Smokehouse / Wagon Shelter

The Smokehouse was located on the A. Luther Freeman and Bertha Harris Freeman Dairy Farm on Galilee Church Road in Jefferson and dates to the early 1900’s.

The Smokehouse had shelves built on the walls for canning jars and a homemade salt box was part of the room. Hog meat was salted down (buried in salt) and allowed to remain for a period of time before being prepared for hanging. Cured hams and shoulders were hung from the rafters by wire as were bags of sausage. Wire was used to keep rats away.

It was also home to a colored farm hand named Brat and for 80 years afterward has also been known as Brat’s House. Later, another single male farm hand lived there and also took meals from “Miss Bertha’s” kitchen.

Eventually this structure was filled with kindling or pine stumps from the farm. Splinters were split from these stumps and used to start fires on the farm.

In 1938 a wagon shelter and loft were added to the structure. Mrs. Freeman dried her fruit on the new tin roof for many years and stored her quilting frame in the new loft, with the extra canning jars.

As the years went by, bags of dairy feed in printed fabric replaced the meat in the smokehouse. A small, used Alis Chambers tractor found a home in the wagon shed.

On June 2, 1945, fire broke out and burned the family home. All out buildings, including this one, were saved by the Jefferson Fire Department.

The building was given by Sara Eads and Jean Sailors and was moved from the Freeman Farm in 2000 by the County. Sue Rylee has completed the renovation.