Roads, traffic, people, congestion make it difficult to image what the landscape was once like in an earlier era. Next to five lanes of Highway 127 between downtown Hickory and Viewmont rests a Victorian home that is one of the gems of an age that predated everything around it, a perfect place to spend a Saturday afternoon.
Photo: Maple Grove, in its early days and now.
Maple Grove was the home of Adolphus Lafayette Shuford, one of the founders and biggest cheerleaders for creation of the town just over the hill from his residence. Dolph, as everyone called him, learned carpentry and in addition to directing construction of the Maple Grove where he and his wife Adelaide Lindsay Shuford raised a family, he was instrumental in the building the Western North Carolina Railroad. It was he who argued that Hickory was the perfect location for a city given its altitude. At over 1,000 feet above sea level, it was safe from those miasmic diseases like cholera and too low for mountain maladies like rickets. He was perhaps, Hickory’s best booster.
During the Civil War he ran the Confederate commissary in Hickory and when the conflict was over he stood ready to, as his obituary said, “take part in every good work.” We are fortunate that his home still stands, and for that we have the Hickory Landmarks Society to thank for it. The house is now their headquarters, as well as a museum that lets us see what life in the 1870s/80s was like, before there was a highway with cars racing past in front of it.
Much of the land that now sports houses was pasture in Dolph’s day. He raised Jersey cattle on it, some 70 acres that included a dairy farm, extending down to the Cripple Creek. The Shuford place encompassed quite a spread. Touring the house, each room tells a unique story about the life and times of Hickory.
The Hickory Landmarks Society is absolutely essential to the preservation of historic Maple Grove, as well as Propst House, and Houk’s Chapel, which HLS oversees. Just as important, they provide valuable assistance to homeowners who need direction on adaptively restoring historic structures across the city.
HLS also offers programs on topics of historical interest. This Saturday at 2pm they are sponsoring a talk on the region’s furniture industry. Yes, this is another shameless plug for Well Crafted: The History of the Western North Carolina Furniture Industry. I’ll be there to discuss the book and share the some stories from it. Hopefully, you will be there too to share your connection with the furniture business. One way or another, we all have some link. Either buying it, building it, or having a relative, friend or ancestor who did, there is a good chance you will find sawdust in your veins.
Think of it as a double feature. Really, it’s two eras of history to discover. The rise, fall and resurgence of mechanized furniture production, along with the Victorian world of Maple Grove, a time before the arrival of factories. Lots of good history to talk.
