The history of Franklinville
Franklinville grew up as a mill town above the Deep River in Randolph County, North Carolina, its ground marked first by a Revolutionary War escape at Faith Rock in 1782, then by milling from 1804, and finally by a historic district recognised in 1984.
Faith Rock Road sits near Faith Rock, Franklinville, the bluestone outcrop where Andrew Hunter rode Tory leader David Fanning's horse Bay Doe off a sixty-degree drop into the Deep River in May 1782 to escape capture, surviving two gunshots in the process. The road also passes two of the town's oldest cemeteries and lies close to a mill town listed on the National Register in 1984.
Cemeteries older than the town's surviving buildings
On Faith Rock Road, past the edge of Franklinville, the ground around you holds more cemeteries than buildings. About half a mile off sits Franklinville, North Carolina itself, a mill town that grew up along Bush Creek and the Deep River.
The town's two oldest burial grounds lie close together, also about half a mile from here. The First Baptist Church Cemetery has held graves since 1891. The Franklinville United Methodist Church Cemetery is older still, with burials going back to 1834, not long after the town's first cotton mill opened on the river.
Franklinville's downtown, with its mill-era houses and storefronts, earned a place on the National Register of Historic Places in 1984, recognizing the whole district rather than any single building.
A man rode a stolen horse off a cliff
A quarter mile from here stands Faith Rock, Franklinville, a bluestone outcrop over the Deep River. During the Revolutionary War, Tory leader David Fanning chased down a local man named Andrew Hunter nearby. Hunter had no way out but the river.
Hunter grabbed Fanning's own mare, Bay Doe, and rode her off the bluff, down a drop of about sixty degrees, straight into the water below. Fanning's men shot him twice as he went. Hunter survived. The rock has carried his name ever since.
Local history also points to an Indian burial ground once set between Franklinville and Ramseur, near the old Island Ford crossing. Its exact spot is gone now, swallowed by two centuries of farmland and road-building.
A traffic stop ended in three arrests
On September 30, 2026, the Randolph County Sheriff's Office stopped a vehicle right on Faith Rock Road. A search turned up drugs and a firearm. Three people were arrested.
Faith Rock still overlooks the Deep River, a quarter mile from where you stand, the water running the same course Andrew Hunter rode into more than two centuries ago.
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