Hovis-Spratt House
(ca. 1860s)
The Hovis-Spratt House remained in the possession of the Franklin Hovis and Charles Spratt families for nearly 125 years.
1405 Hawfield Rd, Charlotte, NC 28214
The Hovis-Spratt House, located about two miles from Steele Creek Presbyterian Church, is one of the last original buildings in the Steele Creek community that dates from the Civil War era. Begun prior to the Civil War by Franklin Hovis (1827-1903), the house was not completed until after his return from service in the Confederate Army. A native of Lincoln County, Franklin married Mary Ann McKnight (circa 1821-1887) of Mecklenburg County in August 1852, and built a log cabin behind the site of the present house. All five of Franklin and Mary Ann’s children were born in the log cabin.
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As funds permitted before the Civil War began, Franklin laid out and started work on a new house more suitable for his large family. According to family oral history accounts, Franklin was able to find tall virgin pines with no branches for the beams and clapboard, and the bricks for the chimney were hand-made on the site. Upon completion of the Hovis-Spratt House and the struggles of Reconstruction, the Hovis family shared in the fortunes of the quickly growing county. All five of Franklin and Mary’s children married and moved from the farm.
Like most of his neighbors, Franklin was a subsistence farmer. Census records indicate that the Hovis family did not own any enslaved persons, but many of their neighbors did enslave at most one person, such as Thomas Spratt – the father of Charles A. Spratt (1855-1917), a subsequent owner of the Hovis-Spratt House – who enslaved a fifteen-year-old girl.
Following Franklin’s death in 1903, ownership of the Hovis-Spratt House and an accompanying 94-acre tract of land passed to son-in-law William L. Shelby. Eight years later, in 1910, ownership was transferred from the Hovis family to the Spratt family, when Charles Spratt bought the property for $4,606.25. The property remained with the Spratt family for seventy-five years. Charles Spratt was a well-known Mecklenburg County surveyor and engineer in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It was under his ownership of the Hovis-Spratt House that the rear room addition was constructed. From 1930 to 1949, the house was leased to various tenants, but during the latter years Charles’ descendant Frank Spratt, Jr. moved back into the house, where he lived until 1986. In 1985, Frank sold the property to a business partnership which plans to develop the site for on office park.