Gregg-Wallace Farm Tenant House
National Register Listing
Street Address:
310 Price Road, Mars Bluff, SC (Florence County)
NRHP Nomination
Record Number:
S10817721008
Description and Narrative:
The Gregg-Wallace Farm Tenant House, ca. 1890, is an example of the predominant form of housing for African Americans in the rural south for over a half-century after emancipation. White landowners exercised control over freed slaves after emancipation through the use of cartels that trapped African Americans in tenant houses and in wage labor. Landowners made secret agreements not to sell land to African Americans or allow them to move to another plantation without the consent of the previous owner. Thus African Americans were kept dependent on the landowners for their houses, their food, and their jobs. The cartel and the oppressive Jim Crow laws combined to enforce a system of intimidation that guaranteed the planters cheap labor and set strict boundaries on the behavior of the people who lived in tenant houses. The house’s construction is significant because it preserves tangible evidence of the evolution of a typical Mars Bluff vernacular tenant house. Tenant houses often evolved from one-room slave houses, first by the addition of a shed room at the rear and a front porch, then by the addition of a second room. This pattern was found throughout the south. Listed in the National Register January 28, 2002.
Period of Significance:
1890 – 1945
Level of Significance:
State
Area of Significance:
Ethnic Heritage: Black;Architecture
National Register Determination:
listed
Date of Certification:
January 28 2002
