History
European settlers were drawn to the area as early as the 1740s because of the Shallow Ford, a natural gravel roadway under the Yadkin River. The Shallow Ford, which became part of the Great Wagon Road, was the only place in the vicinity that was shallow enough for heavy wagons to cross.
When a road was extended from the Moravian settlement of Bethabara to the Shallow Ford in 1753, the village just west of the river became a frequent stop on the stagecoach trail. From the crossing, settlers could continue to Salisbury and Charlotte then on as far south as Georgia. In 1770, the Shallow Ford became part of the western expansion as well, when the Mulberry Fields Road, and what later became known as the Daniel Boone Trail to Kentucky, opened.
The area was first known as the Bryan Settlement after Morgan Bryan, a Pennsylvania Quaker who settled in the frontier three miles (5 km) downstream of the Shallow Ford in 1748. Edward Hughes – who may have been the first settler in the region, arriving as early as 1747 – established a tavern and inn in the area.
Read more about this topic: Huntsville, North Carolina
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“The history of the world is none other than the progress of the consciousness of freedom.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)
“Spain is an overflow of sombreness ... a strong and threatening tide of history meets you at the frontier.”
—Wyndham Lewis (1882–1957)
“Certainly there is not the fight recorded in Concord history, at least, if in the history of America, that will bear a moment’s comparison with this, whether for the numbers engaged in it, or for the patriotism and heroism displayed.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)