The Trading Path in Alamance County, a Beginning
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The
following essays suggest some starting-points for locating, studying and
preserving the Trading Path routes and stream crossings in the Alamance
County area. Portions are extracted from chapter 1, “Places and People”
in Carole Watterson Troxler and William Murray Vincent, Shuttle
& Plow: A History of Alamance County, North Carolina (Alamance
County Historical Association 1999) with permission of the latter for read-only
presentation.
Link
here to 18th century maps by Moseley, Fry & Jefferson,Collet and
Mouzon to accompany the essays.
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1.
East-west Pattern of the Trading Path Network in Alamance County
copyright
1999 Alamance County Historical Association
The
route of the major Trading Path between Indians in east central Virginia
and those west of the Yadkin River can be envisioned easily against today’s
transportation network in Alamance County, for it formed its basis. With
the coming of the railroad in the 1850s, tracks from Hillsborough well
into South Carolina maintained the general course of the greater Trading
Path. Also, the route is shadowed today by the course that Interstate 85
takes through much of Virginia and North Carolina. The Trading Path also
shows in local roadways.
The
eighteenth century terms “Indian Trading Path” and “Trading Path” referred
to more than one route, because Indians and their trade patterns shifted
during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In Alamance County, the
name “Trading Path” usually referred to a segment leading from the Siouan
settlement at Achoneechy Town (northwest of present-day Hillsborough) westward
to today’s Mebane, fording the Haw River at the present town of Haw River,
then passing through today’s Graham. The path forded Great Alamance Creek
west of Bellemont, then went westward past Alamance Battleground and into
Guilford County. In addition, the terms “western Trading Path” and “lower
Trading Path” referred to a leg that left Achoneechy Town in a southwestward
course. It forded the Haw River where Alamance Creek flows into the river,
just south of present Swepsonville. The lower Trading Path continued southwestward
through today’s northern Albright Township, then crossed Patterson Township
diagonally. In addition to these routes that European settlers called “Trading
Paths,” a very important road and ford that Native Americans established
at Saxapahaw connected what became southern Alamance County with Achoneechy
Town and the greater trading area.
For
the first Europeans then, penetration of the Alamance County area was made
possible by three well-established routes westward from the Achoneechy
settlements. The routes oriented newcomers at the places where they crossed
the Haw River, known today as Haw River, Swepsonville, and Saxapahaw. It
is of some significance that the northernmost fording place took on a European
name in the first half of the eighteenth century: “Pine Ford” or “Piney
Ford,” an area better known later as “Trollinger’s” and “Haw River.” Its
location on the main Trading Path made it the most frequented and familiar
crossing of the Haw River for outsiders. Whatever name Native Americans
called the place was lost. The term that English speakers used for the
ford indicated a prevalence of pine trees at the site, a feature remarkable
enough to provide a name. A strong growth of pines reflected the fact that
the land adjacent to the ford had been kept clear of forest growth, presumably
by farming, until some 30 to 60 years before the name “Pine Ford” came
to be used. Pines require about 30 years to take over cleared land in the
natural vegetative progression, and they in turn yield dominance to hardwoods
after another 30 or so years. The earliest recorded use of the name “Pine
Ford” for the crossing is 1752, when Orange County was created; by then
the name was in common use. By contrast, the adjacent “Haw Fields” between
the Eno and Haw rivers was described as “fields” and “old fields” or grasslands
in the 1720s, remarkably clear of trees of any sort. Such word usage suggests
that farming was relinquished within view of the ford as the crossings
increased. Maps made in 1733 and 1751 suggest that the Pine Ford crossing
came to surpass the one at the confluence of the Haw and Alamance Creek
during that time. The Edward Moseley 1733 map shows the Trading Path crossing
the river at the confluence, but the Trading Path crosses the Haw upstream
near the mouth of Back Creek in the 1751 map made by Joshua Fry and Peter
Jefferson. Otherwise, the Trading Path route is the same, and the difference
may reflect no more than the interests of the map makers. The perception
of a northward shift of what newcomers considered the main route of the
Trading Path near the Haw River, however, is reflected in the way Earl
Granville’s land office described the land they surveyed in 1756 for Jacob
Henry Trollinger. The surveyor reported the tract as being on the west
side of the Haw River, “astride the New Trading Path.”[1]
Public gathering and camping at the crossing continued longer on the east
bank than on the west. Indians continued using the east side of the river
at Pine Ford into the nineteenth century.[2]
Just
as the “Pine Ford” vicinity became known as “Trollinger’s,” the ford where
the “lower” Trading Path crossed the Haw near the mouth of the Alamance
came to be named for a series of mill owners near the site: John Armstrong,
Archibald DeBow Murphey, Thomas Ruffin, and finally George Swepson. Saxapahaw,
by contrast, kept its Native American name. Although the people from whom
the name derived are known generally as “Sissipahaw,” the sound of the
name survived remarkably well from the time a Spanish traveler spelled
out the sound of the river’s name as “Sauxpa” in 1567.[3]
Perhaps Saxapahaw in the south, like Ossipee and Altamahaw in the north,
maintained its Indian name as a fording place on the Haw River because
it was outside the main traffic flow of the east-west Trading Paths.
The
general courses of several Alamance County roads and streets still closely
reflect the Trading Paths and no doubt incorporate stretches of them, particularly
at the higher elevations of the original roads. These include Boywood Road,
much of Mount Herman-Rock Creek Road, and much of NC 119 northeast of Swepsonville
for the “lower” Trading Path. The route of the main Trading Path is reflected
in portions of Mebane-Rogers Road and Bason Road between Mebane and Haw
River and in NC 49 in Haw River and north Graham. Relatively level terrain
and urban changes in Graham and Burlington challenge attempts to site the
Trading Path there, but the eastern part of Hanford Road and Monroe Holt
Road retain portions of the route between Interstate 85/40 and Alamance
Creek. South of Alamance Creek, church and cemetery locations that were
accessed by the Trading Path in the eighteenth century indicate that the
Bellemont-Alamance Road westward from Sinking Quarter Creek incorporates
a stretch of the Trading Path, as does a portion of NC 62 westward from
its intersection with the Bellemont-Alamance Road. The road from Saxapahaw
toward Achoneechy Town is approximated by part of the Salem Church-Mt.
Willing Road in Thompson Township.[4]
2. Pine Ford and Back Creek Crossings of the Trading Path and Some Related Haw River Crossings and Roadways
copyright 1999, Carole Watterson Troxler
This segment examines documentation for a) the Trading Path crossing of
Quaker and Back creeks near their confluence and b) the Trading Path crossing
of the Haw River at “Pine Ford” or “Piney Ford,” which ford gave rise to
the town of Haw River.
Maps drawn by John Collet in 1770 and Henry Mouzon in 1775 show the road
crossing an unnamed network of waterways east of a distinctive bend in
the Haw River that characterizes the river’s course at the town of Haw
River. Such maps were expected to present only the general course of roadways.
Typically the map maker drew them from notes and sketches he made at his
next stop after traveling a road, or he drew them from descriptions gleaned
from other travelers. Stream crossings and road intersections were more
important than the shape or scale with which the road itself was represented.
The waterways just east of Haw River in the 1770s maps are distinguished
by the shape of the lower portion of their main stream, which reveals it
to be Back Creek. The tributaries (Back, Otter, Quaker and Stag creeks)
are presented almost schematically, fan-like. The map maker’s point is
that the road crosses them very near their confluence. Although a few eighteenth
century deeds recorded the names of these creeks, usually they were described
simply as “the waters of Back Creek.” Some forty years earlier, before
the rush of recorded settlers in the 1750s, Edward Moseley had marked Back
Creek and its tributaries prominently in his 1733 map, calling it the “Marrow
Bone River.”
Eighteenth century maps depicted four crossings of the Haw River in the
Alamance County area. From north to south they were 1) upstream from the
Reedy Fork, and on its northern prong; 2) Pine Ford 3) the Alamance Creek
confluence and 4) south of Saxapahaw. Given the level of settlement along
the Haw by the late eighteenth century, one expects there to have been
additional ones as well. Downstream from the Reedy Fork, a ford known to
the nineteenth century as “the Shallow Ford” was near a road that was authorized
in 1753. The new road roughly paralleled the Haw River on its northeastern
side. If the Shallow Ford was not in use already in the 1750s, the presence
of the road would have attracted the attention of travelers to its contours.
After heavy rains, the crossings at Reedy Fork, Shallow Ford and Pine Ford
were less likely to be dangerously flooded than were the downstream crossings
of the Haw River. Alamance Creek commonly was referred to as a “river,”
and it drained a basin reaching far into Guilford County. Moreover, its
confluence with the Haw could be swelled by the extensive waters of the
Stinking Quarter Creek network. When flood-wary east-west travelers shifted
their route northward to avoid the Alamance confluence and crossed the
Haw River instead at either Pine Ford, Shallow Ford or the Reedy Fork,
they still had to cross “the waters of Back Creek” east of the river.
The new 1753 road that roughly paralleled the river connected the river
crossing north of Reedy Fork with the stream crossings in “the waters of
Back Creek.” It was one of the first roads authorized by the roads commission
of the newly created county of Orange. This was prior to Hillsborough’s
organization as the county seat. From December 1752 through March 1754,
the Orange County court met in a log court house near the crossing of Back
Creek’s tributaries.[5]
The road commissioners continued meeting there for several sessions after
the colonial legislature altered the location of the county seat. Prior
to the March 1753 meeting of the county court, the road commissioners ordered
three new roads. One of them was to run from the “courthouse to Giles
Tillets,” then on to “Joseph Tates on the east side of Little Troublesome
Creek.” Tillet’s land was on the north prong of the Reedy Fork. Tate, Tillet
and Joseph Pinson were overseers for cutting and maintaining this road.
Pinson also was on the north prong.
At the same time, the road commissioners ordered a road from the southern
edge of Orange County (the southern edge of present-day Chatham County)
northward to intersect the “western or Trading Path” on the southwest side
of the Haw River. The purpose of this road was to connect the area served
by that section of the Trading Path with Wilmington and its port. Much
of this north-south road anticipated present-day N.C. 87 between Pittsboro
and Graham. A
third road ordered by the commissioners was to go to Upper Saura Town through
present-day Caswell and Rockingham counties.[6]
The
selection of a courthouse site between Pine Ford and the Quaker-Back confluence
reflects the importance of both crossings, short-lived as that courthouse
was. The first Orange County court met at John Gray’s home near the Eno
River in September 1752. At that session, the justices followed the legislature’s
directive to decide where to locate the county seat. They agreed to have
it further west, near the Haw River, close enough to Pine Ford for that
crossing to give access to people who lived west of the Haw. The court
clerk recorded their decision to built the courthouse "near the Piney ford
on haw river & on the north side of said River." Usage was “north”
for the northeast side of the Haw and “south” for the southwest side.[7]
This decision to place the courthouse and other county facilities near
the western end of the Eno-to-Haw road rather than on its eastern end reflected
the influx of people into the Hawfields and to the lands west of the Haw
River.
The
rapidity with which the piedmont attracted new arrivals was reflected anew
with the legislature’s decision to re-site the courthouse after it had
been used less than two years. When Orange County was created, the Pine
Ford crossing was near its center. While newcomers were pouring into the
lands watered by the Haw and its tributaries, the lands of the Yadkin were
being settled as well, and there were calls for a new county in that area.
In 1753 the colonial legislature created Rowan County, thereby removing
the vaguely defined western edge of original Orange County. With Rowan
County extending eastward nearly to the present Alamance-Guilford boundary,
Pine Ford was no longer near the center of Orange County but near its western
edge.
Memory
of the location of the first courthouse for Orange County was retained
for a time. During the Revolutionary War, many people were anxious to register
ownership of their land with the state government, and there was a rush
of land entries during 1778-79. Several land entries mention “the old court
house tract” as a boundary, always located in “the waters of Back Creek.”
In October 1778 George Hodge made an entry for 624 acres, which he described
as being “on the waters of Back Creek a branch of Haw River, it being the
tract of Land Commonly Called the Old Courthouse tract.” His neighbors
in describing their land added that they were adjacent to “the old court
house tract.”[8]
Where was the courthouse? One begins with the justices’ agreement that
the courthouse, stocks and jail be placed within two miles of Pine Ford
on the northeast side of the Haw River. The vicinity of the Pine Ford crossing
historically saw continual use as the focus of the river crossing and the
site of commerce and manufacturing at the river’s edge. Granite Mill was
constructed beside the crossing, and both the North Carolina Rail Road
Company and the builders of highways (U.S. 70 and N.C. 49) sited bridges
in the vicinity. The natural function as a ford is manifest both at ground
level and in geologic mapping: the river is unusually broad and normally
shallow and island-studded in the area encompassing Pine Ford. The Quaker-Back
confluence is slightly more than two miles from the Pine Ford vicinity
via N.C 49 east and Bason Road. Even assuming road shifts, it appears that
the justices stipulated that the courthouse be within two miles of Pine
Ford because they did not want to require court travelers to use both fords.
Just
west of the Quaker-Back confluence there was sufficient high ground for
public facilities and roads to be safe from any high water at that crossing.
The confluence of Otter, Quaker, Stag and Back creeks is masked by a reservoir
today. The courthouse, jail and stocks would have been placed on the high
ground, on the Trading Path, now Bason Road.
This portion of the Trading Path became connected with the crossing north
of Reedy Fork by way of the road authorized in 1753. Their intersection
appears in the Collet and Mouzon maps as a fork clearly associated with
the Quaker-Back confluence, the “waters of Back Creek.” The fork became
a crossroad in the nineteenth century. Some of its crossroad functions
appear in the first surveyed map of Alamance County, William Luther Spoon’s
1893 map. Spoon showed Piny Grove Church at a crossroad that today lingers
as the Bason Road-DeWitt Drive intersection. He labeled a “district school”
about a quarter of a mile west of the church. The district school of Spoon’s
day probably was the pre-Civil War “common school” known as Maple Spring
School, for it was at the center of the Maple Spring district of the 1850s.
Placement of the school and church reflect the public functions of nineteenth
century crossroads.[9]
In this case, the crossroad had originated with the 1753 order for a new
road from the “courthouse to Giles Tillets” on the Reedy Fork. Similarly,
the placement of present day Belview Baptist Church continues the link
with the 1753 road and the court house, as does “Chapel Road” leading from
Bason Road in the direction of Back Creek. Chapel Road intersects Bason
Road at the location of Spoon’s “district school.” Spoon did not show Chapel
Road, indicating either that it was not a public road at the time or that
it had not yet been formed. The land along Bason Road at these crossroad
remnants is high and broad, overlooking the submerged crossing of Otter
and Quaker creeks.
3. Glimpses of the Court House "in the waters of Back Creek"
copyright 1999 Alamance County Historical Association
A
few details have survived concerning the Orange County courthouse in “the
waters of Back Creek.” They are from manuscript sources: the court minutes
and a traveler’s account.
The
justices of the peace contracted with one of their number, Marmaduke Kimborough,
to build the courthouse, stocks and jail. As was the practice, Kimborough
provided two sureties that he would build the facilities at his own expense.
He could expect to be paid after completion of the work, but he stood to
benefit also from the tavern and lodging trade that court sessions would
bring. Kimborough had operated an in Edgecombe County ordinary, and there
had been a petition to move the county court to be nearer his establishment.[10]
The
other justices specified that the courthouse would be 32 by 22 feet with
a pitch of 11 feet, “framed & weather boarded with feather edge plank
& shingled Roof.” The prison was to be 20 by 12 feet, with a central
partition. It was “to be made of hewed Logs eight inches thick, weather
boarded with feathered Edged plank, with a shingled Roof & floored
above & below of hewed Loggs.” Further, the contract stipulated that
the “work is to be finished in a workmanlike manner within two Years from
the date hereof.” In the meantime, however, the courthouse was to be “fit
for the Reception of his Majesties Justices at their next sitting”.[11]
The minutes of this first session of the Orange County court ended as follows:
“Court adjourned till Court in Course to be held at the place where the
Courthouse is to be Built.” The law had set the next session for December
1752. The minutes for that session, which opened 10 December 1752, indicate
that the court met “at the Court house at Mr Kimbrough.” The court met
there for all four 1753 sessions and the March 1754 session. The December
1753 session granted Kimborough a license to keep an ordinary “at his home”
and also granted a license permitting Brasel Brasher to keep a second “Ordinary
at the Court house”.[12]
A
traveler who kept a journal was at this Orange County court house during
the September 1753 court and spent the night at Kimborough’s ordinary.
Neither it nor the courthouse was yet finished – Kimborough still had nearly
a year to go under his contract for the courthouse and jail. The visitor
was John Saunders, an English merchant. He worked for a company with a
store at Suffolk, Virginia, and he was in North Carolina expecting to meet
an associate in Granville County. The man Saunders sought had left Granville
County, however, and people at the Granville court suggested he might be
at “Orange Court House.” At one of his stops between the Granville and
Orange courts, Saunders learned that his associate intended going to Pee
Dee River in South Carolina. When Kimborough confirmed this and said he
himself was going to Pee Dee soon, Saunders entrusted Kimborough with messages
and retraced his way back to Suffolk. “Orange Court House” was the end
of the line for Saunders. He had had the usual bad experiences with eighteenth
century backcountry roads and ordinaries. He was not impressed with Kimborough’s
buildings, but he said the food there was better than most.
Other
than the court minutes, Saunders’ brief journal provides the only glimpse
of the Orange County court at its meeting “on the waters of Back Creek.”
Saunders recorded that after crossing the Eno River and “riding fifteen
Mile,” his party
got
to Orange Court house, where was Sundry people assembled and their Appearance
did not prejudice me much in their favour but I soon understood they were
j- - - -ces of this Court wch disapated our fears a little and they soon
left us and we had pretty good Enter[tainme]nt, Mr. Kimbro keeping ordinary
but the houses excessive bad being built of Logs and them laid verry far
from Close, that our lodging room was verry Airy and verry light notwithstanding
we had never a window.
It
is possible that the court met in Kimborough’s place of business rather
than in a separate “courthouse.” Such usage was common while courthouses
were under construction. That would not have been consistent with the September
1752 court directive for Kimborough to have the courthouse “fit for the
Reception of his Majesties Justices at their next [i.e. December 1752]
sitting,” however. Moreover, Saunders’ reference to “buildings” of similar
construction suggests that both the ordinary and the courthouse (and perhaps
also the jail) were logged, floored, and covered but not yet chinked.
Finally,
Saunders’ notebook has a story of its own. In 1863, a Union soldier found
it and a Revolutionary era rifle boarded up together in an Edenton house,
stole both, and signed the book: John T. Crook.[13]
4.
Where was Pine Ford?
copyright 2000 Carole Watterson Troxler
Documents cited in the discussion so far indicate that the court house
site was within two miles of the “Pine Ford” or “Piney Ford” on the Haw
River. The road linking the court house site with Pine Ford is assumed
to have been a section of the pre-existing Trading Path. The following
eighteenth century transactions relate to Pine Ford and the road connecting
it with the site of the 1752-54 court house in “the waters of Back Creek.”
Early in 1779, the Orange County Court ordered a “new road” from “Orange
Old Court house to Haw River.”[14]
This seems to be the origin of the course taken by Bason Road and NC 49
today, linking the court house site and the east river front via
an awkward turn where the land begins its descent to the river. This 1779
“new road” (now Main Street east of the river), gave direct access to Trollinger’s
ferry.[15]
Prior to the river access given by the “new road,” travelers used the old
road to Pine Ford and then, if they preferred to use the ferry rather than
ford the stream, they went downstream to Trollinger’s landing. Thus the
new 1779 road was a convenience for ferry passengers, and travelers with
cargo would find the ferry especially appealing. The direct route to the
ferry was convenient also for landowners along the new route, for they
stood to benefit from its commercial potential. The crossing was, and would
continue to be, a major thoroughfare for east-west travelers, many of whom
were participants in the westward migrations of the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries. No documentation has surfaced to indicate a commercial use of
the old Pine Ford, and it appears to have remained free to public access
as a traditional crossing associated with the indigenous Trading Path.
The
Orange County court in August 1761made two orders regarding road maintenance
that indicate that Pine Ford and Trollinger’s ferry were near each other
but were not regarded as the same place and that they were functioning
simultaneously at that time.[16]
For the east side of the river, the court appointed Anthony Stanford to
supervise the maintenance of the “road
from James Burnhill’s [Barnhill] to the pine ford and the Ferry at Trollinger’s
on Haw River.” Thus part of that east bank road connected the ferry with
the ford. The court made a road order for the west bank relative to the
ford and the ferry as well. They court appointed Michael Holt Jr. overseer
of “the Road from Pine Ford on Haw river to the fork of the Road westward,
and from Trollinger’s ferry into said Road.” This “Road from Pine Ford
on Haw river to the fork of the Road westward” had originated as the section
of the Trading Path on the west bank of the Haw. The road order’s reference
to a fork suggests that the Path connected with a newer settlement road.
The road order also indicates that the road “from Trollinger’s ferry into
said Road” likewise was a settlement road, created specifically to connect
the
ferry with the older course.[17]
These
1761 references to the ford, the ferry and the roads serving them show
parallel roads (roughly north-south) connecting the ford and the ferry
on either side of the river. There was one east-west road, and it was the
indigenous Trading Path, with its termini at Pine Ford. The newer roads
had been created to link the riverside termini of the Trading Path with
Trollinger’s ferry downstream. Subsequent commercial development focused
on the ferry site, and Pine Ford slipped from memory, both as a site and
as a name. Even so, the public ford was still in use in 1815, when the
Orange County Superior Court ordered John Trollinger to “use all means
with the hands under him to put the road and ford over Haw River
in the best repair possible." Perhaps the free ford still competed with
the family’s crossing enterprise; Trollinger ignored the order, and the
court indicted him and threatened a ¦20
fine to force his compliance.[18]
The
chief natural feature of the Haw River in the town bearing its name is
its dramatic widening; it is, of course, no accident that this shallow
stretch occurs at the historic commercial and manufacturing core of the
town. From at least 1779 to the present, the key commercial crossing has
been near Trollinger’s ferry, fed since 1779 by roughly east-west approaches
to the southern portion of the river’s wide swath. Today’s east-west approach
is N.C. 49. Where was the indigenous Trading Path crossing that European
settlers called “Pine Ford” in relation to this crossing?
One
can project a course for the Trading Path from the vicinity of the court
house site directly to the river’s wide stretch. If the mind continues
Bason Road unbent at its intersection with N. C. 49, the projected Trading
Path reaches the river near the mouth of a stream just north of Granite
Mill, nearly half a mile north of the N. C. 49 bridge. There is no feature
in the natural terrain to significantly deflect this hypothetical course,
which reaches the river in the northern portion of the shallow stretch.
The small stream is nearly matched on the west side of the river by another
branch slightly downstream. The mapmaker William Luther Spoon in 1893 labeled
the western stream “Fall Branch” and showed its mouth at the southern end
of Granite Mill.[19]
When the land still was forested, trickles such as these marked low runs
of terrain, offering access to travelers crossing the shallow stretch.
Spoon’s
1893 map marked the eastern branch but did not record its name. Given his
diligence in recording stream names, this omission is taken to indicate
that the name had slipped from the cultural memory by 1893. The name of
the small stream still was in use in the 1850s, at least by the Trollingers.
It is the last vestige of the memory of Pine Ford. The rivulet was called
“Pine Hill Branch” in the eighteenth century, suggesting that the hill
it descended obtained the name “Pine Hill” while the “Pine Ford” crossing
was in use. Thus in 1778, when William Hodge made the entry for his grant
of 240 acres, he described the land as being on the Haw River “at the mouth
of Pine Hill Branch.” In 1856, when Benjamin Trollinger sold half his interest
in the Haw River Company and its Granite Mill, he began the boundary description
with, “where Pine Hill Branch flows into Haw River.” Using the road course
projected above, the mouth of Pine Hill Branch is two miles from
the Bason Road-Chapel Road intersection, the site of the mid-nineteenth
century school.[20]
Pine
Hill Branch and Fall Branch suggest the location of “Pine Ford on the Haw
River,” natural markers surpassed only by the river’s own wide swell.