Haw River: A German Immigrant's Ford That Became a Mill Town

In seventeen forty-five, Adam Trollinger, a German immigrant, settled on the banks of this river and gave the community its start. His son Jacob built a grist mill three years later, and a village called Trollinger's Ford grew up around it.

Nearly a century later, in eighteen forty-four, Benjamin Trollinger built the Granite Mill, bringing textile manufacturing to town. The Holt family later took over the mill. By the late eighteen hundreds the riverbanks held multiple mills and clusters of company houses. The Haw River gave power to all of it: the falls, the dams, the mill races that kept looms turning through the industrial age.