Peterson, John N., Farm

Set on a partly cleared tract in the mountain community of Poplar in Mitchell County, the farm centers on a two-story, three-bay I-house begun about 1870 by John N. Peterson, a carpenter who is said to have built it himself. Its double-tier front porch carries sawn spandrels, a balustrade and a frieze, and a 1985 county inventory describes the sawn detailing as among the most flamboyant folk Victorian work in the county. The house keeps its original front door with painted graining, interior poplar paneling and a carved mantel, despite a 1960 kitchen wing replacement. The farmstead includes a 19th-century barn and several early twentieth-century outbuildings. Peterson served as postmaster from at least 1879 and as a justice of the peace, and the property is regarded as a clear record of subsistence farming and local government in a remote part of the Blue Ridge.