State

August 25, 193-1 THE STATE Роде Eleven BARRINGER HOUSE ONE of the oldest houses in North Carolina. It is locotcd in Catawba County and has a most interest¬ ing history attached to it. By ROBERTI MENZIES ago this building was replaced by another one which was used for the same purpose. Out in the yard. Barringer con¬ structed a Dutch oven which served the people living in IS you can see from the accotnpany- /% ing picture, it isn’t much of a Л. Ж house. The chances are that if you happened to be p a s sing you wouldn’t take more than a cursory glance at it. Just another rather dilapi¬ dated, weather-beaten farmhouse. Despite this, however, the old house has quite a history. It is fourteen years older than the United Stales of Amer¬ ica. It has been a private home and also has serve-1 as a courthouse. Besides all that, it was the center of social ac¬ tivities for people living within a radius of fifty milc9 or more. Passingly strange, too, is the fact that although located in Catawba County it was used as a courthouse some eighty years be¬ fore the county itself was formed. It is known as Barringer House. Baek in 1762 a Dutchman named Matthias Barringer faced the still prob¬ lem of building a home in the wilder¬ ness of what was then the upper part of Mecklenburg County. Ho had only the simplest of tools and was without the benefit of nails. Finding that he couldn’t build the house alone, Mat¬ thias, after selecting the site, rode some twenty miles to Beatty’s Ford on Ca¬ tawba River and secured the help need¬ ed. With a ground measurement of 27 by 3d foot, Matthias’ new house had three rooms downstairs while the up¬ stairs was left us one large unceiled room. Old Matthias built his ceilings high; he made the houso so high that the gable looks inordinately lofty. Without nails, the joints wore dove¬ tailed and mortised; the conventional mud-daubing taking care of the cracks. Hand-planed shingles were used on the roof. Behind the “big house,’’ Matthias crocted a smaller building for u kitchen and diningroom. A great many years the houso for many generations of bread making. Of two things Matthias was particu¬ larly proud. One was the large chimney with artistic insets outside and a huge fireplace within; the other, a tremen¬ dous beam of about twenty inches square that ran from one end of the house to the other — sturdy enough to hold the building together forever. The builder of Barringer House lived to enjoy his new home only fourteen years before being Scalped by the < 'hero- kee Indians. Some time before that tragedy, he married a Miss Haus (sometimes spelled "Horse") and left two children, Matthias. Jr., and Catherine. Time rolled on and the Barringer House became the property of the Car¬ penter family who occupied it for sev¬ eral generations. Paradoxically, without moving its lo¬ cation so much as an inch, the Bar¬ ringer House lias been in four different counties; Mecklenburg. Tryon, Liu- coin, and Catawba. The upstairs room in the house which old Matthias, Sr., had consistently refused to divide was the largest single room lor miles around. For this reason, the home shortly after its erection came to be used for dances and other social gather¬ ings in that part of the state. Being without a county seat, resi¬ dents of the newly formed Catawba County chose the Barringer House for a combination court house ami jail. Several terms of court were held there. The grounds of the Barringer House also became the "muster ground" for the county. Musters were held during the summer and every able-bodied man between the ages of twenty-one and fifty was required logo in training for a few days each year as a soldier. Mr. Caleb Sctzer, who lives near Barringer House and who was eleven years obi when the Civil War ended, says that tin- ie mus¬ ters were considerably more of a social gathering than anything else. There was no tax on liquor in those days, In- points out, and the dances which were held following the musters were usually hilarious affairs, sometimes growing rather rough. During one of these dances, a man is said to have Isten .■«tabbed and then thrown out of the second-storv window. Thrifty house¬ wives us.il the musters as an occasion to turn an honest penny by selling their gingerbread to those who gathered. Barringer House served Catawba County as a courthouse for only a short time — probably a year or two. Newton then became the county seat and a more adequate courthouse was built. Despite its extreme old age, the house is still occupied today. The fireplace, before which members of the Carpenter family sat and studied their lessons when children, has been bricked in and is now prosaically modern in size. Most of the hand-hewn log walls are now covered with weatherboarding but tin- trap doors are still there, the huge cross !*eam remains, and the house promises to be serviceable as a living place for many years to come. 1 1 is located less than two miles front the city limits of Newton. There stands on the courthouse grounds in Newton a shaft with a tablet bearing this inscription: “In tribute to Matthias Barringer, Lipscomb Adam. Grundt, lines, Wilson, and others, who were massacred on John’s River in General Rutherford's forced march against the Cherokces in 1776, and to Philip Fry, who alone escaped, and to Conrad Tippong. one of La Fayette’s men. by a grateful pos¬ terity, July 2, 1897." Nearby residents say that the bleak old Barringer House is haunted— that at night you can hear the ticking of the watch of the man who was murdered upstairs. Skeptics, however, sneering- ly contribute the noise to wood ticks. The place is of considerable interest to people in this section as well as to visitors who come hero from other lo¬ calities. A large number of people visit Barringer House every year. THE BRAVEST DEED (Continued from page three) speak above a whisper. Nor could la- move in bed. He just lay there, but his eyes continued to smile at us. Tlmv were bright and fearless until they closed for the last time. I think he gave one of the greatest demonstra¬ tions of courage and bravery that I ever have seen or heard of in all mv life.