When most people think of old plantation homes, they picture Tara from Gone With the Wind but simple homes like Melrose were much more common to the South, especially in the backcountry. Melrose was not the first house built by Matthew and Mary Singleton since it was made of sawn lumber rather than cut logs.

Melrose
from a drawing by Alfred Hutty

One of the first large houses in the backcountry, Melrose sported a one-story piazza, or porch, across the front and had four rooms on the bottom floor. Two chimneys stood on either side of the home and both were flanked by windows. A central hall gave access to the smaller second floor and to the back yard of the house.