Mollie and Alice Hill House

Mollie and Alice Hill House, ca. 1888

This house was probably built around 1888 either by Lauriston Hill for his widowed sister-in-law or by that sister-in-law, Susan Hill. The carpenter or builder is unknown. It’s named for Susan Hill’s daughters (Lauriston Hill’s nieces) who lived here for most of the house’s existence.

the Mollie and Alice Hill House at the turn of the twentieth century
photograph from Bud Hill's personal collection, copied by Wade Duncan in 1988

the Mollie and Alice Hill House today

Susan Poindexter was born to well-to-do parents, William and Eliza Nelson Poindexter, near Germanton in 1828. In 1846, she married John Gideon Hill, who was the son of Joel and Mildred Hill and brother to Lauriston Hardin Hill. John Gideon served as Stokes County’s sheriff in the late 1840s, and after the county was divided in 1849, he became the first Forsyth County Sherriff. John Gideon and Susan appear to have lived in or near Bethania for most of their married lives, and Hill died there in 1885.[1]

This photo of Lauriston Hill with his fiddle may show
Mollie and Alice with their cousin or mother.
The edge of the porch in the extreme right may be the
front porch of the Mollie and Alice Hill House.
photograph from Bud Hill's personal collection, 
copied by Wade Duncan in 1988

In 1888, Susan Hill bought this lot from her brother-in-law, Lauriston, and moved back to Germanton with her unmarried daughters, Mary Mildred “Mollie” and Alice. It is unclear if Lauriston Hill commissioned this house for his widowed sister-in-law and her daughters or if Susan Hill had it constructed.[2]

Susan died in 1890, but, confusingly, the 1900 census shows Mollie and Alice living in Germanton with sixty-two-year-old Susan Hill, who is listed as their sister. This is, most likely, their cousin, Susan F. Hill, daughter of Joel Felix and Harriett Kiser Hill. (Mollie and Alice’s father, John Giedon Hill, and Susan F. Hill’s father, Joel Felix Hill, were brothers.) Also included in the household in 1900 is Jannie Rierson, the family’s thirty-five-year-old, African American housekeeper.

By 1910, Alice and Mollie lived alone in their house. The census enumerates Jane Rierson on Sycamore Street (no longer extant) in Germanton and notes that she is working in a private home, presumably for the Hill sisters. Ten years later, the Hill sisters still resided in this house, but Ms. Rierson had followed many of Germanton’s other African American residents to Winston-Salem, where she moved in with her daughter and son-in-law, Henry and Ollie Oliver on East Fifteenth Street. Henry Oliver worked at a rubber plant while Ms. Rierson’s occupation was listed as “wash and iron.”

Mollie Hill died in 1922 and Alice appears to have moved to Winston-Salem: the 1940 census records Alice on North Spring Street where she owned a home but lodged several boarders, including Lillian Small, her cousin’s daughter. In 1944, she sold her Germanton home to David and Dorothy Montgomery who lived here until the late 1950s.[3]

In 1973, Dorothy Montgomery sold the house to Sidney and Muriel Rivers who deeded it to Louis and Glenda Whiteheart just a few years later.[4] The Whitehearts added vinyl siding to the home, but otherwise, it remains intact.

The Mollie and Alice Hill House is a two-story, L-shaped dwelling. A double-leaf front door with sidelights and a shallow pediment is centered in the symmetrical façade. The home’s two-over-two sash windows feature plain pediments to match the one over the front door. Fluted cornerboards trim the exterior and a one-story, full-width porch features square posts with deep molded caps surmounted by sawnwork scrolled brackets, and a fanciful sawnwork balustrade. Like the Lauriston Hardin Hill House next door, this house features a double-tier porch that wraps along the interior corner of the main block and the rear ell of the rear elevation. This porch has been enclosed at the first floor level, but remains partially open upstairs.

Behind the house is a one-story, board-and-batten building that was probably a kitchen, and a tobacco barn stands at the back of the lot, near the railroad corridor.

Sarah Woodard David, 2015

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[1] R. D. W. Connor, et el, eds., History of North Carolina, vol. IV, North Carolina Biography (Chicago: Lewis Publishing Company, 1919), 57.

[2] Connor, 57, and L. H. Hill to Susan F. Hill, Stokes County Deed Book 29, page 440, March 18, 1888.

[3] Alice Hill to D. S. Montgomery, Stokes County Deed Book 99, page 444, January 4, 1943. Additionally, Alice Hill died in 1955. Alice, Mollie, Susan, and John G. Hill are all buried in the Poindexter-Bynum-Hill Family Cemetery just off NC Highway 65, between Germanton and Walnut Cove.

[4] Dorothy Montgomery to Sidney and Muriel Rivers, Stokes County Deed Book 212, page 846, August 23, 1973, and Sidney and Muriel Rivers to Louis and Glenda Whiteheart, Stokes County Deed Book 241, page 768, February 4, 1978.