7504 Dodsons Crossroad

Hillsborough, NC 27278

Look carefully at the A.P. Gates house report below. From this and other documents it is believed that the original log cabin was built in the late 1700s. This is an unusual and beautiful house, beginning as a log cabin in the late 1700s-early 1800s. It is listed in the 1891 map of Orange County as a place of significance. The reason we have listed the Square Footage of this house as ''estimated'' is that the upper 4 rooms, which are comfortable and have been continuously occupied since their construction, are slightly less than 7 feet in height, violating the NCREC rules for livable space, but there are legitimate exceptions for historic properties, and we believe this house certainly qualifies. A complete sketch of the house is included in Docs. This is a lovely place, with a stately practical old house which wanders from century to century on over five acres of open fields and gardens, 5-6 useful outbuildings strung like a necklace through the land, old trees, a fenced orchard of apples, pears and plums, a deep sense of place. When you enter the driveway it feels like a real homestead. The house: graced with multiple porches and decks, four exits, 8 rooms, wooden floors, good views from all the windows, a root cellar lined with brick and stone, two sets of stairs from two different centuries. A small ballroom and the original notched-log front room with red logs and white chinking. Graceful and rambling and filled with surprises. The outbuildings (all are wood-sided): Workshop, tool room, chicken house with run, handsome wooden carport, storage shed, large 37X18 two-story red barn. The former owners bought the farm in 1989 and lived here comfortably until 2005. The house shows their care and attention. Please come and visit. You might just fall in love. Old Log: A.P. Cates House Water, Tories, Marriage, and Babies Deed records in Hillsborough show that Maj. Thomas Lloyd (c.1715-1792) secured a large land grant east of Pickard Mountain in 1757. This was one of many Orange County tracts he and his eldest son Stephen Lloyd received from the Earl of Granville prior to the American Revolution. Among the family's holdings lay a parcel deeded to Frederick Lloyd (1752-1808), a second son of the major, whose claim was verified by the newly independent state of North Carolina in 1790. This parcel holds a spring that is the headwater of Morgan Creek. Old Log cabin sits thirty paces above this fountainhead. Major Lloyd was an arch Tory, but his son was not. The major enforced Governor Tryon's law during the Regulation (1768-1771) as Orange County sheriff and magistrate, and he oversaw the building of the county jail meant to restore order on the frontier. He assisted Edmund Fanning's royalist militia during the really big rebellion of 1776-1781. He subsequently feared land confiscation for his loyalty to the crown. (https://www.ncpedia.org/biography/lloyd-or-loyd-loyde ). He was alive, but very old and politically out of favor, when Frederick's deed was registered in 1790 based on a 1763 survey. The fact that Frederick Lloyd has a DAR tag (A207437; per https//geni.com) indicates that he enlisted as a Patriot. If he lived on his registered parcel in 1795, then it is likely that his son Frederick, Jr. (1795-1888) was born in the Old Log cabin, with generations following. Mary Elizabeth Lloyd (1834-1922), great-grand-daughter of Major Thomas Lloyd, married Anderson P. Cates (1834-1911) in 1861. They were neighbors. He enlisted in the CSA and survived the Civil War. She bore him ''at least nine children.'' Thus, the A.P. Cates house on the 1891 Orange County map is their home. Modern address: 7504 Dodson's Crossroad.

Listing courtesy of Gary Phillips of Weaver Street Realty & Auction



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Last checked: 2026-05-18 07:04 AM UTC