Gulf Dam

Page history last edited by PBworks 16 years, 4 months ago

21-9 Gulf Dam

Harmon Husbands built the first mill here; Husbands was a Regulator, who eventually fled from North Carolina to Pennsylvania. Husbands and John Wilcox had a complex series of transactions related to this mill (Chatham DB G, pg 419 also g/229), forming a partnership for a time. Wilcox built an iron furnace on the south bank, which was impressed into service in the Revolutionary War.

The Gulph Lands (including the mill) sold from George Wilcox to John Haughton, through his friend David Reid, in 1836 (Chatham DB AE pg 2). Haughton's son, John H Haughton, later owned the Gulf Mill and was very involved in the Cape Fear and Deep River Navigation Company.

The 8-foot-high Haughton Mill dam was raised to 9 feet by the Cape Fear and Deep River Navigation Company (Thompson 1848), but Hadley (1980) reports that by 1855 the Navigation Company was focused exclusively on river trade below this point and so the lock here and at Carbonton Dam (then called Evan’s) were abandoned. Thompson (1848) refers to this as Horton's Mill, apparently misapprehending Haughton for Horton.

According to Vatter (2008), this site sold around 1868 to John M Mc Iver (presumably some relation to Evander Mc Iver who owned a saw mill on Governor's Creek). According to The Story of the House in the Horseshoe, the McIver mill was a few hundred feet downstream of the Haughton Mill. The map in that book shows the dam as extending straight across the river, but the photo above clearly shows a V shaped dam.

See Fred J Vatter's excellent article on Gulf: http://chathamcountyline.org/pdfs/CCL.feb08.web7.pdf

According to Hadley (1980), citing the Gov. John W. Ellis papers (p. 444), Farrishes’ Lock and Dam was intentionally damaged by the owners of the mill at Gulf (John H Haughton or the Mc Ivers?) in 1860 because the pool interfered with their mill.

Swain (1899) reported that Gulf Mills had a rock crib dam here that was 10 feet tall. At that time there was a cotton gin and a roller flower mill. The dam is shown on the map accompanying Campbell 1923, but there is no dam here today.