Imagine the Scene

View the foundation.

Simon Dixon moved from Pennsylvania in 1749 after his father died, a local history book says. After building a cabin along this side of the creek, he got discouraged and went home. But he returned with wife Elizabeth, her sister, and his birth family. He liked building with stone: Simon built a rock home, supposedly a few hundred yards downstream; a stone wall just uphill; and this mill, built in 1753 on Cane Creek.[a] The mill race—channel dug to divert water for power—is in the small rise on the far side as you look along the stream.

Cornwallis has taken over the Dixons’ home as his headquarters. A snow has fallen, and Cornwallis spends much of his time warming himself in a straight-back chair by the fire.

The British forced Simon’s wife Elizabeth and their children to live here in the mill. Other than one or more Redcoat guards on the door, and the sounds of Dixon’s family making do inside, there is none of the activity you might expect given that an army is trying to feed itself. That’s because Dixon and his sons, all rebels, jammed timbers into the millstones so the mill cannot be used.

At some point Elizabeth leaves the building, walks past you, and approaches her home. There she is stopped by the sentries. She demands entry, they refuse, and an argument ensues. The door opens. It is Cornwallis himself. “What is the trouble?” he asks. Dixon explains that she wants her pipe and tobacco. He escorts her inside, helps her find them, and sends her back past you to the mill.

Go back to your car and:

1. Turn north (from the mill, away from the creek) on Sylvan School Road.
   Note: The rock wall you will soon pass on the left was built by Dixon a year after the mill.
2. Drive across the intersection with Greensboro-Chapel Hill Road.
3. Turn right into the parking lot at Cane Creek Meeting House.

Get out of your vehicle and face the meeting house.

The congregation was founded in 1751. Simon and Elizabeth donated 26 acres here for the church.[b] The meeting house of the time was probably where the current building is today, basically a big log cabin. Quaker homes and outbuildings are within view in all directions.

Look toward Greensboro-Chapel Hill Road.

The 2,000-man British army and its camp followers march past the mill and toward you on Thursday, March 22, 1781. They set up camp around the building on today’s cemetery and down toward the creek. They have no tents to ward off the cold, having burned their wagons to move faster prior to the battle. The worst of the wounded are moved into the meeting house.

“The soldiers stacked their guns in two long rows between the mill and the Dixon house,” a meeting house history says. “The hillside was dotted with camp fires as the men rested. The smell of roasting meat filled the air. According to private records, the soldiers killed 250 sheep, fifty cows, and scoured the neighborhood for bee hives until they had about eighty.”[1] Over the course of their stay, soldiers tear down all of the fencing in the community to use in their campfires.

“The cattle were butchered near the meetinghouse. The benches, which were single board seats with no backs, were carried into the yard and used as ‘butcher tables.’” When the first building burned and a new meeting house was built early in the 1800s, the benches were reused. “The benches continued to be used in the meetinghouse, still bearing axe marks and blood stains, until a fire in 1879 destroyed them.”

A farmer supposedly comes here to complain about his cow being taken. He is told he can have the hide if he can find it. He does—but is forced to give up his boots in exchange.[c]

The Dixons are known to support the Revolution and thus Simon has taken refuge near modern-day Mebane. He makes the mistake of coming back too soon and is captured.[2] Because he owns the mill and much of the land around you, soldiers have been searching for his money. They or Tories supposedly torture him with tongs heated in a campfire to find it, but he will only say, “On the banks of Cane Creek.” One source claims the tongs were displayed in the Dixon home for years as proof.[3]

The Sunday after they arrived, the British pack up again and move out east (to the left) along what now is Greensboro-Chapel Hill Road.

Walk around the back of the buildings to what appears to be a round tombstone.

This is one of the millstones from Dixon’s Mill that was jammed by him and his sons. Three of the wounded soldiers died in the meeting house and are buried here.

Look behind the marker and some distance away you will see another millstone. Walk to it.

Simon and Elizabeth Dixon lie here. While being held at the British camp, Simon contracted an unspecified “camp fever,” perhaps caused by his torture wounds. He died in their house three weeks after the British left—in the same chair Cornwallis had used.