Baker, J. T., Farmstead

The J.T. Baker Farmstead holds significance as an undisturbed and largely intact central Texas cotton farm. Its principal architectural feature is the 1881-1914 J.T. Baker home, a well-preserved vernacular wood dwelling; the structure represents a class of rural domestic construction that only rarely has been intentionally preserved within central Texas. The farm operation, owned by J.T. Baker and his descendants for 90 years, retains significant historic integrity, as its initial 100-acre area encompassing historic structures and archeological remains has been virtually undisturbed for the past half-century. The farmstead also includes four specific areas that show promise of revealing historic archeological remains that may be significant in interpreting day-to-day life in rural central Texas during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Therefore, the J.T. Baker Farmstead is nominated to the National Register of Historic Places under Criterion C in the area of Architecture at the local level of significance and Criterion D in the area of Archeology at the local level of significance.

The J.T. Baker Farmstead is one of thousands of similar farms that once dotted central Texas. The typical central Texas farm consisted of 60 to 80 acres of cultivated land plus any grazing land that might be contiguous or in the immediate vicinity. Farms in the Eastern Cross Timbers (the physiographic region in which the J.T. Baker Farmstead is located) generally had such grazing land, while those in the Blackland Prairie to the east generally lacked the grazing component. Two-thirds of the cultivated land was devoted to raising cotton, while just under a third was used for growing corn. Comparatively little land was devoted to crops other than the cash mainstays of cotton and corn, most notably absent being oats, which in many other areas was raised for feeding horses and mules. Hill County, where the farmstead operated, produced 54,020 commercial bales of cotton, a little over 2 percent of the Texas total in 1899 (census of 1900 figures). Cotton for decades was the mainstay for much of the local economy.

The yearly routine for Central Texas farmers focuses on cotton raising and started in February or early March when work began to prepare the fields for planting. Any old cotton or corn stalks were shredded with a wheeled "stalk cutter and plowed into the soil, while plowing "bedding" created the typical furrows of agricultural fields. Planting followed generally between March 15 and April 1, with many of the farmers following timing advice from commonly available almanacs.

In a typical year, cotton picking began between mid-August and early September, and the arduous work continued for a month to six weeks if all went well. The historic cotton varieties did not produce cotton that matured all at the same time, so the bolls of the fiber ripened through the late summer and autumn. Generally, fields were picked at least twice and often three or more times, some harvests extending to the end of the calendar year.
In mid-winter many farmers with their wheeled stalk cutters broke up the dead stalks from cotton and corn, beginning their decomposition in the soil.

In the twentieth century, government agricultural extension agents began encouraging farmers to burn the stalks as a means of reducing boll weevil infestations.

The representative farmstead consisted most commonly of a 2-room sawed lumber board-and-batten house with a shed room on the rear, which might in time be expanded into a structure with three to four rooms with shed additions. The typical dwellings on these cotton farms were vernacular board-and-batten frame structures built either by their owners or by local carpenters. After the arrival of the railroads, the houses were usually built from sawed lumber rather than logs, and they generally had glass windows. The coming of the Gulf, Colorado, and Santa Fe Railway to northern Hill County in 1881 made available there, for the first time, comparatively inexpensive sawed lumber as the raw material for building such cheap and, in cold weather, often uncomfortable homes. Wire mesh screens on windows and doors often served as indices that demarcated the boundary between economically poor and middling farming families.

Central Texas cotton farms were comparatively deficient in outbuildings. The most typical structures, built in a random pattern in the areas near the farmhouses, included corn cribs, granaries, smokehouses, chicken houses, and privies. Typically the farmers allowed their farm equipment to sit in the open without protection from the elements. Barns might be present, but they frequently had the appearance of over-sized sheds. Fences most often were built from locally-cut posts and barbed wire.

The dwelling at the J.T. Baker Farmstead is a fine preserved example of the inexpensive houses built for use by central Texas cotton farmers in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It began as a one-room 14x16 foot board-and-batten cabin with a limestone chimney and was built at some date after the arrival of the railroad (1881) and before 1898. During the period preceding 1900, the house was expanded. The 12x16 foot kitchen and dining room were added on the north. A board-and-batten bedroom measuring 14x14 feet was added immediately east of the original cabin.

The J.T. Baker house consisted of these three rooms when the Baker family moved into it on 1 January 1901. The family had come to Texas from Duluth, Georgia, in 1890, following other family members who already had moved to the area in 1876. Soon after John Thomas Baker's 1900 purchase of the 100-acre farm, he hired a local carpenter to expand the house (1901 or 1902) so that it could better accommodate his already large family. The carpenter built a frame addition consisting of a hallway and parlor/bedroom on the south (former front) of the house that measured 23x16 feet. At some date not long after 1914, the older board-and-batten kitchen/dining room area at the north end of the house was lengthened by 2 feet and widened by 5 feet. This was the last structural modification to the dwelling.

Baker and his family occupied the house until about 1925, after which time it became tenant housing first for the Sam Ward family from 1926 to 1940 and then for the Melton Brantley family from 1941 to about 1950. From then the structure was used for general farm storage purposes until its rehabilitation was undertaken in 1988-89.

After the last resident of the J.T. Baker house departed about 1950, the old J.T. Baker Farmstead area became a little-used corner of what had become a much larger farm where cotton still remained the main cash crop. The farmhouse became a storage structure and most other buildings, such as the corn crib, were allowed to deteriorate. During this time of decline for the old farmstead, no consistent efforts were undertaken to clean up its immediate area, so the accumulated debris from seven decades of agriculture and animal husbandry remained in place, becoming the significant historic archeological remains that survive today.

The archeological remains meet the National Park Service requirement for listing for several reasons. First, this farmstead is one of the few locations where the archeological deposits relate to a single agricultural product. Second, the farmstead remains relatively intact. On most comparable farms in the region, such accumulations of agriculture and farm animal-related materials have long ago gone to salvage dealers, while board-and-batten structures have been razed, have been allowed to deteriorate to the point of collapse, or alternately have been modernized almost beyond recognition. Third, the artifactual material is abundant and appears to be concentrated in several nodes. One such area is the barnyard, located north of the house, near the corn crib. According to oral history accounts, the barnyard area contained three structures, a corn crib, granary, and barn. At present there is no surface evidence of the latter two structures. In addition, there was a buggy house, a smokehouse, and a cellar. Their approximate location is described in oral histories, but their specific construction dates are unknown though they were extant in 1915. The location(s) of hand-dug wells are unknown, and locations of former privies have not been identified from surface evidence. This property did not contain cisterns detached kitchens or cookhouses. A wide range of artifacts are visible on the surface in the immediate area of the J.T. Baker House and adjacent barnyard.

These include crockery, ironstone, china, and glass sherds; 1920s and 1930s auto parts, stove parts, drill bits, bone remains, agricultural machinery (including a complete mowing machine and harrow), buttons, jewelry, toys, hardware, and more. The archeological remains, thus, have the potential to identify the places where various activities occurred, and the implements used to carry out those activities.

An additional area of cultural remains on the J.T. Baker Farmstead is that of railway-related structures and historic archeological material. In 1881 the Gulf, Colorado, and Santa Fe Railway was built across the property. For 64 years Santa Fe freight and passenger trains steamed across the farm multiple times daily until new tracks were built a short distance northward in 1945 when Lake Whitney's construction required re-routing the right-of-way.
seen.

Today significant remains from the historic railway activity may be The earthen embankment on which the tracks were laid is the most visible of these features. Its top is covered with gravel and crushed rock The ballast, the long mound stands as high as 14 feet above surrounding terrain. Near the J.T. Baker House, the tracks crossed an unnamed creek on an 1880s limestone and brick double-arched culvert which today remains intact and sound.
Other tangible remnants from the railroad use include preserved sections of railway company-built fences constructed with split bois d'arc posts and barbed wire and an original Santa Fe Railway right-of-way gate. railway structures, including fences, gates, and culverts are of standard railroad design, as other structures of similar design and material are known on the same railroad. All along the former right-of-way is scattered debris that was deposited during the six decades of railway use, such as wheel bearing cover, switch lock key, and small spikes typical of those used on the light-weight rail as would have been used on the original 1880s track laying. The importance of these archeological remains lies in the fact that they have lain virtually undisturbed through much of the present century.

Consisting of farmhouse, outbuilding, railway structures, undisturbed historic archeological remains from agriculture, animal husbandry, and railway-related debris, the J.T. Baker Farmstead encompasses unusual survivals of cultural remains that generally have disappeared from the landscape of central Texas and which rarely have been consciously preserved within the region.