Facing the old Carolina Road, Hillcroft is a residence put together like a string of beads. The earliest section is the two-bay, one-and-a-half-story frame cottage with dormers. It was built for Colonel Henry Lyne, a soldier in the Revolution whose daughter Susannah married John Penn, a signer of the Declaration of Independence. The middle, three-bay, two-story frame section was built in the early nineteenth century for Methodist minister John Cousins Traylor. And the two-story brick section (1840s) was constructed by James Rangeley, who gave his name to the community.