Cultural Landscape Report for Weymouth, Southern Pines, North Carolina

Hood, Davyd; Stach, Glenn

From introduction: "In the first years of the twentieth century, when James Boyd (1831-1910), the Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, coal magnate, set about establishing a winter estate in Moore County, North Carolina, both Southern Pines and Pinehurst were in their infancy as winter resorts. That said, however, the reputations of both were advancing as favored places for citizens of the Northeast and Middle Atlantic states seeking respite from cold climes. Like others of his generation and station, James Boyd quickly appreciated the appeal of the area, and understood his decision on behalf of the family to be a business prospect similar to so many others he had made that reaped rich reward. In this instance he once again made an important investment in lands and place that benefitted his descendants through three generations. The oasis he named Weymouth, in balmy pinelands that proved so appealing in winter seasons, came to be the permanent residence of two of his grandsons, the sons of his only son, John Yeomans Boyd (1862-1914): James Boyd (1888-1944), the writer, and Jackson Herr Boyd (1892-1983). Both men took to Weymouth in their youth, on family holidays while the senior James Boyd was living, and in the 1910s when they gained a natural and forced maturity with the unexpected death of their father, on 9 March 1914. By 1921 the die was cast. Within the space of four years, the manor house that had comfortably housed the Boyd family for some sixteen years would be replaced by four separate houses on adjoining grounds that comprised a family compound with no equal in the Sandhills. This report focuses on the estate that James Boyd, the grandson and namesake of the Boyd patriarch, created in the early 1920s. Situated on the property purchased in 1904 and christened Weymouth, the new house designed by Aymar Embury II was positioned within about 100 feet of the older house. It too would be called Weymouth, a name that has defined an exceptional place for over a century. These opening chapters of the phased Cultural Landscape Report for Weymouth comprise two significant periods in the estate’s history. The first, spanning the period from 1904 to 1920, opens with James Boyd’s purchase of a sizable portion of the Blue family’s ancestral lands in January 1904. Within the space of months, the matter of building a winter residence on that acreage was altered by the death of Mrs. Boyd’s kinsman, James Maclin Brodnax, who had completed and occupied an imposing house on the ridge rising above the east edge of Southern Pines. It stood on an 8.40-acre tract, adjoining Mr. Boyd’s newly-purchased acreage and the grounds of Hedgerow, the ca. 1900 winter residence of Elisha Macurdy Fulton (18__-1913), which was purchased in 1914 by Miss Ervinia Thompson who enlarged, refitted, and operated it as a hotel named the Cedar-Pines Villa. In September 1904, James Boyd purchased the Brodnax House and made certain improvements to it. Given the name Weymouth, it would serve as the winter residence of members of the Boyd family into 1921." Project funding was provided in part by a 2010 Historic Preservation Fund grant to the Town of Southern Pines (project number NC-10-016) administered by the North Carolina State Historic Preservation Office (grant number 37-10-21940) and the State, Tribal, and Local Plans and Grants Division, National Park Service, U.S. Department of the Interior. Southern Pines, North Carolina is a Certified Local Government

Cultural Landscape Report for Weymouth, Southern Pines, North Carolina

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