Sold: The Historic 1902 McNairy House, $415,000

Posted on by David Arneke

4831 Lake Jeanette Road, Greensboro
The McNairy House

  • Sold for $415,000 on August 6, 2021 (originally $445,000)
  • 4 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, 3,300 square feet, 1.91 acres
  • Price/square foot: $126
  • Built in 1902
  • Listed April 12, 2021
  • Last sale: $285,000, August 2002
  • Note: The house originally was the centerpiece of the huge McNairy farm, which included the area around Lake Jeanette Road and Bass Chapel Road. The house and its surrounding 1.91 acres remained in the McNairy family until 1996.
  • Francis and Mary Boyd McNairy moved to North Carolina from Pennsylvania in 1761. They bought land on Horsepen Creek; 20 years later it was part of the site of the Battle of Guilford Courthouse. Their house was used as a hospital after the battle; prominent local minister, educator and ardent revolutionary David Caldwell provided emergency medical treatment (he also was a self-taught physician). The home was dismantled in 1967 and reassembled at the Greensboro Historical Museum, where it still stands.
    • In the 19th century, all but one of the McNairs followed Francis and Mary’s son John to Tennessee (John took along his buddy Andrew Jackson — yeah, him — then a Guilford County lawyer).
    • James McNairy (born 1809), a lawyer, remained. “A large landowner like his father, he served as a justice of the peace, as well as a member of the state legislature,” according to Tim Cole of the Greensboro Public Library.
    • At the turn of the 20th century, James’s descendants included brothers John and James McNairy, who built a schoolhouse for their children on the property. With the help of the Preservation Greensboro Development Fund, the current owners recently sold that building, and it was relocated.