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47 <br /> Court records from 1805 show that James Strayhorn petitioned to <br /> build a gristmill on Stone's Creek. <br /> The Borland-McCauley Mill, located near the confluence of Stone' s <br /> - Creek and the Eno River, was the chief mill in the area. Although <br /> the technology of power generation changed from water to steam, <br /> the geographical advantage remained: the site later became a Duke <br /> Power station. <br /> Mid-Nineteenth Centu3zc <br /> Slavery existed on a relatively small scale in Orange County, <br /> compared to the large, commercially oriented plantations of <br /> eastern North Carolina. Only the larger landholders owned <br /> significant numbers of slaves. Few small farmers owned slaves, <br /> and most of those owned less than ten. A slave-owning yeoman <br /> farmer may have had but one black family in servitude, and they <br /> lived and worked side-by-side. The two families dwelled and <br /> toiled in such close proximity to each other that their food, <br /> clothing, and shelter were barely distinguishable. <br /> Small farmsteads were the predominant feature of the cultural <br /> landscape of Stoney Creek throughout the 19th century. <br /> Agriculture continued to be diversified, with cotton becoming an <br /> important commodity in the trend toward cash-crop farming. The <br /> railroad, completed in the mid-1850x, opened up new markets, <br /> allowing farmers to begin concentrating on one or two cash crops, <br /> mostly cotton and tobacco. <br /> University Station was born when owners of the land adjacent to <br /> the North Carolina Railroad realized its development potential. <br /> An 1856 newspaper account reported that Calvin Strayhorn was <br /> offering for sale twenty half-acre lots "lying immediately on <br /> Stone's Creek. " Strayhorn and others dreamed that University <br /> Station would become a bustling crossroads for trade between <br /> Chapel Hill and the rest of Orange County. However, it was never <br /> more than a passenger stop for people traveling to and from the <br /> University of North Carolina. <br /> No industries developed at this point along on the railroad line, <br /> and by 1890 only about twenty-five persons, mostly farmers, lived <br /> there. The Clayton House, formerly a boarding house for <br /> travelers, survives to this day. <br /> 3 <br />