Back in the Day: Hickory Grove Church
Dr. Joe Sutton
Introduction
The landscape of Bucklesberry has changed dramatically since the beginning of its colonization in 1720-1730. Notably, there are considerably fewer wooden clapboard and lap siding structures, although they were commonplace in the South for several centuries. The countryside today is speckled with farm buildings finished mostly with laminate veneer, vinyl, or metal siding.
Constructed by local, skilled master carpenters many years ago, only a handful of old, but enduring, wooden buildings remain in Bucklesberry. Amazingly, a few barns and corn cribs are still functional. The several standing homeplace houses, however, are severely weatherworn or have undergone such significant improvements, repairs, or restoration that they only slightly resemble their original design.
Possibly the oldest existing house in Bucklesberry is located off of Pine Bush Road. The first owners were Dempsey Wood, Sr. (1816-1882) and Elizabeth Sutton Wood (1827-1894). Constructed in the 1840s, the two-story, white-framed house with several outbuildings was the former homeplace of Marcus Alton Sutton (1911-2005) and Bettie Lorena Sutton (1914-2001). Their son Charles Marcus Sutton and wife Gibby Creech Sutton are current owners.
Another noteworthy old structure in the heart of Bucklesberry is Hickory Grove Church, situated just a few yards directly off of Kennedy Home Road. Passers-by who briefly glance at the current building might surmise that it has always been a bricked structure, or perhaps that it is not an old structure at all. A circa 1945 photograph of the church, however, confirms that it was previously a wooden building.
The first bricked buildings appeared in North Carolina in the early twentieth century. By the mid 1900s, bricked ranch-style houses began springing up in Bucklesberry, in contrast to the wooden, stick-built homeplace houses that dominated eighteenth and nineteenth century farms. Naturally, the facades of many church buildings with wood siding exteriors received bricked facelifts, including Hickory Grove Church.
Next month's article will discuss Hickory Grove as the first local church established in Bucklesberry. Interested readers may enjoy reading a previously published Bucklesberry article titled "Great Hurricane of 1893" available at https://shorturl.at/KEAvM.
Hickory Grove Church 2025 Hickory Grove Church ca. 1945
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