Cunningham-Hight Tenant Farmstead, 55.5 feet west of the intersection of Vincent and Curry Roads, Waxahachie, Ellis County, TX

Significance: The farmstead includes a complex of buildings associated with early to mid twentieth-century tenant farming in western Ellis County. The property encompasses land owned by George H. Cunningham, and early pioneer in the area, and his descendants. Cunningham was one of the county's wealthiest land owners and owned extensive amounts of land in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. He acquired the land where the complex now stands in 1855. As a landlord, he participated in the emerging tenant-farm system of the nineteenth century, and the extant barn dates to his period of ownership. Descendants of Cunningham, including granddaughter Leta Mae Hight and her husband G. Howell Hight, continued the practice of tenant farming through the early and mid twentieth century. The Hights oversaw the construction of most of the other surviving buildings in the complex. The farmstead is indicative of the type of tenant farm that produced most of the cotton grown in Ellis County during the early twentieth century.
Unprocessed Field note material exists for this structure: N1857
Survey number: HABS TX-3379
Building/structure dates: 1925 Initial Construction