The was a 1,000 Cotton and Tobacco Plantation in NC

Bryan Whitfield Herring Farm, Calypso North Carolina

Date added: September 01, 2024

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The Bryan Whitfield Herring House is situated amid twenty-eight of the original 1,027-acre farm, one-and-one-half miles west of Calypso and four-and-one-half miles north of Faison in the extreme northwestern corner of Duplin County. The flat open fields, distant tree line, and dense declivity of nearby Goshen Branch serve to dramatize the lofty and imposing character and style of the picturesque Greek Revival plantation house, a stark silhouette in a limitless landscape.

The landscape of the Herring Farm includes fields, groves, streams, and woodlands contained in a twenty-eight-acre section of a nineteenth-century tract of 1,027 acres. The land continues to be used essentially as it was at the time of the house construction, and the agrarian landscape conveys the visual character typical of many coastal plain farms during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The pattern of cultivated fields and pastures has not been changed and maintains historic agrarian yields including cotton, tobacco, Irish potatoes, corn, and beans.

Bryan Whitfield Herring (1812-1874), a native of Lenoir County; and his wife, Penelope Simms (1815-1887) of Edgecombe County, produced ten children who became prominent in Southern politics, military service, medicine, education, and farming. The property is currently owned and occupied by Bryan Whitfield Herring's great-granddaughter, Patricia Johnson Denise, and her son, Christopher. Thus, through direct inheritance, the house and land have been maintained, and the architectural heritage has been carefully preserved.

Settlement of the upland area of Duplin County increased dramatically after the construction of railroad transportation through the region in 1838. Among the successful planters who moved into the region during the early nineteenth century were Herrings, Hickses and Faisons, whose adjacent holdings formed the basis of the early wealth and social intercourse of the region northwest of the county seat at Kenansville. In 1819, John Beck sold two tracts along Fryers Branch on the north side of Goshen Swamp, totaling 903 acres, to his cousin, William Herring, a native of Lenoir County and progenitor of the Duplin Herring line. In 1833, Herring purchased two tracts on Goshen, encompassing 120 acres, from William Hurst. Six years later, in 1839, Herring bought four acres on Indigo Branch from Hurst, enlarging the plantation to 1,027 acres. All this property was eventually inherited by his fifth son, Bryan Whitfield Herring.

Bryan Whitfield Herring was born in Lenoir County on June 21^st, 1812. On January 21^st, 1834, he married Penelope Simms, who was born in Edgecombe County on May 26^th, 1815. Their marriage produced ten children, all of whom grew to prominence in the Old North State and elsewhere. The eldest child, William Alexander Herring (1834-1903), studied civil engineering at the University of Virginia, served as Captain in Company G, 40^th North Carolina Regiment during the Civil War, and sat in the post-war Mississippi House and Senate. The second child, Benjamin Simms Herring (1837-1922), graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis, served on the Merrimac during the Civil War, and died at the age of eighty-five in Tallahassee, Florida. A third son, Needham Bryan Herring (1839-1923), was educated at Belmont, North Carolina, and became a successful and respected surgeon. Fourth in line was Robert Simms Herring (1841-1914), who attended the Franklin Academy at Louisburg, North Carolina, joined Company G, 40^th NC Regiment with his brother, and after the war moved to Carol County, Mississippi. The fifth child, and first daughter, was Elizabeth Vaiden Herring (1843-1921). She married John Cromartie Wright in 1867. Her interest in education manifested itself in her leadership of the Coharie School in neighboring Sampson County, and directly influenced her son, Robert Herring Wright, who became president of East Carolina University at Greenville. The sixth child, Louis Whitfield Herring (1847-1896), ran the plantation after his father's death, and ensured that the house and land remained in the family. Bryan Whitfield Herring, Jr. (1849-1907), the seventh child, known as "Buck", was a distributor for the Steiff Piano Company in Wilmington, and is credited for giving the railroad market town near the Herring plantation the name Calypso, for the hero in Homer's epic, Ulysses. The eighth child, a daughter, Della Barnes Herring (1851-1917), attended finishing school in New Orleans, and returned to Duplin County where she married Elias Faison Hicks, member of another prominent regional family. James Simms Herring (1853-unk.), the ninth child, spent his professional adult life in Little Rock, Arkansas. The last child, Mary Faison Herring (1856-1948), called "Mollie", attended Mary Baldwin College in Staunton, Virginia where she achieved the highest grades in school. She married Mordecai Witherington, of a distinguished Duplin line.

Bryan Whitfield Herring and his family prospered on the plantation for nearly a quarter of a century after constructing the handsome, Greek Revival-style home on its 1,027 acres of productive agricultural land. In addition to his agricultural pursuits, he was involved in politics as a member of the North Carolina State Senate for terms in 1850, 1852 and 1854. He died on October 18^th, 1874 at the age of 62; and his widow continued the farm operations with the help of her son, Louis. After her death, on July 31^st, 1887, the estate passed to a daughter, Della; and her husband, Elias Faison Hicks. In turn they bequeathed the property to their only child, Mary Faison Hicks (1873-1909); and her husband, Thomas Pigford (1872-1910). They willed the property to their only child, Virginia Pigford; and her husband, Edward Herd Johnson. Subsequently, Patricia Johnson; and her husband, Frank Denise, received the house and 169 acres of land surrounding it as her inheritance. Thus a direct line of descent of the Bryan Whitfield Herring plantation extends down through six generations, from William Herring to his great-great-granddaughter, Patricia, a period of 180 years. Among the traditional crops still produced on the farm are cotton, sweet potatoes and tobacco.

Site Description

Built circa 1850 and located near Calypso in a fertile farm belt in the northwestern corner of Duplin County, North Carolina, the Bryan Whitfield Herring House is one of a group of highly significant, antebellum, Greek Revival-style homes that were built within a radius of about five miles from the economic and cultural center of Faison for a select society of interrelated, wealthy, antebellum planters whose holdings remain in the ownership of descendants into the late twentieth century.

State Route 1311, a short transverse road that runs northwest between Calypso and the Sampson County border, passes in front of the house before descending down to Goshen Branch, a feeder stream flowing into the great Goshen Swamp near the center of the county. The 169-acre property lies on the north side of the road and east of the branch, extending in all directions to border tree lines of pines and swamp oaks. A sandy path turns into the front yard where evidence indicates the location of a semicircular drive and the archaeological remains of several brick dependencies.

The handsomely proportioned residence is resplendent with fine architectural details, centered on the double-story entrance porch and four massive gable-end chimneys. Despite a tornado in 1984 which destroyed the upper chimney stacks, outbuildings, and 180-panes of glass from the windows; and heavy damage caused by two hurricanes in 1996, the house remains virtually intact, and the owners have recently installed a new, period, wood shingle roof.

The Bryan Whitfield Herring House is a two-and-a-half-story, gable-end, frame house in the Greek Revival style. Five bays wide and four bays deep, the south front elevation is dignified by a double-story entrance porch incorporating four robust, square posts and two pilasters, each with molded caps and bases, supporting an architrave and low-pitched frieze. Originally the porch was one story high, but in 1854 the upper tier was added by the application of flooring over the sloping roof rafters. The sides of the lower porch are enclosed by balustrades with wide footboards, square pickets and round handrails. The gallery replicates the Greek Revival posts at slightly smaller dimensions and introduces two new stylistic elements: Gothic Revival pointed-top balustrades, and Italianate brackets of curvilinear form and acorn motifs upholding deep soffits.

The exterior walls are sheathed with plain-edge weather boards terminating at wide corner pilasters. Ovolo molded caps are formed by the extension of eave fascias set beneath the roof soffits. The east and west gabled elevations have flush verge boards that are a derivation of the Georgian architectural tradition.

Windows contain six-over-six sash and square moldings that project outward into crossetted lintels, another Georgian throwback. Entrances at the first and second levels have four-panel doors with triangular, Greek Revival style moldings and multi-light transoms. Tall sidelights flank the lower door and transom. A one-story, shed-roofed attachment extends across the rear elevation and is of unique arrangement: small porches occupy the central and corner bays, while the second and fourth bays contain piazza rooms. Robust corner posts, similar to those at the front of the house, mark the porch corners, and the central bay contains two paneled posts. Doors open into the corner chambers, central hall, and east shed room. Windows in the attic gables have four-over-four-pane sashes centered in east and west facades.

An outstanding feature of the house is the presence of four massive, 5:1 bond, exterior chimneys, two stepped-shoulder sentinels standing at each gable end between close-coupled windows. The east chimneys have stuccoed lower sections and rebuilt upper stacks. The west chimneys are stuccoed halfway into the second story, their stacks destroyed by recent hurricanes.

A wide central hall runs through the lower level of the house. Doors with chamfered architraves open into four spacious rooms containing well-executed paneled mantels, high strip molded baseboards, plaster walls and ceilings, and wide pine floors. Along the west wall of the hallway are mirror image open-string staircases with square newels and balusters, and rounded handrails. The stairs commence just inside the front and rear entrances, rise to separate landings at the center of the house, then make full turns and end their runs in small foyers outside the second-floor bedrooms. The four chambers have doors with plain architraves and mantels, and other finishes duplicating those at the first level. Above each mantel and in the halls are boards with clothes hooks. A continuous partition wall in the upper story bisects the house, each sector being served by a separate staircase. A supposition for this rare floor plan is that the Herrings were determined to keep their sons' and daughters' quarters separated. A third staircase of similar design rises in a straight run from the northeast chamber up to an intact board-and-batten door and into the expansive attic. The attic walls and sloping ceiling are finished with plaster applied to hand-split lath.

Twenty-eight acres of the remaining 169 farm acreage contain historic resources related to the Bryan Whitfield Herring House. The twenty-eight acres contain intact patterns of woodlands, fields, water features, and farm lanes. In continuing to be used essentially as it was during the period of significance, the agrarian landscape of the farm property conveys the isolated visual character typical of many coastal farmsteads during the nineteenth century. Standing in the center of the southern end of the twenty-eight acres, the Herring House faces south across a knoll to the road heading northwest from Calypso to the Sampson and Wayne county lines. North is a broad plowed field extending to a border of deciduous and evergreen woodlands, beyond which flows Fryars Branch. An early farm lane runs the eastern boundary of the property. To the west of the house is the farm pond, two springs, and a wooded area.