Edward M Rozzell House

(ca. 1881)

The Edward M. Rozzell House evidences the financial success of the Rozzell family as both cotton farmers and operators of a Catawba River ferry line. 

11647 and 11657 Old Rozzelles Ferry Rd, Charlotte, NC 28214

Edward Moss Rozzell (1850-1921) and his family were an integral part of the Paw Creek community. He and his father Richard A. Rozzell (1808-1882) operated large cotton farms along the Catawba River and ran the river’s only ferry line connecting Gaston and Mecklenburg Counties. Indeed, the Rozzell ferry line was Mecklenburg County’s only ferry line in the years that preceded the Civil War. The home that Edward built – a well preserved example of the popular single-pile, two-story I-house – evidences the prosperity that the Rozzell family enjoyed during the county’s booming post-Civil War agrarian economy. 

Property Quick Links

 


Born only a decade before the beginning of the Civil War, Edward was reared in Paw Creek’s small farming community. In addition to working on the family’s large farmstead and transporting travelers across the Catawba, Edward and his family boarded weary travelers in their home and ran a restaurant to feed their hungry passengers. Edward moved out of that bustling environment in the early 1870s following his marriage to Mary Ann Dunn (1850-1929), but the newlyweds did not move far from the Rozzell family homestead. They built a small temporary structure on a plot of land off Rozzelles Ferry Road (now Old Rozzelles Ferry Road) and immediately began work on the extant larger house. That second house was completed in 1881 with the help of the couple’s neighbors and family members. 

Mary Ann Rozzell bore eleven children and reared eight in the Rozzell House, while Edward farmed the land. Like most farmers in the postbellum period, he grew cotton and corn as primary cash crops and maintained a smaller kitchen garden with a variety of fruits, vegetables, and grains for his large family. The family also raised livestock including swine, chickens, dairy cattle, and specially bred cattle and sheep. The family belonged to the Paw Creek Presbyterian Church that later became Cook Presbyterian Church. 

Upon Edward’s death in 1921, the property passed to the couple’s youngest son Earl Tracy Rozzelle (1891-1967). He continued to farm the land, with diminishing success, until his death in 1967. His widow Pricie Freeman Rozzelle (1890-1987) passed the farmstead on to her daughter Margaret Cynthia Rozzelle (1914-1999), who in turn passed it to her nephew Jerry Sifford when she moved to nearby Mount Holly. In addition to the Rozzell House, the property includes a wellhouse, a small granary, and a log barn.