The Norfleet-Rand House was built in 1846 by Wyatt Epps (1797-1878), an early settler in Holly Springs who operated one of the earliest taverns in Holly Springs: the Dumm and Bishop Tavern, located on the east bluff of the original “holly springs”. After the center of town life moved to the newly-formed Square in the late 1830s, Eppes purchased the Union House. In 1846, Epps purchased Lot 305 from R. H. Byrne and built this Greek Revival cottage on the southwest corner of the lot.
In 1859, Eppes sold the house to J. J. House, a figure of some local notoriety who ran a local horse-drawn passenger bus before the Civil War but gained his fortune as a blockade runner during the War. Two years later, House traded houses with J. P. Norfleet (1814-1889), a local merchant who was then living in today’s Dunvegan (1845).
J. P Norfleet and his family lived in the home from 1861 until 1896. After Norfleet’s death in 1889, his daughter Ada Norfleet Rand (1842-1896) and son-in-law Henry Oscar Rand (1838-1892) continued to reside in the house, giving the house its historic name of the “Norfleet-Rand House”. Henry and Ada’s son, Frank C. Rand (1876-1949), who was born in Red Banks but almost certainly spent some time during his childhood in this house, would go on to co-found the International Shoe Company, one of the largest companies of the 20th century.
From 1896 until 1921 the house was owned by the Methodist Episcopal Church, South (the southern predecessor to the modern Methodist Church), and was likely used as the Holly Springs United Methodist Church (1849) parsonage. For the next fifty years, the house was owned by the L. L. White family. In the 1980s, the house was restored by Helen H. Witte. Since 2002, the house has been owned by Jeane Benoist.
The Rand-Norfleet House is a one-story raised basement Greek Revival house with flanking gables. The west and south elevations have single-bay pedimented porticos supported by Tuscan columns (though the south elevation once had a much larger portico, as shown in the 1915 Sanborn Map). The main entrance on the west side of the house is framed by sidelights, a transom and pilasters.
Hill Country History 