Why is it Thompson Mill Road?

100 years of history

            Wake Forest is a town where “heritage” and “Crenshaw” are almost trademarks, but the Thompson name is just part of a hurried “Thompsonmillroad” with no recognition that the Thompsons, indeed, had a mill there.

          Actually, it was first a Crenshaw mill. William Crenshaw (1783-1861) and his wife, Sarah, settled along Horse Creek and built a grist mill, a lumber mill and a store while clearing their large plantation.

          Their house, called Waterfall, was begun in 1810 and, after some additions, was very similar to the Mordecai House in Raleigh and Wakefields near Wake Forest. The house stood just east of today’s Thompson Mill Road on the banks of Horse Creek and burned in 1967.

          The couple had five daughters. Their only son, John Martin Crenshaw, was born in 1822 and became the first student to enroll in the new Wake Forest Institute in 1832.

          Two of the Crenshaw daughters, Frances and Martha, married two Thompson brothers, respectively George and Michael. Our interest is in George and Frances who married in 1827, although first we have to leap back almost 100 years to the first Thompson in Wake County.

          That was Swann Thompson who, with his brother Michael, emigrated from England in 1745 and settled in the Barton’s Creek area. Swann was no pauper, hounded by creditors to leave. He built up a large estate before his death in 1801, including about 75 acres lying on both sides of the Great Falls of the Neuse. This may have been the site of the first grist mill in Wake County.

          The Thompson family continued to have real estate interests in the Barton’s Creek area. George (1804-1891), Swann’s grandson, donated land in the 1850s for the Mount Pleasant Lodge and Academy in the Rogers Store area and also owned a farm and house on Old Creedmoor Road until 1877.

          But George is mostly connected to Wake Forest. We know he, along with his father-in-law, was one of the incorporators and first trustees of Wake Forest College in 1834, an institution he continued to serve as trustee and other duties until his death.

          George was too young to be involved with Forest Hill Academy when it was formed in 1818 by William Crenshaw and others and probably named for trustee John Martin’s 1,117-acres plantation which straddled Richland Creek and the old Falls Road. Crenshaw may have built and operated the school for girls and small boys.

          But it was George Thompson who reinvigorated the academy in the latter part of the 1830s when it became an institute to prepare young men for the nearby college and to become Baptist ministers.

          It is not clear whether George built the eight-room Greek Revival house in 1826 before his marriage or in 1836 as part home, part school. He may have taught there; the college records show he was generous in helping those young future ministers.

          But he was also a plantation owner with 705 acres and eight slaves in 1840, and he served as a state senator from 1844 until 1849.

          George and Frances had three children: William Marcellus, A. Judd and Sarah. William, who would give his name to the house, married a third cousin, Mary Thompson, in 1853 and they had four children before the war began. Judd became a doctor.

          The first local unit to leave Raleigh for the front was the volunteer Oak City Guards. Shortly before they left, the Barton’s Creek Guards transferred to the Oak City Guards as a unit, and their captain, William, then 31, was named first lieutenant.

          William was killed in June of 1862 at the battle of Gaines Mill, Va. Mary went to Virginia to bring his body home for burial. She and her children continued to live in the house George had built, and George may have lived there also.

          George had supported William’s unit financially and also provided money for the medical unit directed by his other son, Dr. Judd Thompson. Because of that support for the Confederate cause, George lost his citizenship after the war but it was restored very quickly by President Andrew Johnson. Judd survived the war and later had a practice in Apex.

          It was not George’s family who ended up on Thompson Mill Road but his brother Michael and his wife, Martha, born a Crenshaw.

          William and Sara Crenshaw’s son, John Martin Crenshaw, became a prosperous farmer and cotton broker. In 1860 he married his widowed cousin, Louisa J. Norman, daughter of another branch of the Crenshaw family, Samuel and Eliza Harris Crenshaw. They had built Crenshaw Hall, which still stands on old N.C. 98.

          Louisa and John Martin Crenshaw lived at Waterfall, his home, for a time, but the story is she missed the excitement of the passing stagecoaches and travelers. They moved to her old home, Crenshaw Hall, and remodeled it so that, the story goes, he would not be disturbed by the noise from the kitchen.

          Louisa and John Martin Crenshaw sold Waterfall and the grist mill to Michael and Martha. It was their son, Sanford Webb Thompson, born in 1852, who became a doctor and gave the name of Doctor’s Old Mill to the mill. He married Etta, who was a faithful member of Forestville Baptist Church, and their son was born in Waterfall. The family has moved to Raleigh, but there is still a Sanford Webb Thompson V to carry on the family name.

###