NCCF funds support restoration of historic Appalachian house
In the heart of Franklin, North Carolina, the Siler/Jones House is known locally as “the house at the foot of the hill.” It is one of the town’s most recognizable landmarks and is now being carefully restored, revealing more than two centuries of Appalachian history.
The effort to preserve this historic home is due in part to the posthumous generosity of Maude Bivins, a lifelong educator and quiet philanthropist who passed away in 2019. Maude’s estate was managed through a trust. Fred Jones, a longtime family friend and her trustee, established two charitable funds in her name at the North Carolina Community Foundation.
The Siler/Jones home has been a gathering place for generations of the two families, and it bore witness to some of the most turbulent and transformative moments in western North Carolina’s history, including slavery, the Civil War, and the forced removal of the Cherokee along the Trail of Tears. Recent research confirmed that the historic Trail of Tears route passed directly in front of the house, making it one of the only known “witness structures” in North Carolina on the National Historic Trail.
“This whole lot really tells that story of early America,” said Molly Phillips, communications director for Mainspring Conservation Trust.
One of Franklin’s earliest settlers, Jesse Siler, acquired the land in 1819. At the time, it was the site of a log cabin believed to have been built by Cherokee people. Over the next decade, Siler and enslaved laborers built over the cabin’s frame, adding a second story. The very first Siler family meeting took place at the house in 1853, and the gathering has continued every year since, making it one of the longest running family reunions in the United States.
After the Jones family acquired the house through a property trade in 1888, four generations of Jones family members added their own architectural touches to the structure.
“It was more than just a home. It was where generations of us came together, shared stories, celebrated, and kept our history alive,” said Fred Jones, who grew up in the house and started his own family on the property.
As the house fell out of family use, Fred and his wife Jennifer knew it needed a new future.
That’s where Maude Bivins’ estate and NCCF played a vital role.
Maude made several charitable gifts during her lifetime including gifting to Mainspring a log cabin she owned in northeast Georgia. These charitable gifts continued through her estate plan and culminated in the gifts to the donor advised funds established in her name at NCCF.
The Jones Family donated the Siler/Jones House to Mainspring in 2024. Believing the home’s restoration was a cause Maude would have supported, grants from the donor advised funds named for her are helping cover a significant portion of the restoration costs.
Together, the Jones family’s gift of the home and the Bivins funds’ support of the restoration have resulted in a new future for the property in Mainspring’s hands. With the support, Mainspring is transforming the house into a public space and office building.
“We are planning to put the house back together as it was around the turn of the century but also show some of the log cabin as it was in the 1820s. Some of the pieces and sections of the house that are being uncovered now, nobody living now has ever seen,” said Phillips, who is also managing the project for Mainspring. “It’s the perfect representation of what that funding was meant to do: to preserve community, to preserve culture, to preserve history.”