The Hoyle Historic Homestead, also known as Hoyle Family Homestead, Peter Hoyle House, and Pieter Hieyl Homeplace, is a mid- to late-18th century two-story house in
Gaston County, North Carolina
Gaston County is a county in the U.S. state of North Carolina. As of the 2020 census, the population was 227,943. The county seat is Gastonia. Dallas served as the original county seat from 1846 until 1911.
Gaston County is included in t ...
, with notable
German-American
German Americans (german: Deutschamerikaner, ) are Americans who have full or partial German ancestry. With an estimated size of approximately 43 million in 2019, German Americans are the largest of the self-reported ancestry groups by the Unite ...
construction features, the main block of which reflects two, and possibly three, phases, but the exact construction dates have not been determined. A major renovation, , added a late
Georgian
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* Anything related to, or originating from Georgia (country)
** Georgians, an indigenous Caucasian ethnic group
** Georgian language, a Kartvelian language spoken by Georgians
**Georgian scripts, three scrip ...
and
Federal
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finish, as well as front and rear shed porches. A brick well house and a frame
smokehouse
A smokehouse (North American) or smokery (British) is a building where meat or fish is cured with smoke. The finished product might be stored in the building, sometimes for a year or more. , both east of the house, date from the 19th century. Almost nine acres (36,000 m
2), with several large walnut trees, surround the buildings.
[.]
Hoyle family
Pieter Heyl, a miller from
Adenbach, Germany, his wife, Catharine, and their children arrived in America on September 11, 1738, on the ''Robert and Alice'', originally settling in northeast
Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. The Heyl family, later Anglicized to Hoyle, then lived for some time in
Frederick, Maryland
Frederick is a city in and the county seat of Frederick County, Maryland. It is part of the Baltimore–Washington Metropolitan Area. Frederick has long been an important crossroads, located at the intersection of a major north–south Native ...
, but by 1753 had moved to what is now Gaston County, North Carolina, then part of
Anson County
Anson County is a county located in the U.S. state of North Carolina. As of the 2020 census, the population was 22,055. Its county seat is Wadesboro.
History
The county was formed in 1750 from Bladen County. It was named for George Anson, Ba ...
. Peter Hoyle died prior to January 20, 1761.
[
The exact date of construction of the house is not known, but various sources date it anywhere from 1750 to 1758. After Peter's and his eldest son Jacob's deaths, which occurred within a year of each other, the land was inherited by Jacob's minor son Martin, who then transferred his interest to his uncle John. In 1794 the property went to Peter Hoyle's other grandson, Andrew, who became a farmer and entrepreneur. "Rich Andrew", as he was known, may have acquired the property with the house already standing and then improved the dwelling, or he may have built the house and later upgraded it with new finishes in the early years of the 19th century.][Correction: North Carolina pioneer Peter Hoyle never owned the land upon which Hoyle Historic Homestead sits. The land was acquired by John Hoyle, son of Peter Hoyle, after Peter Hoyle's death via a 1765 North Carolina land grant for land in what then was Mecklenburg County. See digital image, indexed as "John "Hail" at David M. McCorkle, NC Land Grant Images (http://www.nclandgrants.com/home.htm), Crown Patent Book 18: 143 dated 6 April 1765. 20 October 1794, Lincoln County, North Carolina, deed book 17: 328, Register of Deeds, Lincolnton: John Hoyle to onAndrew Hoyle conveyed tracts including the land granted on 6 April 1765. The research was executed in 2006 by Kathy Gunter Sullivan, Certified Genealogist, in behalf of Hoyle Historic Homestead and reported in "Andrew Hoyle Research Report 2," p. 1. One goal of the Andrew Hoyle research was to document title history of the land on which the Hoyle house sits.]
Location
The Hoyle House stands on a hill overlooking the South Fork of the Catawba River
The Catawba River originates in Western North Carolina and flows into South Carolina, where it later becomes known as the Wateree River. The river is approximately 220 miles (350 km) long. It rises in the Appalachian Mountains and drains into ...
. The house faces south toward a now overgrown dirt road; the Dallas-Stanley Highway on the north side now provides access to the property.[
]
Structure
The earliest section has a foundation of small stones, still partly visible. The house's German-American hallmarks include its heavy timber
Lumber is wood that has been processed into dimensional lumber, including beams and planks or boards, a stage in the process of wood production. Lumber is mainly used for construction framing, as well as finishing (floors, wall panels, w ...
frame construction with vertical braces at the corners with tightly fitted horizontal log infillings. The apparently original and complete roof structure is now covered with early 20th century tin
Tin is a chemical element with the symbol Sn (from la, stannum) and atomic number 50. Tin is a silvery-coloured metal.
Tin is soft enough to be cut with little force and a bar of tin can be bent by hand with little effort. When bent, t ...
, and much of the unusual original beaded siding, applied circa 1810 with cut nails, survives covered by weatherboard. Weathering beneath the beaded siding reveals the exterior was originally unsheathed. Some of the early windows remain, set in molded surrounds with molded sills that appear to date to 1810. The windows originally were small (about two and a half feet square) and possibly filled only with shutters in the earliest period.[
The first floor of the main block is a four-room plan of two larger rooms on the east side, with corner fireplaces sharing a single chimney, and two smaller west rooms. Each pair of rooms is of equal width, but the front rooms are slightly deeper. A later, second north–south partition, no longer in place, once created a center-hall plan. Today all rooms connect with adjacent rooms. The original staircase, in the southeast corner of the larger front room, enclosed with one set of winders and at least one stop outside the enclosure, was removed in the late 1960s.
The first floor interior is carefully finished. Much of the modern ]sheetrock
Drywall (also called plasterboard, dry lining, wallboard, sheet rock, gypsum board, buster board, custard board, and gypsum panel) is a panel made of calcium sulfate dihydrate (gypsum), with or without additives, typically extruded between thick ...
and painting have been removed to reveal early board ceilings and walnut paneled partitions and paneling on the outer walls. While some or all of the interior sheathing appears to date after 1810, all of the trim and some of the ceiling probably date to the first remodeling.
The three room plan of the second floor consists of a large east room that comprises about two thirds of the space along with two small west rooms. The north–south paneled partition is similar to the partition of the first floor. This basic three room plan probably is original, although the partition has been moved at least twice. Notches on the baseboard and patching of the wall plasters and chair rail indicate the wall was moved east, into the larger space, by about three feet. All outer walls were exposed logs until they were plastered, probably early in the 19th century. A door in the northeast corner of the large east room leads to an enclosed attic staircase; in the stairwell the structural system is clearly evident because the corner post, down braces and log filling have never been sheathed.
The two remaining outbuildings date from the early- to mid-19th century. Near the northeast corner of the main house, the well house is a one-story, rectangular common bond brick building with ventilation holes on the ends. A gabled tin roof extends beyond the west end and acts as a porch sheltering the well. The well house stands at the southeast corner, and east of the well house stands a weatherboarded smokehouse with a gabled roof sheathed in sheet metal.
Importance
The Hoyle House is an important and, in some respects, apparently unique landmark of traditional German-American
German Americans (german: Deutschamerikaner, ) are Americans who have full or partial German ancestry. With an estimated size of approximately 43 million in 2019, German Americans are the largest of the self-reported ancestry groups by the Unite ...
architecture
Architecture is the art and technique of designing and building, as distinguished from the skills associated with construction. It is both the process and the product of sketching, conceiving, planning, designing, and constructing building ...
in North Carolina
North Carolina () is a state in the Southeastern region of the United States. The state is the 28th largest and 9th-most populous of the United States. It is bordered by Virginia to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the east, Georgia and ...
. The unusually large, for its time, and substantial dwelling exemplifies a construction method— heavy timber frame with log infill— seen elsewhere in the mid-Atlantic Germanic settlement areas but not previously identified in North Carolina.[
The date of construction, and thus the identity of the first owner of the house, cannot be conclusively determined from existing documentation, nor can the exact chronology of its development. It is not clear if the house was built by 1761. With further investigation, if the Hoyle House can be firmly dated through archaeology, dendrochronology, or additional documentation, its place in the development of German-American architecture in the ]Piedmont
it, Piemontese
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can be more clearly understood.
See also
* National Register of Historic Places listings in Gaston County, North Carolina
External links
*
References
{{National Register of Historic Places in North Carolina
German-American history
German-American culture in North Carolina
Houses in Gaston County, North Carolina
Houses on the National Register of Historic Places in North Carolina
Georgian architecture in North Carolina
Federal architecture in North Carolina
Houses completed in 1794
National Register of Historic Places in Gaston County, North Carolina
Museums in Gaston County, North Carolina
Historic house museums in North Carolina
1794 establishments in the United States