Beyond that, in the shadow of the modern Systel Building just across Green Street, was an angular wooden gristmill. Its big wheel turned slowly in the water flowing over a wooden mill dam. That's where Fayetteville started in 1755, when John Newberry, a Quaker millwright, erected the mill and then opened a tavern. It was the first business in Cross Creek. Just up the creek, cattle were slaughtered for meat and hides.
Water still flows over a later concrete milldam on the same site.
John Dobbin's 1765 brewery was just across the creek, in the modern-day parking lot behind the Systel Building. Green Street in those days was a patch on a road that led from Cross Creek all the way to the northern end of the Carolina colony. Now, if you look the other way from your parking-lot view, you'll see where two other colonial roads met, now the intersection of Bow and Person streets. The tavern keeper was the first signer after the author. Four other tavern keepers were not to be outdone.