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Jacob Wills Stone House

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Kingsport, TN
Jacob Wills Stone House

The Jacob Wills Stone House was built about 1790 at Cloud's Ford in Kingsport TN. The house is built of hand shaped limestone, with a log foundation.

The home is a private residence, however the owners are happy to answer questions and share historical information. The old stone house at Cloud's Ford in Kingsport Tennessee was built circa 1780, likely by a Virginia stonemason by the name of Silas Smith. It was purchased in 1790 by Jacob Wills and the Wills family descendants occupied the house for over a century. On December 13th, 1864 Union tr

oops crossed the Holston River at Cloud's Ford, marching past the house and overtaking the Confederate-held city of Kingsport. The house is a full-time private residence, but the owners, Bruce Black and Claire Warren, are very happy to answer questions and share information. National Register of Historic Places #730001849

01/31/2026

January 31st, 2026.

08/25/2025

Sadly, we are about to lose the beautiful old walnut tree at the stone house. It is the last of a group of walnuts that were planted sometime after the 1930s photo of the house was taken and were mature trees by the time the 1973 photos were submitted to the Natl. Register of Historic Places. The tree split open and fell late in the afternoon of August 20th, revealing a rotted interior. It will have to come down before the rest of it falls and does damage or hurts someone. We are sorry to see it go, but are looking at what trees we might plant in it's place. If you have tree suggestions, let us know!

12/20/2017

Today, the Old Stone House sits on a little less than two and half acres. But originally, 400 acres of the surrounding area were part of the land granted to Jacob Wills, first known owner of the Old Stone House. Below is a scan of that original land grant, dated April 7th, 1790. It reads as follows:

"State of North Carolina. Know ye that we have granted unto Jacob Wills four hundred acres of land in Sullivan County on the South East side of the North fork of the Holeson (Holston) river. Beginning at a white Oak and beech by the river then North 50 poles East 76 poles to a lake (Likely Winegar Spring on Carters Valley Road at Winegar Drive) North 60 poles East 190 poles to two white oaks on Morrison's line and with the with the same North 120 poles to a back oak at the foot of a ridge West 125 poles to a black oak on the top of the river ridge North 70 West 305 poles runing down the river to a stake South 27 East 390 poles to the Beginning to Hold to the said Jacob Wils, his Heirs and Asigning forever Dated the 7th day of April 1790 J Glasgow Secretary, Alex Harm"

12/13/2017

On this day in 1864, a turning point in the Civil War took place in the yard of the Old Stone House. Confederate forces were confident that they could hold back the Union at the Holston River. The river was too deep and wide to get horses and artillery across without bridges. However locals within the Union troops knew that just two miles up the river was Cloud's Ford. This is the shallow point on the river at the point where present-day Carters Valley Road crosses the Holston. Native Americans and longhunters had been crossing at Cloud's Ford for centuries. Cloud's Ridge on the Hawkins County side of the river provided the Union with plenty of cover approaching the ford. They crossed the river and into our yard, marching right past our house, and on into Kingsport, where they overtook the Confederacy. This skirmish became known as the Battle of Kingsport.

11/16/2017

One of the things we enjoy most about the Old Stone House is seeing the marks that those who were here before us have left on the house. The axe marks in the old hand hewn beams are a favorite. Sometimes we talk about who might have made those marks. Was he a craftsman? A slave? That we will never know, but 220 years later, his work is still being appreciated! Below are pictures of our beams and some pictures showing how beams were made in the 18th century. To read more about 18th century home construction click here:
http://www.homestead.org/11-construction/60-traditional-homestead-construction

10/28/2017

Wedding bells are ringing at the Old Stone House! Owners Bruce Black and Claire Warren officially tied the knot on the front porch last Saturday!

09/11/2017

We have a BIG HEAVY jigsaw puzzle to do! Not long ago we realized that the large, shaped stones at the base of our flagpole were actually an old, segmented millstone!

It is a "bed stone" and was once the lower or two stones in a mill. We can tell this because it has a rough underside and only one finished grinding surface. Originally, the pieces of this millstone would have been held tightly together by a large iron band around its perimeter.

It had been placed at the base of the flagpole with the grinding surface face downward in the ground, and so we flipped it over and washed the dirt off. We quickly discovered that putting one of these back together is harder than it looks. The stones were all out of order. The grooves of the grinding surface go every which way and some only go half way across the stone.

I decided to search for someone who could give us some advice and contacted http://millstones.com/ for assistance. I found out that our millstone is French in origin, and it is approximately 150-200 years old! It is typical of what would have been used in Tennessee area during the late 18th and early 19th centuries.

I also learned that the way to put it back together is not to try to line up the grooves on the grinding surface but to study the outer edges and mate the rough outer surface of each wedge to the next that way. The weight of these stones makes this trial and error matching very difficult.

I hope to follow up this post with another showing the reassembled stone soon. Wish us luck, we're gonna need it!

08/13/2017

We have been asked how many fireplaces are in the old stone house. That is a rather difficult question to answer. We have three visible fireplaces- One large fireplace in the living room and two smaller ones upstairs in the bedrooms. However, the interior walls have been moved around over time to suit the needs of previous owners. We are not quite sure if there were two, three or four bedrooms upstairs when the house was built. We know that there is at least one large fireplace behind the wall in the kitchen and there may or may not, be two additional fireplaces upstairs. I am especially tempted to uncover the kitchen hearth. However the problem is that it would require a major remodeling of what is a good, functional kitchen, with lots of old time charm. So for the time being, I am having to let the old stone house keep it's secrets!

07/19/2017

Funny, the things you can learn from a house's former owners! The other night we met up with Dennis and Bec Mcclanahan, the previous owners of the stone house. They relayed a story that the owner before them told.

A young boy who lived in the stone house at that time was upstairs playing in his room (now the guest bedroom). As boys will do, he began tossing his baseball against the bedroom wall, when it unexpectedly went through the wall and disappeared into a void behind the wall!

They investigated further, removed the wallboard and uncovered the beautiful stone wall and small bedroom hearth that we have today. They had had no idea that it was there at the time.

So that leaves us with the question, could there be more hearths hidden behind the present walls? Yes there are undoubtedly more, but I will save that for the next post!

07/14/2017

"Is it haunted?" This is by far the number one question that we are asked about the Old Stone House, so I have given a lot of thought about how best to provide an answer. We have lived in the house since April 28th and so far the only thing going bump in the night are the cats. From the moment we stepped over the threshold for the first time, the feeling that we had about the house was one of welcome, home and happiness. Have people died here? Undoubtedly so, and yes, there's a small private graveyard across the street. But if there are any "old souls" still residing in the house, they seem to be the benevolent sort and we think they must be happy to have us!

07/12/2017

The old stone house has never moved an inch since it was built around 1780, and yet it has been in at least two states, or as many as five, depending upon how you look at it.

Cloud's Ford is located so close to the present day Tennessee-Virginia border, that we like to say that if you have a good arm, you can throw a Frisbee into Virginia from the front porch. However the state lines were not always located where we know them to be today.

Researching the backstory behind the moving the state lines in the area of Cloud's Ford is extremely complicated and could easily fill a book. Suffice to say, that although the house was originally built in North Carolina around 1780, in 1784 Cloud's Ford was part of the territory that declared its independence and applied for statehood as the State of Franklin. It failed to receive the two-thirds majority needed to win statehood and after a small skirmish, was returned North Carolina in 1788.

From 1789 to 1802 Cloud's Ford was part of a three mile wide "no man's land" between the borders of Virginia and Tennessee. It was known as the "Squabble State" due to the controversy surrounding which state it belonged to. Residents of the so-called Squabble State owed no allegiance to any state or county and could refuse to pay taxes. Eventually these disputes were resolved and Cloud's Ford became part of the state of Tennessee that we know today.

See the attached illustration. Cloud's Ford is located on the Tennessee-Virginia border, just above the letter L in Franklin.

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Kingsport, TN
37660

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