The Lunsford R. Brown house Circa 1855, Martin County

Photo taken by me last fall, 2024

"From Plantation Legacy to Silent Walls: The Story of the Lunsford R. Brown House"

The Lunsford R. Brown House was constructed circa 1855 on a 300-acre tract of land inherited from Lunsford’s father, Rueben Brown. Rueben, in turn, had received the property from his grandfather, William Brown. Prior to the construction of the current dwelling, an earlier house on the site was demolished, though it is uncertain whether this structure belonged to Rueben Brown.

Lunsford married Matilda Pippen of Edgecombe County, and together they filled the house with the sounds of seven children. By 1850, his holdings had grown to a plantation of 1,600 acres, worth $18,500—a sum that included the labor of 37 enslaved individuals whose lives, though largely unrecorded, were deeply intertwined with the land’s story.

Local tradition recounts that during the Civil War, when Union troops arrived to seize supplies from the plantation, the recently widowed Matilda Brown invited the commanding officer to dine with her. Through this gesture, she is said to have persuaded him to spare the house. However, fate was unkind; Matilda died before the year’s end, as the war itself was drawing to a close.

The property remained in the Brown family for generations. From the 1910s until the 1980s, its halls echoed with the everyday lives of tenant families, including those of Jesse F. Piland, a rural mail carrier, and his son, Buck. Then, silence took its place, and the once-bustling homestead stood abandoned, holding fast to the stories time could not take.