Historical roots run deep in Treyburn area

DURHAM -- "You can just feel the antiquity in here," David Southern said.

One might have been feeling more heat, humidity and bugs, but Southern had a point. One muggy morning last week, Southern, an authority on Durham County's early history, was beating a route through briery woods near the Stagville State Historic Site when he spotted a rusted wagon wheel rim.

"That could have been tossed up here," he said, gesturing down the slope to a trough in the forest floor, overgrown but 20 feet wide. It was unmistakably an abandoned road: part of the Trading Path, a prehistoric network of trails linking the James and Savannah rivers, and one of the tangible remains that make the northeastern quarter the most historically important section of Durham County.

"The whole thing," said Jean Anderson, author of the histories "Piedmont Plantation" and "Durham County," "adds up to attractive land that should be saved."

Its past is well documented, but the area's future is up for discussion. D.R. Bryan, a Holly Springs developer, wants to put a "New Urbanist" community on 1,162 acres adjoining the 1980s Treyburn development.

Those acres also adjoin Horton Grove, one of the best-preserved slave quarters in the United States; adjoin and include several ancient roadways; and hold unexplored archaeological potential. Those facts, among others, are on the table at a public charette on the project, sponsored by Bryan Properties and led by the Durham Area Designers organization.

"The historical, cultural aspect is going to be a really big part of this thing," said landscape architect Dan Jewell, one of the Durham Area Designers involved. "D.R. Bryan has tasked us with ensuring the Stagville and Old Trading Path elements will be a part of this."

That may be a tall order, suggested Tom Magnuson, historian and founder of the Trading Path Association, a preservationist group.

"I do know there is a lot of preliminary work they need to do," he said. "They need to do a complete [archaeological] survey. ? I've been tracing some old roads that would be impacted."

Properly speaking, the name "Horton Grove" belongs to the slave village, the surviving portion of which stands on a three-acre plot of state historic land off Jock Road, a likely spur or alternate route of the Trading Path.

Horton Grove is one of three components of the Stagville site, along with 67 acres around the 1787 Bennehan House and one acre around a 4,500-square-foot barn built in 1860. Before the Civil War, the buildings were part of a 30,000-acre plantation complex built up by Thomas Bennehan and his son-in-law and grandson, Duncan and Paul Cameron.

The "Grove" part of the name comes from a stand of trees, of which several noble black walnuts remain. The "Horton" comes from a yeoman family whose cabin, built about 1750, is likely the oldest building in Durham County. After Emancipation, some of Horton Grove's inhabitants and their descendants remained as sharecroppers, such that the site covers a historical sweep from Colonial times to the New Deal, and its ground gives up artifacts from bone buttons to beer bottles.

Known but unexcavated American Indian sites lie along the nearby Flat and Little rivers and their tributaries, and the area's "paper trail," Anderson said, extends further back than that for any other part of the county.

The earliest records, from March 1749, include a deed executed by London speculator Henry McCullogh to one Patrick Boggan who, three weeks earlier, had been licensed to operate a tavern along the Trading Path just east of Horton Grove at the Little River.

The Trading Path, or what is thought to have been its main route, crossed the Flat River about 1/8 mile south of the present Old Oxford Highway bridge. At the Bennehan House ridge, it crossed another Colonial-era trail, running up from Raleigh and continuing along what is now the Stagville-Bahama road.

Nearby, on that road, U.S. Sen. Willie P. Mangum made his home. There, in 1861, he bid goodbye to the Flat River Guards, leaving for Confederate service despite his parting words: "You can't succeed." Mangum's own son died at the first Battle of Manassas.

Just down the road is the two-story home that Stagville overseer Philip Southerland built for his retirement in the 1880s.

About that time, capitalists in booming little Durham were building new railroads. The first to open was the Durham & Roxboro, which connected such whistle-stops as Red Mountain, Quail Roost, Bahama, Willardville, Fairntosh and Weaver with the world outside. Disused for 20 years, the railroad has grown up in pine trees, but its right-of-way remains a tantalizing hint of someday reconnecting a now-isolated district with the rest of the Triangle.

Architect Jewell said the charette would include a presentation about the history of the Horton Grove area, as well as a chance to brainstorm about how to handle that land. One idea, he said, is to restore sections of the Trading Path as a greenway through the new developments: "Tie Treyburn together a little bit."

"Certainly, that whole area has a lot of historical significance," said Don Moffett, president of the Eno River Association, who commended Bryan Properties for holding the charette.

"I want to encourage people to come out," Moffett said.

Historians Southern, Anderson and Magnuson said they planned to be there.