Where did Jones Ferry cross the Haw River?

In 2017, findings were presented from two independent investigations that dovetail to form a plausible theory about where Jones Ferry crossed the Haw River in the 18th and 19th centuries in northern Chatham County, North Carolina.  Margaret Miller Growe, Executive Director of the Tamassee Group, and Richard Ellington, past president of the Chapel Hill (NC) Historical Society, presented their observations to the annual meeting of the Chatham County Historical Association (CCHA). 

During his years-long search for the ferry crossing, Ellington has documented the original path of Jones Ferry Road as it winds southwest from Chapel-Hill/Carrboro, NC, toward the Haw River.  Growe, meanwhile, was conducting her own search along the Haw riverbank for archaeological evidence of the ferry operation itself, in the area where she suspected Jones Ferry Road might have terminated at a navigable crossing site over the river.   In 2003, she identified what she thought may be the ruins of a large building situated on bluffs above the river.  The ruins lay alongside an old roadbed leading down from the terminus of today’s Jones Ferry Road.  When Ellington visited Growe’s site with her, he agreed that it was the likely ferry crossing.  Newspaper coverage by the Chatham County Record of their presentation to the CCHA can be viewed here.

The Tamassee Group is proud to have been a part of potentially solving this important historical puzzle and looks forward to further substantiation of the find.