| 110th Year, 42nd Issue | Thursday, May 27, 1999 | Sparta, North Carolina |
Work is nearly complete on the Hutchinson Family Homestead, a $150,000 project at Stone Mountain State Park that includes restoring the cabin built by John and Sidney Jane Brown Hutchinson in 1855 at the southeastern base of the mountain.
The complex of five structures also includes a barn and nearby blacksmith shop that, like the cabin, already were there. Added with logs brought from elsewhere were a corn crib and smokehouse.
Interpretive digital recordings, activated by pushing buttons on signs at each building, tell about the related farming activities in the late 1800s. Local people with mountain accents were used to make these narratives.
Stone Mountain State Park Superintendent Edward Farr said a small woodshed, non-functional outhouse and spring box on the nearby spring also will be added. A wooden fence made of sharpened locust posts is being built around a small garden near the cabin.
Farr said the Hutchinson family has donated numerous antique household items for the cabin and other parts of the homestead. A large number of other items have been donated for the cabin and elsewhere, Farr said. The cabin will be open to the public.
"Hopefully we will have hams hanging in the smokehouse and corn for the crib," said Farr.
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