Thanks to the 180 people who bought tickets, volunteered and sponsored Preservation Zebulon’s Historic Home Tour on Saturday April 9.
We heard many good comments about our Town, about the houses and church, and the community building that we are doing in holding our Tour and promoting the history and architecture of our downtown residential and Gannon Avenue areas.
We are proud to show off 100+ year old homes in our proposed Zebulon historic district and appreciate the support of the community and visitors from seven counties!
We Thank Our Wonderful Sponsors
PRESENTING SPONSOR
North Carolina Humanities
GOLD
Dr. Scott and MaryBeth Carpenter
SILVER
Ashbrook Builders
Comfort Master Heating and Air
Dallas Pearce Realty
Tommy and Marsha Massey
Muter Construction
Parrish Realty
Dr. Mike and Sheila Schotzinger
Whitley Furniture
PROGRAM LISTING PARTNERS
Cut Custom Creations by Todd Gecewicz
Cybergraph Advertising
Olde Raleigh Distillery
Patricia Roberson
Ruth Moss
Zebulon Chamber of Commerce
Zebulon Jewelry and Pawn Shop
WIGGS HOUSE
This beautiful Queen Anne house, featured in Zebulon’s Historic Home Tour, has two stories and a hip roof with cross gables. A 1912 postcard depicts the house as existing earlier than its entry on the 1920 tax records.
The house’s builder, William Larkins Wiggs and his wife Delanie “Laney” Whitley Wiggs had 5 children. Wiggs was a successful tobacco farmer, and a pioneer settler of Zebulon. According to a Raleigh Times article published on June 3, 1912, “For some time he was successfully engaged in the tobacco business in Zebulon, and … the sales of his warehouse amounted to a million pounds annually.”
Wiggs was general supervisor of roads in Wake County. According to the Raleigh Times article, he “worked 14 miles of road, gravelled one-half mile, built three bridges … has eight mules and 16 convicts” to help build the roads. In 1915, he was a speaker at the Good Roads Institute, and in 1923 was a Wake County Commissioner. Originally his home was the only house on the entire block, and a stable, outdoor kitchen and a large tract planted with grape vines on the back of the property.
Wiggs died in 1932, and his wife Delanie died in 1942. The house was sold and became a boarding house, with a second unit complete with kitchen added upstairs in the 1940s or 1950s. In 1952, sold to Elizabeth Ellett, a school teacher who lived in the back area of the house, as she became wheelchair bound. Her sister Martha lived upstairs and used the two front house rooms – the parlor and music room. In the 1940s or 50s a kitchen was added to the rear of the house and the original separate building containing the kitchen was torn down.
Elizabeth and Martha Ellett sold the house to Marvin Howell and Dwain Driver in 1994. The home’s current owners have utilized the house over the past 28 years to host large Christmas parties, weddings, receptions, baby and bridal showers, and retirement parties.
