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A few weeks ago, I was sitting at a history table during a craft show at the Methodist Church in Summerfield.

Several people stopped to chat about the Summerfield Tapestry Throw I had on display. One couple said they lived near the spot where James Gilles, the bugler boy of Col. Henry Lee, was killed by Tarleton's dragoons during the Revolutionary War.

That conversation led to earlier history of the area. Rick Kellam had heard that the road from Kernersville to Yancyville had once been an old Indian path. I told him I knew it had been a stagecoach trail, stopping at Saunders Inn, but had not heard about the Indian path.

He told me the road, which we know today as N.C. 150 and Scalesville Road, was a large ridge, and that when it rained the water flowed off the ridge in two directions -- north into the Haw River and south into Myers Fork Creek, which today empties into the city lakes.

I loved this little bit of trivia and jotted it down and told him it would make a good story.

He laughed and said, "Oh, don't quote me. This is only what I have heard."

I told him that stories passed down through the years can usually be pretty accurate and sometimes documented.

I left the craft show and drove along N.C. 150 observing portions of a ridge toward N.C. 68 to the Piedmont Saddle Club where my husband, Jack, was volunteering at the Jamestown Rotary Club horse show.

I met a member of the Guilford Battle Company, and we compared our new license tags depicting Gen. Nathanael Greene upon his horse. We both were proud to be a part of raising money to buy more land that was part of the battleground where the Battle of Guilford Courthouse took place March 15, 1781.

I left there and drove to the old Guilford Mill, where I met the new owners. I overheard someone tell the story of the British officer Cornwallis stopping at the mill and taking provisions for his army during the Revolutionary War. This led another man to tell about a woman having a confrontation with Charles Cornwallis in the Jamestown area about that same time. It seems that Cornwallis was about to take her only cow and she demanded that he leave it because she needed the milk for her baby.

He left the cow, and we can only assume that mother and baby survived.

I left the mill and drove home to Summerfield with warm feelings of the history that I had picked up that day.

Jack came home, and we decided to drive into Greensboro for a bite to eat. We went to the K&W at Friendly Center and saw our neighbors, Polly and Wesley Case, there. We waved them over to our table.

I shared the story I had heard about the ridge and the Indian path. The Case family has lived in that area for many generations.

Wesley Case talked about the Scalesville Road area where we both live and talked about how his brothers and other people we know would hunt squirrel in the woods, now becoming scarce.

He said his father came home from work one day and said, "We are going to start growing tobacco."

Wesley and his brothers asked why and his father told them they needed to learn how to work. And they did.

Looking back on that day of learning bits and pieces of local history for some reason makes me feel safe.

Why?

Because all of these people shared openly a common thread that runs through all of us -- history, family, work ethics and land.

I am proud to call Guilford County my home.

Etta Reid, a local historian and educator, lives in Summerfield. She can be reached at etreid@aol.com.