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]
[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.
[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.
[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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