CityView Magazine

The house is open and inviting, a blend of old and new. And quite a history. Not far from the house sits an even older building that may have once been used to store goods and supplies that came up from Wilmington. The property even included, long ago, a one-room schoolhouse, and the story goes that Caroline’s great- grandmother, a school teacher named Flora Caroline MacArthur McQueen, hid and nursed a wounded Henry Berry Lowery, the legendary Lumbee guerilla fighter considered the Robin Hood of the Lumbee tribe during the turbulent times of Reconstruction. Those were the glory days. Her family continued to farm there Top | Hidden by a grove of pecans, oaks and maples, the Gray’s Creek home is green from the inside out. Above | This homestead has truly returned to its glory days. 38|Special Issue • 2009 until the 1970s, but the homestead got a new lease with Jon and Caroline. While the house now has all the amenities of a modern dwelling, it took a considerable amount of remodeling to get the home on its way to 21st century livability. “We took 10 years to do it,” Caroline said. “We would work on it for a while, then sit for a while and then work on it for a while. Life is a balancing act.” The balance includes a busy work schedule at their respective non-profit jobs and a passion for bluegrass, folk and acoustic music, which includes performing with a band and writing and publishing their own music. Jon, a southern California native and mechanical engineer by trade, is director of Sustainable Sandhills, a non-profit group committed to raising awareness of environmental issues through programs ranging from recycling to eco-tourism. Caroline is development director for the Sandhills Area Land Trust, a non-profit organization that works with private landowners to negotiate voluntary conservation agreements on private property.

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