Excerpt
As you leave the parking lot and walk down to the trailhead, be sure to note the shallow ford in the river. You are walking on land that witnessed some of the area¿s earliest history. William Few, a prosperous Quaker from Pennsylvania, came to this area, with his wife and brother James in 1758. He bought 640 acres of ground on both sides of the Eno River. After clearing the land and starting crops, he and James erected a gristmill, the remains of which you can see by fording the river and walking up the river to the left. (The remnants can also be seen from Fanny¿s Ford Trail if you don¿t want to get your feet wet.) / Both men were politically active, James particularly so. James eventually became known as one of the Regulators, a group that wanted to reform colonial government with regard to taxation. "Regulated" taxes, they thought, would at least be fair taxes. In this way, the Regulators were forerunners of the Revolutionary War patriots.