Sherman, Elijah, Farm

Elijah and Georgianna Sherman built this farmstead in Granville County, North Carolina, probably shortly after buying 163 acres on Cub Creek in 1887. The house is a two-story, one-room-deep I-house with a center hall, weatherboards that have never been painted, a full-width front porch, end chimneys of rock and brick, and a one-story rear ell. Inside, hand-planed hall boards, wainscoting and matching mantels with pointed-arch lintels survive. Behind the house stand 17 contributing outbuildings, including log tobacco barns, a striphouse, a packhouse, corncribs, a stable, a smokehouse, a washhouse, a woodhouse, a privy and a stone well, along with a family cemetery. Together they show the working life of modest tobacco farmers in the bright leaf era. The farm is notable for its intact condition and the variety of its buildings, and it compares closely with the Puckett and Tunstall farms. Its significance is dated from the late 1880s to 1937.