By David Freeze
Horne Creek Living Historical Farm Site
On October 17, 1987, the Horne Creek Living Historical Farm was officially designated as a State Historic Site. On Friday, July 24th, Booper and I headed north to visit the farm and next-door Pilot Mountain State Park.
In 1900, there were 224,637 farms in NC, and 87% of people farmed. Today, less than 2% of North Carolinians farm. Concerns over the loss of our agricultural heritage led to the creation of the Horne Creek Living Historical Farm.
Construction on the centerpiece farmhouse was begun by Thomas Hauser in 1875 or 1876, just [prior to his marriage to Charlotte Kreeger. The house is two-story, with a center hall and is built of logs, then covered by clapboarding (wooden weatherboards). The couple originally lived in the rear of the house as newlyweds, then added on the front of the house as the family grew. The house had four fireplaces, and the foundation of the house was available stone. The house was first painted around the turn of the century, when the exterior was remodeled with shutters, factory porch posts and banisters and connected the wellhouse to the structure. All this gave the house a more Victorian look. While there, my granddaughter retrieved a bucket of water from the 50 feet deep indoor well, all with the help of Historic Site Manager Lisa Turney. Turney made sure to tell Booper about the work duties the one small girl in the family had.
Over two generations, 24 children lived in the house and most of them were born in it. Thomas and Charlotte had 12 of those kids, all but one were boys. The family congregated in the parents’ bedroom for conversations about the day, their work, school and their community.
Several generations of Hauser family farmed the land from 1830 until 1953. The family owned the land until it was sold in 1970 to become part of the Yadkin River Section of Pilot Mountain State Park. In its heyday, the Hauser farm like most of their neighbors depended on crops which had long been grown in the Piedmont—corn, wheat, oats, sorghum and flax. They also raised hogs, sheep, cattle and fowl as important food sources. They eventually added tobacco. The farm increased in size to 450 acres by 1900.
The Hauser children and descendants provided information about the family and farm life. A wonderful quote came from Jeff Hauser. He said, “There’s ways of doing things if you have to. People talk about hard times now, they ought to go back a few times (generations). I mean you can do without a whole lot. If I had to, I could survive on a tenth of what I live on. And live good too. If you think about it, we were practically self-supporting. Of course we had to buy salt, coffee and sugar. And lamp oil. Those are the four main ingredients we had to have. With them, we ate like kings.”
Martha Hauser Moser said, “I remember when we made eighteen pies. We had a pie shelf-I mean a pie bench. We made that many on a weekend and every one’d be gone.”
The farm has a visitor center, a tobacco curing barn, sorghum mill, tobacco packhouse, cannery site, icehouse site, fruit house, smokehouse, dry house (for dehydrating foods like apples), chicken lot, wood lot, woodshed, outhouse, a double crib barn, cemetery and plenty of animals.
The house is furnished in period style and is fascinating. At one time, four adults and up to 12 kids lived in the house, although some of the older boys left the farm as adults.
Another family, the Sawyers, owned part of the land that now forms the historic site. The Sawyers were Black and although neither them nor the Hausers were famous for any reason, both families were representative of thousands of other families across the state at the turn of the 20th century. They were common people who left an uncommonly rich legacy for our state. Plans call for recreating at least part of the Sawyer homesite in the future.
Also on the property is the Southern Heritage Apple Orchard, established in 1997 and dedicated to preserving old apple varieties. More than 850 trees planted preserve 425 different southern apple varieties which were on the brink of extinction. Two trees are planted for each variety, one a free-standing semi-dwarf tree up to 12 feet tall and the other is a dwarf tree. The dwarf trees are about six feet and are on a supporting wire system called “espalier.”
The Horne Creek Historical Farm is a “Don’t Miss” in my opinion! We saw it in the drizzle and light rain and had the special benefit of having Historic Site Manager Lisa Turney as the tour guide. I missed it on the day about two years ago when I explored Pilot Mountain because the farm is closed, just like most NC Historic Sites, on Sunday and Monday. The biggest day of the year at Horne Creek is set for October 17th with the 33rd Annual Cornshucking Frolic event.
The land around the farm is protected by the state park acreage, so modern development cannot encroach on it. The farm is less than seven miles from U.S. 52 and nearby towns of Pilot Mountain and King are within 25 miles of the farm. Just over 70 minutes’ drive from Salisbury, combine the farm and the state park for a spectacular and low-cost day of fun!
