HODGE HOMESTEAD

HODGE HOUSE

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The Hodge homestead is currently in progress. We have almost completed the woodworking shop and the Cockerham barn. The next structure to be assembled is the Hodge House. We currently have it staged out at the building site and plan to start assembling the house this winter. This house has the distinction of being the newest log home that we have. It was built in the early 1900s and is estimated to have been built between 1910 and 1920. Being 24 feet long and 18 feet wide, it will be the largest log home at Cinder Ridge so far. In comparison, the Harris and Ross-Wilmoth cabins are only 16 feet by 18 feet. The Hodge house had a large living room and master bedroom downstairs. There were two full bedrooms upstairs with a high loft. The house had a large stick-built kitchen addition on the back. The interior walls and ceilings had breadboard paneling with tongue and groove flooring. There was a full front porch and L shaped back porch that connect to the kitchen. In its original location there was a well adjacent to the L-shaped porch near the kitchen so you could draw water while standing on the porch. Under the kitchen was a root cellar. The house also had store bought doors and windows throughout and had electricity hooked up. It was lived in until the early 1970’s. When we tore the house down it had been converted to a grainery with compartments inside and a twenty-foot auger hanging out the window to move corn in and out. The kitchen was converted into a chicken house. It was owned by Mrs. Holder, the mother of Joe’s friend Freeman Holder. All other log structures at Cinder Ridge have been donated but Mrs. Holder, who was in her nineties, was thrifty enough to want to sell the house (which Joe was happy to pay for) and she offered it to him for five hundred dollars. Her son Freeman was there and insisted that five hundred dollars was too much for the old house that was waiting for the bulldozer to push it over. She said, “Alright then- make it three hundred.” Joe asked who to make the check out to and she replied, “make it out to Freeman Holder.” Freeman responded “huh, if I’d known that I would have kept my mouth shut.”

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OTHER STRUCTURES ON THE HODGE HOMESTEAD

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We currently have the Cockerham barn and woodworking shop complete. The Cockerham barn is a four-stall log barn with a cross intersection. This four-stall style of barn was very popular in Surry County although there are not many left standing. They usually included a large loft for hay storage and shed roofs on each side to feed the cattle in the winter and store farm equipment in the dry. The Cockerham barn is unique in the fact that it is made from two different barns put together to make one. Both original barns were built by the Cockerham family, one was located on the Adams ridge road in Poplar Springs and the other came from Mountain Park Road. The Cockerham’s are related to the Snow family through Joes Grandma Thompson’s family. It’s her relatives who built the two barns.

The woodworking shed at the hodge homestead came from Zephyr Mountain Park Road on Willybird Williams Hill. It was used as a tobacco packing house by the Williams family who started Mountain Park community. The woodworking shop was in bad shape, we had to replace 40% of the logs, Joe salvaged what he could to help preserve that part of our local history.

We hope to start construction of the hodge house this winter.  Other additions to this homestead will include a grainery with a steam operated hammer mill, buggy shed, and an early 1930s commercial chicken house in honor of Joes grandma Vena Snow. She was one of the first commercial chicken growers in Surry County.