The owners of a historic house in eastern North Carolina are donating it for use as an African-American history museum. The Picot-Armistead-Pettiford House has stood in the small town of Plymouth for nearly 200 years. Local folklore links the house to the Underground Railroad before the Civil War despite Census data that shows the tenants were white and owned slaves. Willie Drye is the leader of a downtown development committee in Plymouth. He says free African-Americans bought the house at auction after the war.
"It became a place where black visitors came and went with some frequency and took on some stature, some status I guess, in the African-American community because of that."
Drye says efforts are under way to rebuild the roof. Advisors from the North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources are helping with the renovations.