The Story of Holly Hills (Woodland Hills)

        Holly Hills, originally called Woodland, owes its existence to a young, ambitious North Carolinian, Robert Ecklin, who settled in Shelby County in 1835.

        But the story really begins more than a hundred years before that date, when the Scotch- Irish Ecklin family came to America, eventually settling, about 1750, among other Scotch-Irish families in Craven and Beaufort Counties, New Bern District, North Carolina. These people were patriots who served in both the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812. Although they were prosperous farmers, there were few opportunities for their children to acquire good farms in the well-populated, marshy region on Pamlico Sound. So the sons of Joshua and Sarah Hill Ecklin and of their neighbors, Cornelius and Ann Worsley Patrick, began to look elsewhere for land where they might establish home and families.

         Hearing reports of good, cheap land to be had in West Tennessee, Robert Ecklin and his brother, Joshua, Jr., came to Shelby County in the fall of 1833, purchased farms for themselves and for their neighbors and kinsmen, and returned to North Carolina to dispose of their properties there and to prepare for the move to Tennessee.

        In January, 1835 a caravan of thirty covered wagons set out for the new homes. The wagons were loaded with wives, children, slaves, household effects, farming equipment, seed and even fruit and pine trees.

        In this train were Robert Ecklin, then a bachelor; Joshua Ecklin, Jr. and his wife, Nancy Roach; their sister, Sabrina Ecklin Patrick and her husband, William (son of Cornelius); William brother, Joseph Patrick, and his wife, Sarah Harding Hill; Widow Lucinda Edwards and her daughter, Lucinda, who traveled only as far as Hickory With (Fayette County), Tennessee; and the Reese and Whitley Families.

         The Caravan traveling over the Old Stage Trail, arrived in West Tennessee on April 1, 1835. The Reese and Whitley families settled in the Bartlett area. The  other families took possession of lands which were largely adjoining and covering an area roughly described as running along the Macon Road (beginning several miles east of Hall Road), north along the Lenow Road into the Morning Sun Community, east into the Pisgah community, and south to the Rock Point Road.

        Subsequent caravans in 1837 brought other families of friends and kinsmen, among them Penelope Ecklin (Robert’s sister), and her husband, John Richard Galloway, and the Crenshaw and Felid families from Virginia. Only one child of Joshua Ecklin, Sr. (Mary, wife of John G. B. Arnold) remained in North Carolina.

        The Ecklin caravan had timed the trip so these farming families would arrive at their home in time for spring planting. They found the lands, which had be Chickasaw Indian hunting grounds, heavily wooded, with few clearings for planting. Therefore, the first work for the settlers was to clear as much land as possible, plant crops, and at the next opportunity, build log houses. Robert Ecklin built his log house on the Hall Road, just southeast of the present brick home.

        Robert Ecklin had both the means and the foresight to buy a number of tracts of land, purchasing those with clearings ready for planting and also preparing for the day when he would wish to give a farm to each of his children. To further this dream, he went to Hickory with and married Lucinda Edwards and bought her back on horse back to Woodland, or Holly Hills.

         It is believed that work was begun on the actual building of the brick in 1837 and completed in 1840. Some final touches may havc been made as late as 1848.

        It is reported that everyone helped make the handmade bricks, slaves, children and neighbors. Anyone whose hands were not busy helped. The bricks were made behind the carriage house, which faced east and was located just west of the present house. Timber for the house had to be cut and hewn by hand. Ace Edwards, Lucinda’s brother, was brought to Woodland to design the house and supervise its construction.

        By the time the house was completed, there were children to fill it; Will Robert (who married Izzy Thompson and second Olivia Jones), Emma Augusta (who married John Thurman), Amanda Burney (who married Dr. Nathaniel Chaffin), Charlotte (second wife of Walter Clopton Allen ), and Joshua Bryan (killed in the Civil War). The Ecklin house was the finest in the County outside of Memphis at that time. It is reported that there were no windows originally, on the east side of the house. Slavcs carried the food on large trays along the wide brick path connecting the kitchen and the house. Slave quarters were further south, five log cabins having been erected for them at the time the house was built. Living descendants remember big brass keys hanging in the hall by the door to the dining room, which kept safe the supplies of foodstuffs and whiskey in the closet in the dining room and in the smokehouse outside. The cistern was located just west of the house.

        In front of the home can still be seen the pine trees brought from North Carolina –a reminder of their old home – and also the walnut trees southeast of  the house, where Indians used to make pottery. The family cemetery was the flower garden southeast of the house. Here were buried Robert’s sister, Sabrina Ecklin Patrick, in 1842; her husband, William Patrick, in 1865; their son, Joshua Patrick, in 1846; their daughter, Harriet Patrick Rogers, in 1858; and Harriet’s husband, William James Rogers in 1861. Most of the other members of the family are buried in the Morning Sun Church Cemetery.

        Robert Ecklin also erected a frame building on the corner of his property at Hall and Macon Roads. This was a Masonic Hall, known as “The Hall” throughout the County. The upstairs was used by the Masons, and the downstairs for a school, attended by at least two generations of children. The Hall was also a place for dances and ice cream festivals, and served the Cumberland Presbyterian worshipers until 1852, when the Ecklin brothers helped establish the Morning Sun Presbyterian Church. The Members who had attended services at The Hall then transferred to that church. Five generations of descendants of the Ecklins have been members and officers of the Morning Sun Church.

        The Ecklin Family obviously was a well-to-do “county” family. Each of the Ecklin girls had their own personal maid, and they all attended finishing schools. Mariella and Charlotte attended the Young Ladies Collegiate Institute at Forrest Hill, Tennessee, and the younger girls selected Macon Institute for Young Ladies at Macon, Tennessee. On Sunday, the Ecklin ladies, dressed in their finest, which were well protected by dusters, made an attractive appearance as they were driven in their carriage to Morning Sun Church.

        The Scotch-Irish settlers were industrious and religious people, but fun loving, and Woodland (Holly Hills) was the center of the social as well as the religious and civic life of the community. In addition to the parties held at The Hall, the big brick house was the setting for may affairs for family and friends. The very special ones still remembered by descendants, was the family Christmas tree Grandmother Lucinda Ecklin held annually.  The children came to grandmother’s before dawn, crowded into the back parlor, and often peeped between the double doors at the wonderful candlelit cedar Christmas tree in the front parlor. When the doors were opened, a gay Christmas celebration followed, with Will Ecklin playing Santa Claus.

        Grandmother Ecklin is also remembered sitting close bedside the fire in the parlor (“so the children couldn’t step on her corns”), a brown shawl around her shoulders, a large Bible open on her lap, a clay pipe in her mouth, and red hair sticking out from a beneath her cap.

        Subsequent owners of Woodland- Newton Jasper Justus, Dr. J.L. Minor, and Arthur Hall- all loved the farm and house. Justus probably added a kitchen to the house and built a room over the sistern. Dr. Minor named the property Wildwood and added modern plumbing but preserved the treasured imported French wallpaper and other features of the house. He used one of the log slave cabins to house the deep well which furnished water to the house. Mrs. Minor restored the rose garden, and at her death her ashes – and later Dr. Minor’s ashes also –were strewn there. Arthur Halle changed the name Wildwood to The Hollys, added a modern kitchen and large screened porch, from which the garden and best views of the property were seen, and made extensive repairs to the walls and foundations of the old house. He was particularly fond of the great log barn built by Robert Ecklin.

        Since the demise of its original owners, the old house almost seems to have developed a life and personality of its own. There was a time when it was believed to be haunted, with moving and flickering lights being seen, occasionally. Undoubtedly the house has retained much of its original character and warmth. It was a house built for both dignity and gaiety, and it is most kind to those who bring happiness across its threshold.

Mrs. Allie Gandy Dodd
Augusta Hooper Brough

Note: Much of the early history of the Ecklin Family was obtained from records at Beaufort and Craven Counties, N.C. and from the Department of Archives and History, Raleigh, North Carolina.