There will be an open house Sunday, Sept. 14, at the historic William Thompson House on the deadend portion of Old N.C. 98 off Old Falls of the Neuse Road.
Everyone who loves old houses or Wake Forest area history or anyone who remembers the families that lived in the house when it stood on Falls of the Neuse will want to visit the Greek Revival home.
Owner Kevin Kearns, who has owned the house since it was moved and rehabilitated nine years ago, says it will be a wonderful house for someone with a yen for an historic house that is comfortable, livable and stylish. “It’s great. We love it,” but it is the right time in his life to move on. “Somebody else needs to take up the baton.”
It is a large house and he added a garage with a full guest house above it. There are over two acres of yard plus shrubs and trees and other landscaping. “It’s been an addictive thing, bringing it to life.”
Kearns has opened the house several times. It was part of the Historic Christmas House Tour the first year he owned the house and it will be on the tour again this year in addition to the open house Sunday.
The William Thompson house is impressive now and was impressive when it was built in probably 1853 by William Thompson whose father, George W. Thompson, was a large landowner. They were part of the Thompson family whose fore bearers came from England in the mid-1700s and settled in what is now the Bartons Creek area and near Falls. Other families nearby were the Crenshaws and the Sutherlands. George and his brother Michael married Crenshaw sisters.
George Thompson, along with William Crenshaw, John Purefoy and William Roles, founded what became Wake Forest College. George Thompson served as a trustee for 58 years until his death.
William died at the age of 31 at the battle of Gaines Mill in Virginia. George lost his citizenship after the war because he was a quartermaster’s agent for the Confederate armies. He swore allegiance to the United States and regained his citizenship as many others did.
William’s widow, Mary Thompson, and their children lived on in the house but it was sold out of the family at some point. Like a lot of other older homes, succeeding owners did not have the money to renovate and update and redo and much of the house remained as it was in 1826.
But in 2002 the house was vacant and for sale. Bay Leaf Baptist Church was expanding and purchased the house and the 19 acres that was all that remained of a large plantation. They planned to tear down or burn the house.
Enter a group of Wake Forest people who valued older homes, a group that included Frank and Kathy Drake, both lawyers who had rehabilitated their North Main Street home with, mostly, their own labor.
After about two years of negotiations and planning, the Drakes purchased the house and two acres at the back of the 19 acres. Then began the work of preparing the house to be moved to its new site, work that included preservation carpenter Pat Schell and Pete and Robin Hendricks, who removed the four chimneys brick by brick and reconstructed them later.
Kearns said he first saw the house and fell in love with it when it was in the early stages of reconstruction.
Almost all the original features remain, including the steep and narrow enclosed stairway from the front parlor to the master bedroom and the doors between rooms which ensure great circulation for parties. For Kearns’ son, he could have a complete circle for his toy cars and track, from parlor to room behind to the 10-foot wide hall and back to the parlor.
To get there, take the bypass and turn to the south either at the old NC 98 turn or at Thompson Mill Road and continue straight when you come to the Jimmy Keith store fork that takes you down Old Falls of the Neuse.
