Wimbish, Lewis, Plantation

Built around 1850 on a rise above Grassy Creek in Granville County, North Carolina, the plantation house is a two-story Greek Revival dwelling with a heavy timber frame, a T-plan and a portico of four fluted round columns and two fluted pilasters. Lewis Wimbish bought the 736-acre tract for $7,000 in 1850 and died a year later at 36, and the house is thought to be his. Its interior has a wide central hall, seven-panel doors with bull's-eye cornerblocks, and marbleized stairs and mantels. A plaster-walled privy, dating from before the Civil War, and several early twentieth-century tobacco-era outbuildings sit around the house. A one-room dwelling, locally called the overseer's house, predates the main house and keeps much of its original finish, including a cut stone chimney and a transitional Georgian/Federal mantel. The property is important mainly as an intact example of a larger plantation and later tobacco farm.