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Mills- Water-powered mills were vital to the rural community from the earliest years of colonization up into the early twentieth century. One of the earliest known mills ' was Michel Synnott ' s dating to 1751 . In that year he acquired 100 acres in a Granville grant that included his mill, located in present-day West Point on the Eno Park, several miles to the east of his property on St. Mary ' s Road. The narrow, rocky Eno River below Hillsborough provided many good mill seats, and at least five mills were built to serve the St . Mary' s Road community. Mills harnessed the Eno waterpower to perform a wide range of services : grinding corn and wheat, sawing wood, carding wool, and pressing oil. Water-powered tilt hammers , such as the one at Dickson ' s Mill at Few' s Ford, meant the mill complex. Mills also served as post offices, addition of a blacksmith shop to a whiskey distilleries, fishing spots, and community gathering places . Mills often influenced the development of a community' s roads, especially when a mill seat coincided with a good river ford (Anderson 1979 : 30 - 33 ;. Heron 1979) . The Eno River mills were always at the mercy of the weather. Drought meant too little water and no power, too much rain led to floods that could damage or destroy dams, millraces, and mill buildings . Based on examination of historic maps (e . g . , Tate 1891 , Cumming collection 1976) and secondary sources (e . g . , Polaris nd) , five important mill sites were found near the project area. These are described below. Berry 's Private Mill- this was located near the confluence of Strouds Creek and the Eno River, on the west side of modern- day Lawrence Road (Polaris nd) . Tate ' s map of Orange County in 1891 does not show John Berry ' s nineteenth-century mill. Berry 's Public Mill this was a grist null on the Eno River. This null operated from 1813 to 1908 (Polaris nd . Tate ' s 1891 ma still shows the mill as ` Be "(1' ) p "Berry ' s Mill. The associated Eagle Foundry, started by Allen Brown in the 1840s , was about 700 ft east of the milldam (Anderson 1989) . The 1860 federal census listed Brown' s Eagle Foundry as the manufacturer of 27 tons of iron that year . Carson 's Mill- this mill operated on the north side of the Eno River, beginning sometime before 1814 , when Alexander Carson, Jr. sold the dam to Samuel Carson. It was .possibly operating until 1833 . Tate ' s 1891 map of Orange County does not show a mill on this spot . The location of the mill is uncertain (Eno River Association 1986 ; Polaris nd) . Holden 's Mill- this was a complex with a grist mill, a cotton gin, a saw mill, a wool ill started sometime before 18I l . The operations carder, and an oil press . The first m lasted until about 1893 (Polaris nd) . When Thomas Holden (father of Reconstruction era Governor W. W. Holden) put his mill up for sale in 1845 , his advertisement in the Hillsborough Recorder provided a good picture of one of the larger mill complexes on the Eno : The subscriber, wishing to close his business in Orange, will sell all or half of his Mills on Enoe , known as "Enoe Mills , " situate five miles below Hillsborough. There is the rise of 300 acres of land, a dwelling house with six rooms and three � 30