Royster, Marcus, Plantation

Built in the 1850s for planter Marcus Royster on a rise overlooking fields, pastures and groves, the two-story, T-shaped house is one of the most intact Greek Revival dwellings from Granville County's plantation era. Its front portico has a full set of Doric details, including triglyphs, mutules and guttae, and the front elevation is finished with dentils, large twelve-over-twelve and eight-over-eight windows, and beaded weatherboards over a mortise-and-tenon frame. Inside, the doors, mantels and curving stair handrail survive largely unaltered. Royster owned 14 slaves in 1850 and 31 by 1860, according to federal census records. The grounds hold a mid-nineteenth-century building said to have been an air-curing tobacco barn, a smokehouse, and numerous log and frame outbuildings from the late nineteenth and early twentieth century bright leaf tobacco era. The house remained in the family after Royster's death and was later owned by the Gregory family before a 1974 sale.