Greenfield Plantation, Somer North Carolina
Greenfield is a distinctively coastal plantation house, with a double porch under an extension of the main roof. Believed to have been built around 1752, the house retains much of its Georgian interior fabric, combined with Greek Revival style remodeling. Probably built for Levi Creecy and remaining in his family until 1851, Greenfield was one of several notable plantations owned in the mid-nineteenth century by Edward Wood, a descendant of Levi Creecy and a successful planter and businessman, in whose family the plantation remains.
For more than a century the plantation was known as "Fordice's" because the original grantee was George Fordice, who secured his patent on January 1st, 1694. The house, however, probably dates from about 1752. In October 1750, Levi Creecy married Mrs. Mary Charlton Haughton, the young widow of Richard Haughton who had died two years earlier. With the lady, Creecy acquired her interest in Richard Haughton's plantation, and he eventually bought the interests of her Haughton children after they were old enough to convey property. His descendants, in various branches of his family, have owned the place ever since. At his death in 1772, "Fordice's" was inherited by his youngest son, Job Creecy, then a small boy. Job was still a minor when he died in 1782, and by the terms of his father's will, his inheritance was divided among his surviving brothers and sisters.
One of the older brothers, Lemuel, immediately bought the interests of William and Nathan Creecy and of their cousin John Skinner of Perquimans County, the husband of their sister Mary, who died shortly before Job. He bought the interest of his youngest sister, Elizabeth, shortly after her marriage to Charles Moore of Perquimans. It was Lemuel Creecy who named his farm Greenfield.
The only known ripples on the surface of Lemuel Creecy's life were his election in 1789 to represent Chowan County in the House of Commons and thus attending the state convention which ratified the Constitution of the United States, and his arrest, on August 15th, 1800, just as he and Nathaniel Allen were about to fight a duel for some unknown reason. By that time he was called Colonel Creecy, an indication that he had served a considerable time with the county militia. He willed Greenfield to his son Lemuel, Jr., or, if he should die childless, to a little grandson, Christopher Gale Creecy, child of the younger Lemuel's brother Joshua Skinner Creecy. Apparently Lemuel, Sr., did not know that Lemuel, Jr., and his wife were expecting a child and that young Lemuel had just made his own will to provide for his wife and baby. The two wills were proved at March term, 1816, Lemuel, Jr., having died very suddenly before his father; his child seems to have died at birth.
Christopher Gale Creecy died young, unmarried, and his brother and sisters inherited Greenfield. In 1837 the brother, Richard Benbury Creecy, bought out his two sisters, who had married and moved away. He moved away himself in 1843, to Elizabeth City, North Carolina, where for awhile he farmed and later, for forty years almost, edited the Elizabeth City Economist, from its beginning in 1872 to a few months before his death in 1908, at the age of 95. In 1891 he began the preparation of a series of short historical sketches intended for school children. These were endorsed by a committee of the Literary and Historical Association and helped towards publication by an appropriation of $200 by the House of Representatives of the General Assembly in 1901. He had long since sold Greenfield to Edward Wood, another great grandson of Levi Creecy.
Edward Wood's energy and ability appeared in all sorts of undertakings. So long as he lived in Edenton, he was a member of the Town Council; after he moved to Greenfield he was a county commissioner. As a young man he was one of the organizers of the Albemarle Steam Navigation Company, which carried most of the passenger traffic between Edenton and the Franklin, Virginia, terminal for the next seventy, years. He ran two of the largest fisheries on the sound, one of them at Greenfield, and was a conspicuously successful farmer, with, eventually, the largest acreage in the county. Greenfield was the first of four farms he bought in 1851; by the end of 1858 he had bought five more, as well as much town property. In 1863 he bought Athol, an imposing plantation house. In 1865 he inherited Hayes and Mulberry Hill, a handsome Federal style plantation house, willed to him by his much older friend James Cathcart Johnston of Hayes.
Seven years after Wood's death in 1872, all of his property except Hayes was valued and divided equally among the six children who did not share in Hayes; Greenfield fell to the youngest, Henry Gilliam Wood. In 1891 Wood sold Greenfield to his elder brother, Frank Wood, whose grandsons later purchased it.
Building Description
Greenfield is a handsome and well-preserved plantation house, with a gable roof extending to cover a double porch, a form typical of coastal North Carolina houses from the eighteenth century onward. The house retains much of its original Georgian fabric with some elements of Greek Revival remodeling.
The dwelling is a T-shaped structure, two stories high. The front portion, the cross-piece of the T, is the earliest section; it is five bays wide and two deep, with a central entrance and an exterior chimney at each gable end of brick laid in Flemish bond, the chimneys have steep single shoulders with tumbling. Large nine-over-nine sash occurs at the first level and six-over-six at the second. The main (central front) entrance is Greek Revival in character, with a double door, each leaf with a single long panel, framed by sidelights and a narrow transom. The whole is framed by a rather simple molding. The gable roof of this front section has a single slope to the rear, but to the front, the angle of slope changes a short distance beneath the ridge, extending outward to form the shed-like porch roof. The full-width double porch features rather heavy posts square in section, with simple molded caps. A simple balustrade encloses the second level of the porch, which is served by a single-leaf central doorway with a small transom, set in a three-part molded frame. At both levels, the facade protected by the porch is flush-sheathed.
The rear ell, forming the stem of the T, is also covered with a gable roof, and its fenestration is like that of the front. Presumably, the front portion was reworked when this section was added in the mid-nineteenth century. It is possible that the ell incorporates an original rear shed. There is a shed addition on the southeast in the "corner of the T, a long one along the northwest side of the ell, and small additions to the rear of the ell; these are simple frame affairs, blending with the finish of the main house.
The interior, far more than the exterior, shows the age and variety of the architectural fabric of Greenfield. The front section follows a center-hall plan, one room deep; to the rear, a transverse hall runs across the ell, and there is a large room to the rear of this; further to the rear is an addition (which contains the kitchen). This plan, excepting the kitchen addition, recurs on the second floor.
The central hall, which contains the stairs, retains essentially its Georgian character. It has a wainscot made up of two ranges of flat panels with rounded moldings, a molded baseboard, and a molded chair rail. Doors with six raised panels lead into the flanking rooms and into the rear ell. They are set in mitered, molded frames. Especially notable is the stair, which rises in the eastern (rear) corner of the hall in three flights, the first front-to-back, then a quarter-turn, the second leading across the hall, the third rising back-to-front. The stair has an open string and simple brackets above a paneled spandrel. Turned balusters and a newel and posts square in section carry a heavy molded handrail that neither ramps nor eases. The soffits of both upper flights are fully paneled, as is the fascia above the hall door under this flight. A raised-paneled door provides access to a closet beneath the stairs.
The flanking parlors show the Greek Revival remodeling of the interior. Each has a heavy molded wooden cornice, which may be early and original, and a Greek Revival mantel with heavy moldings and molded console-like end blocks.
The mantels in the second-floor flanking rooms, however, are of simple, robust Georgian character, suggesting the quality of the mantels that once served the first story rooms. That in the southeast room has a molded backband beneath a cushion frieze. This is surmounted by a well-articulated molded shelf. That in the opposite room is similar, but the frieze is flat, with scotia-molded ends. In both rooms, there are molded door and window frames and simple beaded baseboards. The doors have six raised panels.
The finish of the rear ell is simpler than that of the front section. At the first level, the cross-hall also has flat paneling, probably moved from elsewhere. Here, as in the central hall, is a painted wall mural showing scenes of the Wood plantations and of Edenton. A door at the northwest end of the hall resembles that at the Cupola House, an earlier eighteenth-century house in Edenton. Its origin is uncertain. The upper four panels are like the standard six-panel door, but the lower portion features four corner curved wedge panels, around a central diamond-shaped panel. All panels are raised. Above this door is a transom with geometric tracery. The door at the other end of the hall reproduces the same pattern. The mantel in the rear room is similar to other first-floor mantels. There are both six-panel and two-panel doors, and the finish is rather simple.
There are several outbuildings, including one of frame covered with board-and-batten, with a wraparound porch, and another with a steep gable roof and a single door; it is covered with narrow weatherboards.