Friday, January 13, 2017

Braudes and Sallie Rutledge House and Germanton Esso


Braudes and Sallie Rutledge House and Germanton Esso
ca. 1949 and ca. 1957

Jerry Rutledge is credited below as a co-author because most of this post is taken from his article entitled “Raleigh Braudes Rutledge and Sallie Emma Fowler Rutledge,” published in The Heritage of Stokes County, volume 1. Footnotes cite other sources; all facts not footnoted are from Jerry Rutledge’s article.


Although the Braudes and Sallie Rutledge House is one of the newest dwellings on Germanton’s main street, the deeds associated with it shine a light on key aspects of Germanton’s history.

Braudes and Sallie Fowler Rutledge were natives of Stokes County who married in 1928 and moved to High Point for jobs in a hosiery mill. Around the time their first son was born, in 1935, the couple had a chance to buy a farm back home in the Friendship community, north of Germanton. In 1944, twins, Cheryl and Jerry, arrived, and in 1948, the couple purchased the former home of Dr. Wade H. Bynum in Germanton. In short order, the Rutledges built a small grocery and gas station.

Mr. Rutledge worked as a carpenter, continued farming in Friendship, and ran the gas station with Sallie.

In 1957, the Rutledges tore down the old Bynum House and built the existing Ranch house on the older foundation, with the Stokes-Forsyth County line bisecting the house. The one-story house is a typical brick, Ranch with a low-pitched, side-gable roof, engaged carport, and large picture windows. It was the scene of many family lunches and Christmas morning celebrations while the gas station hosted daily gatherings of farmers and locals who gathered to shoot the breeze and swap stories.

The gas station, originally known as the Germanton Esso and later more informally as Buddy Wall’s Exxon, is a one-story, hip-roof building. The façade is brick with concrete block walls on the sides and rear. Half-round attic vents punctuate the front and side roof slopes and along with brick soldier courses above the window and door openings, they give a slight nod to the Colonial Revival designs popular for residences in the late 1940s.

The Rutledges retired from the store in 1973 and leased the business while continuing to farm. Braudes died in 1988 and Sallie lived until 2005. The Rutledge family continues to own the house and store today.

The house stands on the foundation of a house that was intended to be a school for girls, operated by a woman named Ann Mays. Mrs. Mays had lived in Virginia, and although her motivations for moving to Germanton and opening a school remain unknown, she was recruiting teachers as early as November 1854.[1]

In May 1855, Isaac Gibson, a son of one of the town’s wealthiest antebellum families, borrowed $5,000 from a Virginian named Samuel Shelton, who was Ann Mays’ brother. Gibson used that money to invest in the planned school and he purchased four acres of land on Main Street from his niece, Olivia Stedman, and her husband, William. Based on later estate records, Ann Mays engaged a builder named Dietrich Tavis to construct “a house suitable for a dwelling and also of sufficient size and dimensions for keeping a large Female School therein.”[2]

Tavis went to work constructing a Greek Revival house nearly identical to the Stedman-Raney-Savage House and other related houses in the area. Mrs. Mays placed several ads seeking students and teachers in newspapers throughout the second half of 1855, and advertisements continued to run in 1856, but in December of that year, Ann Mays died shortly after the birth of a daughter, who died in August.[3] In May, 1857, Mrs. Mays’ husband put the school up for sale, but the property was not sold and instead, became tied up in the estate of one of the school’s key investors, William Steadman, who died in April 1857.[4]

It is unclear how or why the property ended up in Dr. Steadman’s estate, but because Mrs. Mays died without having paid Tavis for his work, William Steadman along with several other investors were left with the school’s debts, including debts to Tavis. Thus, in 1858, Isaac Gibson, acting as executor of his nephew-in-law’s estate, petitioned the court to sell the house.[5]

It is unclear what happened to the house between in 1858 and 1871, but by 1871, John Alspaugh, Olivia Gibson Stedman’s second husband and her widower by that point, was overseeing the settlement of several Gibson family estates, including William Stedman’s. After 1871, it transferred hands several times before D.C. Slate bought it. Slate was involved in several Germanton-area enterprises, but less than a year after purchasing this house, he opened a hotel in Germanton and a later news article refers to this property as the former Slate Hotel.[6]

In 1891, Slate and a business partner, W.B. Harris, dissolved their partnership and the dissolution gave Harris and his wife, Laura, the building. Harris is mentioned in an 1893 news report as a “professor” operating a school, but it is not known if this building served in that capacity.

In 1899, Harris sold the house to W. P. Bynum who sold it the following year to his brother, Wade, who was a physician.[7] Less than a year later, Dr. Bynum married Martha Poindexter. Bynum was a highly regarded doctor, and his family’s roots ran very deep in the area: his great grandfather had been among those charged with locating a county seat for the newly-formed Stokes County in 1789. Dr. Bynum was known for house calls and dedication to his patients, and based on death certificates, he served white families and African American families alike.

Dr. Bynum died in 1943 followed by Mrs. Bynum in 1945.[8] The house passed to the Bynum’s grandsons, and in 1946, their guardians sold it to to Ralph and Ethel Butner who then sold it to the Rutledges in 1947.[9]



 Sarah Woodard David and Jerry Rutledge, 2017

. . . see also . . . 
For more information about the Steadmans, click here. For a fuller discussion to Tavis' work in and around Germanton, click here



[1] Spirit of the Age (Raleigh), November 29, 1854, page 3.
[2] Estate Records of William W. Stedman, N.C. State Archives, Raleigh, N.C.
[3] Grave markers at Germanton Methodist Church Cemetery.
[4] Graver marker at Germanton Methodist Church Cemetery. Additional confirmation of death date in the Fayetteville Weekly Observer, April 27, 1857. The school was advertised for sale by Robert Mays in the Christian Advocate (Raleigh), May 28, 1857, page 2.
[5] Estate Records of William W. Stedman, N.C. State Archives, Raleigh, N.C.
[6] Greensboro Patriot, August 30, 1899, page 10.
[7] W.B. and Laura Harris to W.P. Bynum, Forsyth County Deed Book 106, page 572, October 30, 1899; and W.P. Bynum to Wade H. Bynum, Forsyth County Deed Book 97, page 472, October 1, 1900.
[8] Graver markers in the Poindexter-Bynum-Hill Family Cemetery, accessed via findagrave.com.
[9] Marshall Matthews, guardian, to Ralph and Ethel Butner, Forsyth County Deed Book 533, page 130, August 8, 1946; and Ralph and Ethel Butner to R.B. and Sallie Rutledge, Stokes County Deed Book 111, page 141, and Forsyth County Deed Book 575, page 43, December 9, 1947.

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