The Old Presbyterian Manse was built in 1855 as the home of the First Presbyterian Church (1860)’s minister. Before the Manse was built, an even earlier building was Built on this lot around 1838 by William Mason. In the late 1840s, Mason sold this first house to Thomas Jefferson (T. J.) Word (1805-1890), a famous lawyer and legislator whose life and career spanned over 80 years. Word was known for being an adventurer who was constantly following the westward expansion of the United States- first to Mississippi (from his native North Carolina) and then to Texas. According to local legend, T. J. Word was driven from this house (and Holly Springs) by ghosts or spirits, making this the first haunted house in Holly Springs history.
In 1855, the original “haunted house” was torn down, and the Presbyterian Manse was built on the same spot. For 70 years, the house was used as the primary residence of the Presbyterian minister. By the early 20th century, the Manse was showing its age, and a new, more modern “New Manse” was built just to the south of this house in the early 1920s. The Presbyterian minister moved to the new Manse, while this house was sold. For much of the mid-1900s the house was owned by Grace Mann. By the 1980s, the house was growing dangerously dilapidated, and the city of Holly Springs received the house at a tax sale in 1984. The house was destroyed in the early 1990s and a modern brick house was built on the same lot.
The Old Manse was a one-and-a-half-story flanking gable frame house with a single bay center gable. A three-bay porch supported by bracketed posts was added to the original cabin in 1890.
Hill Country History 
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