This appears to have originally been built as an unusually small Plantation Plain-style farmhouse with the wings likely added as the family grew. The orientation of the house has also been changed, as well, with the entryways now located on what would have originally been the sides.
Across the highway on the farm is this unusual barn, which I initially thought was a smokehouse. But as Edwin King pointed out, smokehouses didn’t have chimneys. I’m not sure if it was originally a smokehouse, with the chimney added later, or if it had some other function. I just can’t place it.
My late brother, Ricky Humphrey, and his wife lived there in the 80’s.
I think Jesse M. Bookhardt has the correct answer. This building probably did have a large iron kettle inside to make syrup and scald hogs. The smoke from the fire beneath the kettle went out the chimney.
Fire cured tobacco maybe?
Brian,
The barn with the chimney could be used for many things on a farm, but if I had to guess, I would say that it is most likely a syrup barn. Growing up in Jeff Davis County, I remember several of these type building with a chimney. They would have housed an 80 gallon or larger steel kettle with a furnace that was vented through the chimney. There the farmer could cook off a making of cane syrup without being out in the weather. Another use of buildings would have been to scald hogs on hog killing days about this time of the year. The pigs would be dipped into scalding water to loosen the hairs. Then removed and placed on a table or some other support device where the swine’s hair would have been scrapped off the body.
for the size of the barn, i have to agree it was for cane syrup cooking, I went and looked at it close from the road, my father had one about the same size.