THE JOHN FLEMING HOUSE

East Thollie Green Road (SR 1130)

Granville County, North Carolina

by David E. Jeffreys

The two-story front block of this heavy timber frame house, and the previously detached first floor of its rear ell, were built prior to the Civil War by John (1813-1895) and Nancy Fleming. They also probably raised the mortised and tenoned, one-story structure to the house’s fore that served as the office of “Dr.” Charles T. Burnette, the husband of their daughter, Minerva. (Burnette is said to have practiced as a physician without the benefit of a medical degree.) The Burnettes left the house to their niece and her husband, Minnie (Crews) and M. S. Thollie Green (1876-1950), in whose family it remains.

One-room deep and divided by a center hallway, the house has two-panel doors and generous 8/8 windows set into crossetted surrounds. Although its beaded weatherboards are almost entirely obscured by aluminum siding, it retains its original gable end stone chimneys and square, fluted, front porch posts. Many original features also finish the interior. The upstairs rooms have ceilings and walls of hand-planed boards, five-panel doors wet in simple rectilinear surrounds and simple post and lintel mantels. Downstairs the walls are plastered and similar doors are set in symmetrical, corner-block surrounds. An octagonal handrail and thin vertical stiles serve the stair of the center hallway.

The octagonal form is repeated at the porch railing of Burnette’s office, a neatly finished structure with a boxed cornice, pattern boards and crossetted surrounds that may once have originally been a dwelling. The separate log kitchen than once served the house is long gone, but an early smokehouse, built of pegged timbers and sided with beaded weatherboards, still stands to the rear.

~Heritage and Homesteads. 1988.
 The Granville County Historical Society, Oxford, NC

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This house is also known as the “Minnie Crews Green House” and the “Mama Green House.” The dwelling is now the home of Minnie and Thollie Green’s granddaughter, Betsy Hayes, who with her family operates it as a horse farm.

Approximately 1950, my father took me (David E. Jeffreys, Jr.) to see his Aunt Minnie and family and I took some photos of the house with my trusty Kodak Brownie camera. Here is a copy of that picture:

More recently, April 2010, Betsy Hayes invited me to come back to take more pictures of the house:

In addition, I took pictures of “Dr. Barnette’s Office” which stands to the left front of the house: