Remembering the Early Millers who Shaped Our Local Community
This past Tuesday marked the 235th anniversary of the Battle of Lindley’s Mill, and we’re honoring this important moment in our collective history all week long. Read our blog on the Battle of Lindley’s Mill here, and be sure to check back with us to continue reading more in this series. Today we will go back to the early 1700s, where the first settlers began building the foundation for a thriving community around what we still know today as Lindley’s Mill.
Agricultural Roots
The deepest of our agricultural roots here in Alamance County reach back to the small Native American villages. The native people of the Haw River (the Sissipihaw) lived bountifully off the land in the North Carolina Piedmont through hunting, fishing and farming for thousands of years before the Europeans arrived.
When the first Europeans began to settle the area, they established family farms in the hilly and fertile soil of the region. Many Quakers of English and Irish descent, like our own Thomas Lindley, settled around the Cane Creek area near what is now called Snow Camp. These early settlers had to meet their basic needs of food, water, and shelter. They grew wheat, corn, oats, and rye successfully and soon gristmills popped up along Cane Creek in order to make flour to feed the community. Both the Haw River and Cane Creek were crucial to the agricultural (and later on) the textile industries of our region--both as a source of drinking water as well as a source of hydropower for the mills.
Read more: Remembering the Early Millers who Shaped Our Local Community