Tucked behind a black iron gate off Upper Bryant’s Landing Road in Stockton sits a piece of south Alabama history that one retired local resident has spent nearly a decade bringing back to life.
The 71-year-old retiree, who grew up working odd jobs in Robertsdale as a child, bought the roughly 60-acre property on a whim back in 2005 after his daughter urged the family to attend an antiques sale being held there. What he found was a circa-1911 farmhouse and a collection of outbuildings that had sat overgrown and neglected for years, dating back to a family that had owned the land since around 1900. Before that, the property had belonged to another family who built a one-room house and barn on the site back in 1851.
Since acquiring the home at auction, the new owner has restored the farmhouse board by board. The 4,000-square-foot structure is built entirely of tongue-and-groove pine, with 14-foot ceilings, a central hallway designed to channel cooling cross-breezes, and a wraparound porch. Original transoms discovered stored in the barn have been reinstalled above interior doorways, and long-forgotten window weights were tracked down and restored so the home’s floor-to-ceiling windows can still be opened during mild weather.
The surrounding grounds tell just as rich a story. Behind the main house sit several weathered outbuildings tied to the property’s earliest owners, including a one-room home built in 1851 that is now heated, cooled and used as guest quarters, along with a smokehouse and a barn believed to have sheltered Confederate soldiers and their horses during the Civil War. The barn today houses a vintage 1937 tractor and serves as a favorite play spot for the owner’s grandchildren.
The family, based mainly in Bay Minette, uses the farm as a gathering place for holidays and weekends, raising cattle, tending a vegetable garden and harvesting pecans from trees on the property. A creek on the land eventually feeds into the Tensaw River, and a bridge built by the owner crosses it near the back of the property.
Furnishings throughout the home reflect the family’s decades of collecting, including handmade early-1900s pieces and a working antique phonograph with more than 100 records. The family has already hosted weddings at the property, with another planned for a grandchild later this year, continuing a tradition of bringing celebration back to a home that once sat empty and forgotten.