The Society has great news for its members and the community. It has purchased its first home from Kathy and Larry Pearson through the generosity of an anonymous donor. The Chaffin House is located at 110 Mountain Road in the Town of Halifax, Virginia and is included in the Mountain Road Historic District. It formerly belonged to the late Frank Chaffin.
The Society is excited to have a home for the first time in its history and has begun fund raising to help with renovations. Donations will be greatly appreciated.
Siding is now being replaced, to be followed by scraping and repainting the cornices, decorative brackets and fish-scale shingles on the front and side pediments.
History of The Chaffin House
The two-story Chaffin House appears in a 1891 deed book entry when Robert Wharton Watkins, attorney, and his wife Fannie Mayo Melvin Watkins sold the ½-acre property to John H. Farmer for $1,575.00. According to the deed, Farmer was already residing in the house which was probably constructed in the late 1880s.
The next owners were W. Macon Smiley and Laura Y. Smiley who sold the property in 1913, to Marguerite Blackshear Dickens for $2,450.00. She and her husband James A. Dickens owned the house until 1921, when it was sold for $5,000 to Frank Clay Chaffin, Sr. The senior Chaffin died in 1974 and in his will conveyed the property to his children James R. Chaffin, Nancy Chaffin Sizemore, and Frank Clay Chaffin, Jr., subject to lifetime rights for his wife Ethel Roberts Chaffin. Mrs. Chaffin died in 1979, and in August of the same year, James R. Chaffin and wife and Nancy Chaffin Sizemore and husband conveyed their interests in the house and property to Frank Clay Chaffin, Jr. Frank Clay Chaffin, Jr. died in 2004 and his niece, Kathryn Holt Pearson, obtained the property.