About

I am undertaking the restoration of the circa 1884 John James McCuiston house, located in a rural community of North Carolina.

The earliest known picture of the McCuiston House

Lettie Shaw and the beloved family dog

Mr. Devoe Clinard, after the ca. 1940s remodel

McCuiston House in the atumn season, ca. 1950s

Winter in the early 1960s

Five generations of one family were raised in this “Plantation Plain” house, which was once the center of a tobacco and cattle farm. Some of the older folks of the community still remember the tobacco primings where some of the community would show up to help and be treated to a big meal in and around the house. Many also tell me that they considered the McCuiston House to be the finest house in this little town when they were young. After it was sold out of the family, it passed through a couple of hands until it ended up in foreclosure and sat abandoned for about two years. A friend of mine purchased it, had the wisteria, ivy, and massive overgrowth cut off of the house, and made some much-needed repairs. I then bought the house from him in 2014. I am slowly peeling back the layers and restoring the house back as best I can to its original circa 1884 appearance.

I have loved old things ever since I was a child. My grandpa, Tom Bennett, instilled it in me. He grew up at the foot of the Sauratown Mountains of Surry County as a poor sharecropper’s son. In many ways he was a generation behind many others because of his life experiences. When I was a little girl, my grandpa still had a working wood cook stove, a collection of oil lamps, and two sets of plows and mule harnesses “just in case the tractor broke down.” My grandparents’ old house was a log one built in the 1790s–the second-oldest homestead still standing in Guilford County. (The next door neighbors had the oldest.) They heated by wood in the winter and cooled off with open windows in the summer. I spent most of my childhood on my grandparents 50-acre farm in the little village of Stokesdale, North Carolina. My best childhood memories came from a week-long stay on that farm during the big ice storm of 1995. Power was out for a week, and we lived by lamplight and cookstove. I loved hearing stories from my grandparents on how they grew up, especially stories from my grandfather about life as a boy. He valued the old ways and wanted to pass them down to me and my little sister. Our family had been farmers in America since around 1624 when Bennett’s Welcome was started by our ancestors near Jamestown, Virginia. Not too many families of the South can claim such a solid line of farmers, which is something I am honored to be able to do.

When I am not working on restoring the circa 1884 McCuiston House, I usually find myself in my office where I serve the Lord as our church’s administrative assistant.