Christopher W. Hollowell
(Pasquotank County)
Featured Character – The Home Front
Christopher
W. Hollowell
Courtesy of Abby Manning
Erected in 1856 for planter
Christopher
Wilson Hollowell (1821-1892), Bayside epitomizes the height of
antebellum
prosperity in Pasquotank County. The two-and-a-half-story,
double-pile Greek
Revival residence has two-story porches on the front and rear. The intact center-hall
plan interior features
double parlors on the southwest that contain round-arched Italianate
style
marble mantels. Woodwork
throughout the
downstairs consists of sophisticated convex, concave, and flat-fluted
surrounds. The
staircase has an
exuberant octagonal newel with whimsical Gothic-arched balusters.
Christopher Hollowell,
a native of Perquimans
County,
came to Pasquotank
County
in the 1840s to manage several plantations for his cousin John
Hollowell, on
whose farm Bayside was built. He
also
managed the Pasquotank plantations of James C. Johnston of Hayes
Plantation
near Edenton. Hollowell
eventually
inherited the Pasquotank plantations from both his cousin and Johnston,
making
him one of the county’s largest landowners.
The house was built soon after Hollowell’s marriage in
1855 to Alpine D.
Bodine, who died about 1860. In 1870
he married Parthenia Weeks Gatling (ca. 1849-1937), also of Perquimans County. The house and much of the
original
700-plus-acre farm remained in family ownership until 1988. Another large portion
became what is now the
United States Coast Guard Base.
In 1963, items from the Margaret
Hollowell estate became the foundation for the
Museum of the Albemarle. Margaret was the daughter of
Christopher W. and Parthenia Hollowell.
.