Humphrey-Williams Plantation (Boundary Increase)

Along Raft Swamp in central Robeson County stands a two-story frame farmhouse completed in 1846 by Richard Humphrey, whose journal records its finishing in February of that year. The house has a five-bay front, a center hall, and a vernacular Greek Revival interior and exterior finish, with a front porch treated as an interior room and turned posts with coiled-rope capitals. Its trim is unusually whimsical for the region. Around it are a store and post office, a smokehouse, a carriage house, a tobacco barn and other early buildings. The 566-acre tract has passed through one family in unbroken succession since the eighteenth century. Timber, turpentine, and crops such as corn, cotton, and tobacco have all formed part of its economy. The estate's land records, probate papers, and family documents survive in the house, making it a well-documented example of antebellum life in southeastern North Carolina.