Kezziah Sawyer House
714 Pollock Street
ca. 1815; remodelled and enlarged ca. 1895
Although outwardly a simply finished late-Victorian structure, the Kezziah Sawyer house contains within
the heavy-timber frame of a small Federal-period story-and-a-half dwelling. Revealed during recent
rehabilitation work, this early structure was oriented with its gable end facing Pollock Street, and had a
shed porch running the length of the east side. Early photographs of New Bern show this to have been a
popular small house form; several variations of the type survive, among them the Silas Statham house
and 309 Bern Street.
Deed records and architectural evidence indicate that the early house was built about 1815, probably for
Kezziah Chadwick and James Sawyer as a result of their marriage in August of 1814. Kezziah had earlier
inherited partial interest in the lot upon which the house stands from her father, John Chadwick, Sr.
James Sawyer died before 1833, leaving his widow Kezziah as the sole owner of the property until her
death in 1874.
Sawyer willed the house to her granddaughter, Anne Morris, who sold the property in 1891 to Mary G.
Voliva, with the stipulation that it pass to Jeanette Ellis after Voliva's death. It was during Mary Voliva's
ownership that the small gable-roofed Federal period house was enlarged to its present form by the
addition of a side stair hall at the east, a full second story, and the present low-hipped roof. By 1908,
Jeanette Ellis' husband, W.S. Ellis, had constructed at the rear of the lot a large two-story barn with an
attached blacksmith shop to house his carriage building and repairing business. Ellis appears to have
closed this operation by 1924, when the Sanborn insurance maps for that year note that the now
demolished barn was used for "storage of junk and wagon parts." W.S. and Jeanette Ellis sold the
property in 1931 to E.L. McIntosh.
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