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Logging
trucks and bulldozers are at work on the
former Forbes farm just to the west of
South Main Street, and soon we will see
yet another residential subdivision.
Doris Forbes, Esley’s widow, died this
week, disappearing like the pastures and
cows and dairy trucks.
The subdivision with 200
single-family homes will be called
Reynolds Mill, and Tucker Beck with
Orleans Homebuilders said he believed it
was an historical name. The Beavers map
of 1870, which notes a lot of mills such
as Forts Mill and homes such as Crenshaw
Hall, does not have anything about
Reynolds in the area.
I would appreciate it if all
our local historians can help out and
identify a mill or someone named
Reynolds who had a connection with that
area or land.
The subdivision was
originally to be called the Enclave at
Ligon Mill. I am sure there was mill in
the area named for its owner, but I am
not sure if he was the Richard Ligon who
bought our house and acre in 1853 for
$200. He immediately subdivided, selling
the house and half an acre to Peyton
Dunn, a railroad supervisor, and the
back half acre to someone else. Or maybe
he kept it and built the store back
there across from the railroad depot.
The Beavers map does not have a Ligon’s
Mill either.
If I remember the rezoning
and original master plan correctly, the
developer has to build a section of
Ligon Mill Road north to Caveness Farm
Road. Ligon Mill now deadends just west
of Wal-Mart at a sewer pumping station
that will be no longer needed once sewer
lines are laid in the new subdivision.
In the future, the western part of Ligon
Mill Road will make a turn to the north,
connect to Caveness Farm Road, cross the
N.C. 98 bypass and end on Durham Road
(N.C. 98) east of McDonalds.
* * * *
Everyone in the area knows
about deer eating the lawn flowers and
shrubs; this week we have another
instance of the incompatibility of
wildlife and urban life.
Late Monday, about 4:15
p.m., there was an electric outage that
affected South Forest Business Park,
Retail Drive and parts of Capital
Boulevard. Then Tuesday morning the same
customers lost power again about 9:45
a.m.
The town’s electric crews
restored power in an hour and a half the
first time, 45 minutes the second.
The cause? Certainly birds
of some kind flying into the lines, and
wild turkeys are the chief suspects
right now.
* * * *
According to my former
across-the-road neighbor, the late
Vivian Branson, there was once an old
store building about where the dentists’
office is now. “Built in the early 18th
century it housed one of the first, if
not the first, printing presses in Wake
County, even before Raleigh came into
being.” It was torn down in 1924.
Again, we need some history
hounds to flesh out this slim reference.
She said a book printed on this press
could be found in Duke Library.
* * * *
We received one of those
follow-up, how are you doing calls from
a local doctor’s office after my husband
saw him about a minor problem. The
caller, a young woman, informed me she
could not “conversate” with me because I
was not on the approved list.
I could feel the earth move
as a whole generation of English
teachers rolled in their graves. |
