Page 10 - Robeson Living Spring 2020

gest supporters of Floral College. Floral was founded in 1841 Prong Preservation, Inc. The group raised over $170,000 to com-
and was the first college in North Carolina and the second in the pletely restore the home including the addition of electricity, heat,
south to confer diplomas to women. and air-conditioning. Keen attention to detail and craftsmanship
returned the structure to its original handsome appearance. Orig-
The year after the death of his first wife John, Sr built a Mill inal doors, mantels and woodwork contribute to the value of the
Prong. The two-story planation house embodies the distinctive house and make it one of the finest specimens of a Highland Scot
architectural characteristics of the Federal Period including homeplace in the Cape Fear region.
Flemish bond chimneys and well-executed Federal detail, man-
tels, doors and hardware. The porch columns are solid timbers, Antioch Presbyterian Church and Academy
square at the top and bottom, changing to octagonal forms in
the center. The bases of the columns on the first story have
high channels cut through them so that the water will drain from
the porch deck. This is the primary contributor to the columns
having lasted since the original 1795 construction. The porch
railings are molded and fit into the columns through mortises.
In addition to mortising, the top and bottom rails are held in
place with small wooden pegs.
The interior of the home was designed and decorated to the high
standards befitting a man of Gilchrist wealth and position. All
of the first-floor rooms are wooden sheathed, the moldings are
the door and windows frames as well as the chair rails are of a
pattern favored by Federal period builders. The wainscoting of
the parlor also has the simulated wood graining in a brown and
dark ocher.

Located off the back porch was a room that was called a peddler Antioch Presbyterian Church
or traveler’s room. The room only has an exterior door so that
you couldn’t enter the main house. At the time that Mill Prong The residents living in the around McPhaul’s Mill and Mill Prong
was built the road in front of the house was the Stagecoach attended Raft Swamp Presbyterian Church, which was orga-
Road, it being the main road from Fayetteville to Charleston. nized in 1789 with Reverend Dougald Crawford, a University of
It is believed that travelers would have used this room for over- Glasgow graduate and former chaplain in British Force, served
night accommodations. as the first pastor. A great account of Raft Swamp and later An-
tioch Presbyterian Church is found in the Historical Sketches of
The most colorfully decorated room in the house is one of the Antioch Presbyterian Church written for their sesquicentennial
upstairs bedrooms it is painted in four colors. The panel sec- Celebration n 1983.
tions in the baseboards are brown, the upper walls are a blue
green, the mantel and baseboards are black, and the rails, styles Crawford being Scottish could understand the loyalist sympa-
and chair rails are red brown. The restoration team went out of thies of the Highlanders. He was described as a rather stiff per-
their way to make sure that the colors that you see in the Mill son. He spoke to no one at church, but walked straight to the
Prong are not just the colors of the period but are the actual col- pulpit, preached and then left. A complaint was that he spoke too
ors used in the house. rapidly. Crawford refused to connect himself with the Presbyteri-
an Synod of Philadelphia. One of the most interesting pastors was
Mill Prong remained in the Gilchrist family until 1811 when Scotland born Reverend Colin Lindsay who came to Raft Swamp
Gilbert Gilchrist, who inherited the house from his father, sold in 1792. Lindsay claimed the fame of being born after his “Moth-
it to Malcolm Peterson. It was Peterson, who sold Mill Prong to er’s death”. In 1736, a Scottish woman fell sick and entered a
Archibald McEachern (1788 - 1873), another prominent leader deep coma. Thought to be dead, she was buried near her home.
in both the Highland Scots community and the state. McEachern The evening of the burial, grave robbers, greedy for the diamond
enjoyed the greatest benefit of Mill Prong living there from the rings on her fingers, dug up the body. Finding one ring extremely
date of his purchase of the property until his death in 1873 - a difficult to remove, they began to cut off her finger. At this same
period of nearly sixty years. The house was alas the residence moment, she regained consciousness and sat up in her coffin. The
of his son Daniel Purcell McEachern until his removal to Red terrified robbers fled, leaving the unfortunate soul alone in the
Springs circa 1895. McEachern’s descendants who owned the cemetery. She walked back to her home. Six years later, in 1744,
plantation house until the early 2000s subsequently used Mill this woman gave birth to Colin Lindsay. Lindsay immigrated to
Prong as a tenant house and for agricultural storage. the United States in 1790. He settled in the Sandhills region and
became one of the area’s most colorful, if not cantankerous, min-
In the 1978 Hector MacLean former NC Senator and son of for- isters. He was suspended from the Presbyterian ministry three
mer Governor Angus Wilton Mclean brought together extended times due to his violent temper.
members of the Gilchrist and McEachern families to form Mill
Page 9 Page 10 Robeson Living ~ Spring 2020