Sidney and Ethel Grier House

Founded by Eli Clinton Grier in 1874, the Grier mill was located about halfway between the town of Matthews and the Providence Presbyterian Church in southern Mecklenburg County. Although operated for only about eighteen months, the mill utilized some 350 spindles to produce bale yarn, demonstrating the feasibility of a textile industry that would forever shape the county. The Sidney and Ethel Grier House is one of the few remaining residences associated with this locally successful agrarian and early industrial family.  

The Grier family owned and farmed large tracts of land in southern Mecklenburg County both before and after the Civil War. They grew cotton, corn, oats, and potatoes, and raised swine and dairy cattle, exploiting enslaved labor prior to emancipation and engaging tenant farmers thereafter. Following Julius Grier’s death in 1910, some of his land passed to his youngest son Sidney, who had married Ethel Hudson (1881-1962) of Union County in 1905. Together, they built the extant Bungalow-style farmhouse in 1916, with its distinctive pyramidal hipped roof, a full width wrap-around porch, and decorative style elements from both the Queen Anne and Craftsman periods. Sidney continued the Grier tradition of farming on the family land, assisted in his later years by his son Michael (1911-1940). After Michael’s untimely death, Sidney’s son Gerald (1906-1974) and his wife Florence (1908-2004) moved into a smaller house on the property to help with the family farm.  

Following Sidney’s death in 1944, Gerald and his family moved into the main house and continued to farm the property, using tenant labor to grow corn, wheat, oats, barley, and cotton. In later years, he shifted to truck farming, growing vegetables, strawberries, cantaloupes, and watermelons while also raising calves for a nearby dairy farm. Today, only the Sidney and Ethel Grier House and its outbuildings remain of the numerous farm structures once owned by the Grier family. They also serve as the sole reminders of the immediate neighborhood’s agricultural heritage. The local landscape – once dotted with numerous family farms – is now characterized by rapid suburbanization, replete with residential subdivisions, multi-family complexes, strip shopping centers, convenience stores, and service stations.