MacPherson Church

MacPherson Presbyterian Church is a Presbyterian church in Fayetteville, North Carolina. MacPherson Presbyterian Church is a historic church at Cliffdale Rd and McPherson Church Rd. in Fayetteville, North Carolina. It was made part of the North Carolina Highway Historical Marker Program in 1939. Founded by early Scottish settlers and its cemetery contains the graves of Alexander MacPherson and T. H. Holmes, a Confederate general.HistoryMacPherson Presbyterian Church services began around 1793 at Blount’s Creek in Cumberland County. It was formally established in the early 1800s by Scottish settlers in the area, and was named for Colin MacPherson, who donated the church’s original lands. Rebuilt in the late 1860s, MacPherson Church is located on present-day Cliffdale Road in the Seventy-First Township.In 1793 MacPherson’s Meetinghouse members gathered informally under a shelter along the banks of Branson’s Creek. The Reverend Angus McDiarmid, who also worked at other area Presbyterian churches including Barbecue and Bluff, preached irregularly at the gatherings. By 1800, the congregants appointed a committee to construct a permanent structure and to officially establish MacPherson Church.The six-member committee decided to locate the permanent church building on five acres of land donated by Colin MacPherson, for whom the church was named. Eight elders were appointed to lead the new congregation, including Daniel Macrae, James Torry and Neill Buie, Sr. In 1801 a simple frame building was erected for the congregation. MacPherson Church continued to develop over the next few years, with guest preachers throughout the next fifty years. These included prominent Cumberland County figures like Reverend Colin McIver, a professor at Fayetteville Academy, and Reverend Simeon Colton, the first principal at Donaldson Academy.