Luther M. and Carrie McKenzie House

Luther M. and Carrie McKenzie House
Originally posted in 2015 as the Will and Mildred Chaffin House, updated May 2018

Originally, it appeared that Will and Mildred Chaffin probably built this house right across the street from Mildred’s father and cousins around 1909 when the couple purchased the property, however, it is more likely that L.M. and Carrie Leak McKenzie built this cottage around 1894.[1]

Greensboro Patriot, September 19, 1894, page2

In 1890, Luther McKenzie purchased this lot and an adjacent, now-vacant, parcel, and the following year, he married Carrie Leak. In 1894, the Greensboro Patriot reported that Mr. McKenzie was
building a "cottage" next to his store, and indeed, a store stood on the adjoining land. The McKenzies sold the store lot in 1892 and may have sold the house at that time, too, but in any case, the house lot changed hands several times before Will and Mildred Chaffin bought it in 1909. 

By 1910, it appears that John and Gillie McIver, Will Chaffin’s sister and brother-in-law, lived here. That confirms the history of the house recounted by Ruth Petree during Laura Phillips’ countywide architectural survey.[2]

The house is modest, but the McIver household included five children and Mr. McIver worked as a railroad superintendent. Like many families before World War II, the McIvers rented the house.

By the time of the 1920 census, the McIvers were no longer living in Germanton and the order in which the census-taker worked suggests that Jessie Carson, a well-known educator and public school superintendent, his wife, Irene Carson, who worked as a railroad agent, and their three young children lived in the house.[3]

The 1930 census and oral history record Mildred Chaffin living here from at least 1930 until her death in 1940.[4]

Between the time the Chaffins purchased the property and the point at which Mildred Chaffin began living here, the Chaffins lived in rural Stokes County, Whitakers, North Carolina (Edgecombe County), and Huntington, West Virginia. In the 1920 census, Mildred is enumerated in her father’s household, just across the street from this house, and William is not listed with her. When William died in 1929, he was in Halifax County working as a “farm supervisor” for the State of North Carolina. The couple’s frequent relocation and Will’s absence from the 1920 census suggest that Will Chaffin traveled frequently, but little is known of his occupational history.[5]

William and Mildred did not have children and Mildred willed the house to her niece and nephew, James “Bud” and Sarah Hill, the son and daughter of Mildred’s brother, James Morehead, and his [6]

wife, Mable McKenzie Hill. James Morehead Hill, known as Jim, was a mail carrier and built another house on Germanton’s main street, but the family lost that house during the Great Depression. Jim and Mable Hill and their children may have lived with Mildred Chaffin at some point after 1931.

After Mildred Chaffin’s death in 1940, Mable Hill, herself a widow as of 1940, continued living here and purchased the vacant lot immediately northeast of the house.[7] In 1959, Mable Hill gave that lot to her daughter, Sarah, and in 1961, Bud Hill transferred his half interest in the property to Sarah.[8] Mable Hill lived her until her death in 1986. In 1992, Sarah gave the property back to Bud, who had returned to the house in the 1980s, and he owned it until he sold it to a nephew, Danny McKenzie, and his wife, Amy, in 2001.[9] Since then, it has changed hands a few times and is now owned by Jim Ware.[10]

The house has undergone a number of changes over time so that some of its original details are lost or

obscured, but its original form and front porch detailing remain. The Mildred Chaffin House is a one-story, side-gable dwelling. The house retains its full-width front porch with chamfered posts and

quatrefoil

brackets featuring a quatrefoil design popular in Queen Anne-style or Victorian-era decoration. The central chimney that originally emerged from the roof ridge at the center of the house has been removed. The house’s original six-over-six and four-over-four sash windows have been replaced with modern sashes, and cementitious siding mimics the original weatherboards on the exterior.

The Chaffin House follows a saddlebag floor plan. In a saddlebag plan, the two rooms of the house’s primary section abut one another on either side of a central chimney. At the Chaffin House, the front door opens into a tight, triangular foyer from which doors in each angled wall connect to each of the two front rooms.

Originally, the house’s kitchen was a detached, board-and-batten structure, but over time, it was either moved closer to the dwelling or additions were made that connected the house and kitchen. The latter is the more likely scenario, with the connection being made by enclosing an open breezeway between the two buildings. In the 2000s, when cementitious siding was added to the house, the original board-and-batten siding on the kitchen section was removed or covered, making the house’s evolution less obvious.

Sarah Woodard David, 2015

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[1] Will and Mildred Hill Chaffin House, State Historic Preservation Office Survey Form, SK 302, Laura Phillips, 1983 and U.S. Census, 1900, accessed via ancestry.com.

[2] Ibid, and U.S. Census, 1910, accessed via ancestry.com.

[3] U. S. Census, 1920, accessed via ancestry.com.

[4] Will and Mildred Hill Chaffin House, State Historic Preservation Office Survey Form, SK 302, Laura Phillips, 1983 and U.S. Census, 1930, accessed via ancestry.com.

[5] Danbury Reporter, February 14, 1912, page 1; Huntington, WV, City Directory, accessed via ancestry.com; William L. Chaffin entry on findagrave.com.

[6] Will of Mildred Hill Chaffin, Stokes County Will Book 9, page 235; Stokes County Deed Book 78, page 126 and Book 91, page 18 detail the foreclosure of Jim Hill’s property; and Louise Browder, personal interview with the author, June 2014.

[7] Stokes County Deed Book 104, page 399, July 25, 1941, Ada Hill Powers to Mabel McK. Hill.

[8] Stokes County Deed Book 136, page 196, April 3, 1959, Mable McKenzie Hill to Sarah Hill Berry, and Stokes County Deed Book 192, page 576, September 2, 1961, James “Bud Hill to Sarah Hill Berry.

[9] Stokes County Deed Book 357, page 1360, March 30, 1992, Sarah Hill Nelson to Bud Hill, and Stokes County Deed Book 451, page 684, June 14, 2001, James “Bud” Hill to Danny McKenzie.

[10] Stokes County Deed Book 570, page 939, July 18, 2007, James and Sandra Turpin to James Ware.