Wayne County, NC - Heritage Series Reprinted with permission of the Mount Olive Tribune and cannot be reproduced without permission. Transcribed by Barbara Kawamoto. Outbuildings on Farms, Plantations "Our Heritage" By Claude Moore In older days nearly all farms had a variety of outbuildings, which served for various and sundry purposes. After the coming of farm machinery and farms became less self sufficient, many of these buildings were either torn down or allowed to disintegrate because of the expense of keeping them up. Some of the outbuildings were: the corn crib, the shuck barn, the hay barn, the stables, the potato house or cellar, the smoke house, the chicken house, the cotton house, the wash house, the loom house, a tool shed, the turkey pens, the flax house, and often in the Cape Fear region one would find rice houses. The corncribs were either made of pine boards or logs and often contained feed baskets and shuck baskets made of oak splits. Many farm people would have corn shuckings and get all the corn shucked at one time by friends and neighbors after which there was usually a sumptuous dinner. The shuck bar was used for storing corn shucks, which were fed to cattle. And too, the shucks were used for chair bottoms and for scrub mops. The hay barn was used for storing hay and fodder, and many children in the country had pleasant memories of playing in the hay barn. The stables were either built of sawed timbers or of logs. I well remember the log stables with twenty stalls at the old William A. Faison place near Turkey. The stable fertilizer was one of the essential ingredients for farming and gardening. The potato houses were usually built of logs and were built partially below the ground level to keep the sweet potatoes and Irish potatoes from freezing. Most farmers put some of their sweet potatoes in circular shaped banks for the winter. The smoke house was used for storing and curing hog meat. There was often a meat trough hewn out of a solid log and was used for salting down meat. After the hog killings, the cracklings, liver pudding, sausage, and tom thumbs were placed in the smoke house. In earlier times, homemade soap, homemade kraut and salt were stores in the smoke house as well as the stand of lard. Every farm had a chicken house where the chickens, ducks, geese and guineas were kept at night. Some chicken houses had hen nests in them. The cotton house was used for storing newly picked cotton before it was carried to the gin, and sometimes used for storing baled cotton. The washhouse is where the laundry was done and sometimes there was a large fireplace with a pot for boiling clothes. The washtubs, washboards, clothespins, and boxes of potash were kept here. Every farm or plantation had a loom and since they were large and massive one usually had a loom room or loom house. The spinning wheels were kept in the loom house as well as the hank winders, cotton cards, and equipment for dyeing. A tool shed was used mostly for garden tools many of which were made by local blacksmiths and craftsman in olden days. Seeds were often stored in the tool house in glass jars. Many farms had domesticated turkeys although in North Carolina prior to 1890, wild turkeys abounded in eastern North Carolina. Turkey feathers were used for dusters, and goose feathers were used for pillows, bolsters and feather beds. Flax and hemp were grown in early days in North Carolina as well as indigo. This was often kept in a small house. In southeastern North Carolina, much rice was grown in swamps for home use and in the lower Cape Fear, it was grown commercially. Many plantations at Cape Fear had rice houses. The rice was either threshed at a water-powered mill or a mortar and pestle was used. ============================================================== USGENWEB NOTICE: In keeping with our policy of providing free information on the Internet, data may be used by non-commercial entities, as long as this message remains on all copied material. The electronic pages may NOT be reproduced in any format for profit or for presentation by other persons or organizations. Persons or organizations desiring to use this material for purposes other than stated above must obtain the written consent of the file contributor, and contact the listed USGenWeb archivist with proof of this consent. The submitter has given permission to the USGenWeb Archives to store the file permanently for free access. File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by Barbara Kawamoto ==============================================================