State

Volume XIV T H E S T A. T E June 22 Number 4 д Weekly Survey of North Carolina 1946 Entered u iec<vnd-cUss matter. June 1. 1933. at the Postofflce at Ralelfh. North CaroUna. under the Act of March 3. 19T9. The Ruins ol Cralgrownle What once .started out to be a flourishing town in the Sandhills is now only a small group of decayed buililings. The railroad leading to it was torn up many years ago. HERE are several "ghost towns" in North Carolina — Parkewood, in Moore County; Diamond City, in Martin County and a num¬ ber of others. At one time they gave promise of being flourishing communities and developing into enterprising cities. Then some¬ thing happened, and they faded out of the picture completely. This is the story of another host town — Craigrownie, in the andhills. In 1894, W. S. Eekhout, a full- blooded Scotsman, come to Aber¬ deen and became associated with the Tarbcll Lumber Company. He had left his sweetheart, Eva Boyd, in Scotland. A year after his ar¬ rival, the girl came over on a transatlantic liner to join him. The ship was held up in New York harbor for ten days while Eekhout waited on the docks. When they at last got together, they were married and came to Aberdeen to live. Persons who were Eekhout's friends in Aberdeen speak of him as "stupendously pious and ex¬ travagantly conscientious." He was always the first to visit the sick, or to sympathize with some¬ one who had lost a relative. Quite a dreamer, he seems to have been, but not a very practicable man. Dreams of a Railroad Eekhout hod an idea of building a railroad toward Norman from Aberdeen. There was plenty of lumber in that section, and he figured that the freight on this and other commodities would make the railroad a paying invest¬ ment. He also had visions of estab¬ lishing a town. THE STATE. June 22. 1946 By MARY HUE Roseland. in the same vicinity, was started about the same time as Pinehurst and had become quite a sizable winter resort. Eekhout probably had an idea of building another place along the same line. He had the use of some money belonging to relatives in Scotland, and so he began to build his road. It was graded to within a few miles of Jackson Springs, and at the terminus Eekhout bought thirty acres of land from Alex Stuart, land which lies in the southeastern part of Montgomery County, ex¬ tending to the Richmond County line. There a typical turpentine- and-lumber town began to sprout, and Eekhout named it Craig¬ rownie for a town in his native Scotland. The coming of the railroad made necessary a depot and a postoffice, and these were run by J. E. Patter¬ son. Some of the first citizens of the place were Jim Gillis, Pate Markham, Aaron Mims. L. J. Hin¬ son. Will Ferguson. Alex Stuart, J. E. Patterson, John Elliott and John McPherson. In the way of business establishments there were a blacksmith shop, brick factory, dry kiln, hotel, sawmills, dryhouse, turpentine still, whiskey still, plan¬ ing mill, cooper shop and four or five stores. A Rough Community As was usually the case in tur¬ pentine towns of that day and time, there were many rough characters around. They worked on the trams, in the mills and on the railroad all week for a wage of 60 cents per day and rations, which con¬ sisted of four pounds of meat, one peck of meal, and a half-gallon of molasses. And when they laid off work on Saturday there was plenty of whiskey, plenty of guns and plenty of meanness. The old- timers tell of the fights that took place. There were several trage¬ dies. Meanwhile, the lumber was cut. Cragrownie didn’t build up as had been expected and there was no one to furnish freight for the rail¬ road. Eekhout sold his road to the Moore County & Western Railroad Company, which was building a road through the same area, but before a second payment was made, the company went broke and left Eekhout in the hole. His money gave out, his wife died, so he aban¬ doned the whole thing and went to New York state. For a long time his friends heard nothing from him. and the railroad lay there — a streak of rust through the woods — until representatives of Eekhout's relatives in Scotland ar¬ ranged to have it taken up and sold. Eekhout seems to have been pretty much of a rolling stone, wandering about a good deni He was heard of some time after his departure from Aberdeen as a Seventh Day Adventist preacher in Norfolk and also in New York state. Later it was learned that he was preaching out in California. Another Project A while after Eekhout’s failure, a speculator and dreamer in South¬ ern Pines got the railroad fever and induced people to subscribe (Continued on page 28) з