HISTORICAL SKETCHES

CANE CREEK BAPTIST CHURCH

Number 5: April 2004 www.canecreek.org 6901 Orange Grove Road., Hillsborough, NC 27278

THE CRAWFORD FARM

Recently, I had the opportunity to look at a college term paper on Mae and Cecil's farm. I thought it would be fun to share some of the information with the congregation. But first, a bit of history. Cecil and Mae (along with Settle) were the children of Luther and Mary Bell ("Mit") Crawford. A family picture is on page 112 of A Cane Creek Tapestry. (Page numbers in parenthesis below refer to pictures in Tapestry.) The farm lies on parts of two old land grants. The southern half was part of a 1756 grant from Lord Granville to Alexander Mebane, the first sheriff of Orange County. I do not know the original grantee for the upper half, but in 1768 it belonged to John Cate. By 1810 the entire farm was owned by William Hopson who may or may not have been the builder of what came to be know as Hopson's Mill. (I lean toward the mill's having been built by a Cate in the 18th century.) In 1884-5, the farm belonged to C. E. Gower(page 31), one of our preachers. Gower sold the farm to W. H. Lloyd and it then descended to Tommy Lloyd (page 15) who sold the farm to the Crawfords in 1909 for $1225.

The term paper was written in 1990 by Gretchen Case for a UNC Folklore course. She. got most of the information from talking to Cecil and Mae. Mae reports that Ms. Case got a "good grade." Below are excerpts. I have changed a few words here and there to make the excerpts work well together.

"The land on which these buildings stand tells the history of Orange County. At first there was the Hopson cotton plantation, with its old gristmill and slave cabins. The Stagecoach road from Raleigh to Greensboro ran just to the north of the house. Cecil points out that trains put an end to the old stagecoach road, and all that is visible now is a tree-lined gully. During Civil War times, Union troops marching from occupied Raleigh to do battle at Guilford Courthouse stopped to rest here.

"The farm passed from the Hopsons to the Lloyds and then to the Crawfords. But its traditional crop remained cotton. Mae says that prior to 1941 "we did the big cotton" - nine acres producing up to nine bales a year in Depression years. Although they were growing an abundance of cotton, prices had plummeted. The Crawfords recall that one year their father held the cotton back until he could get eight or nine cents a pound, rather than the six he had been offered. The money they received was used to purchase things the Crawfords could not provide for themselves. They did not buy many groceries since they always kept a garden going, churned everyday, and had cows, hogs, and chickens for meat. Octagon soap and sugar were two of the small luxuries in town. Some tools and farm equipment also had to be bought- Cecil fondly remembers the days when a good heavy knife was only 25 cents! Though the Crawford women did most of their own sewing, they bought shoes, men's suits, and winter coats. Cloth was also often store-bought. Another alternative for cloth though, was the brightly printed feedbags in which many farmers received chicken and dairy feed. These were of sturdy material, often with bright patterns that made them desirable for making dresses (page 88).

" The original one room cabin, now the kitchen, is apparent only from the rear of the house. The cabin dates back to the early nineteenth century. The Crawfords cannot pin down an exact date, but they do know that it and the smokehouse to the south were constructed at least as early as 1835 by "Old Man Hopson." Hopson, his wife, and his young son are buried out just to the west of the Crawford's' old granary. The flooded Cane Creek now covers the land that held the cotton plantation's old gristmill and numerous slave cabins. At the top of the hill, the cabin that is now the Crawford's' kitchen served as the "big house". The cabin and the smokehouse are both of solid, simple construction: hand-hewn logs with wooden pegs holding the joists together.

"Luther and Mary Bell Crawford wanted a new house to raise their family in- the cabin was still solid, but the front structure was dreary and aging. Before any building could be done, though, they had to establish their new farm. In the next few years, they had three children: Cecil, born 1910; Settle, in 1912; and Mae, in 1915.[See page 112 for a family portrait.] Finally, in 1917, they were ready to raise a new house. The decision of what style to build was easy: The I-house was obviously the style of the times, as Mary Bell's two sisters had each just built an I-house on nearby property. Building the new house was a community project. The head carpenter, and the only professional involved, was Mr. Ed Cates (page 117), a man from the neighborhood. He and Luther Crawford did the brunt of the work themselves. The lumber for the house came from the backyard. Luther cut the timber with a handsaw, and then took it to a nearby sawmill to be made into planks. The framing timber was procured from a neighbor, at the price of 20 cents per 100 square feet- even in those days a negligible sum. Mr. Cates was paid $2 a day for his labor. Neighboring farmers who put in days of labor on the Crawford's' new house were repaid through the barter system. There was always plenty of hard work to be shared: fields to be cleared, crops to be gathered.

"Perhaps most important, is the ethic of preservation that lies behind these buildings. Nothing was torn down if it could be improved or put to another use. The old garage became the woodshed; an insufficient carport was widened. There is a lesson in all of this for our throw-away society: adapt instead of abandon. Mae summed it up best when she said, "If you just take care of yourself, you'll live to be old." Simple but true, as is evident in the buildings the Crawfords have taken such good care of and grown old with."

Ed Johnson