown, but it still provides a setting for the historic buildings.