Located just outside Collins, this Folk Victorian house is the centerpiece of what was obviously a busy working farm at one time. Kathryn Braswell Hochman writes: “This is my father’s homeplace, known locally as the Joe Cowart Homeplace, and is where we visited my Grandmother Braswell every summer until she died in 1966. It has been rented to tenants ever since. Joseph Lumpkin Cowart (born 1849; died at that house on Christmas Eve 1938 and was buried the next day in a coffin he had made himself) had the house built in 1904 for approx. $80. It was built on the site of a log house (moved off of the property) in which the family had lived. Across the house is indeed a tenant house, and if you were to go behind it you would find a crumbling log tobacco barn. Perhaps you can tell me which is the pack house and which was used for hay. It was not a working farm by the time I came along in the 1950s.. Or rather, only the land was farmed, and by others. I should tell you that this house and the outbuildings and the land are the stuff of my happiest childhood memories. My parents are buried in the Collins Baptist Church Cemetery, and I will always have a reason to go there.“

There are a few outbuildings, including this one, which was a tenant house.

Barns with utilitarian purposes stand in a row across the highway from the main house.

I can’t be sure of all their specific uses, but a hay barn and pack house are among them.

Small, intact working farms of this type are rarer than ever. The Cowart property is a great example.