Mrs. J.P. Overman, of Elizabeth City, whose father, the late Dr. William Pool, of Pasquotank County, spent his boyhood days at Elmwood, then the home of his father, has given the writer a description of this historic house, as learned from her father: "The house was situated on the right-hand bank of the river, and was set some distance back from the road. It was built of brick brought from England, and was a large, handsome building for those days. As I recall my father's description of it, the house was two stories high; a spacious hall ran the full length of the house, both up-stairs and down; and in both the upper and lower story there were two large rooms on each side of the hall. A broad, massive stairway led from the lower hall to the one above. The house stood high from the ground, the porch was small for the size of the building, and the windows were high and narrow. The ceilings of the rooms on the first floor had heavy, carved beams of cedar that ran the length of the house. On the left of the house as you approached from the river road, stretched a dense woods, abounding in deer, and in those days these animals would venture near the homes of men, and feed in the fields." The great planters in those early days in North Carolina, spent their working hours looking after the affairs of their estates, settling the disputes of their tenants, and attending with their fellow-landed neighbors the sessions of the General Assembly, and of the courts. Their pleasures were much the same as those of their kinsmen across the sea in merry England--fox-hunting, feasting and dancing; though to these amusements of the old country were added the more exciting deer chase, and the far more dangerous pastime of a bear hunt, when bruin's presence near the homestead became too evident for comfort. Often the wild screams of the fierce American panther would call the planters forth into the dark forests at their doors, and then it must be a hunt to the death, for until that cry was stilled, every house within the shadow of the forest was endangered. Among the homes of the planters in the ancient counties of Pasquotank, Currituck, Perquimans and Chowan, Elmwood was noted for the hospitality of its earliest owners, the Swanns; and the long list of prominent families who afterwards lived within its walls, kept alive the old traditions of hospitality.