I'm with Peter Sandbeck, a cultural historian with Orange County, and right now we're standing in front of the old Blackwood farmhouse.

Peter, what can you tell me about the history of this place?

- When Orange County purchased this in 2001, they didn't really realize that this 152 acre piece of land covered the entire history of this region from the Indigenous people to the transformation of farming in the 1940s and '50s.

And as we started to study the land and develop the land into a park, we hired archeologists to do an archeological survey of the park.

We had historians do research and we studied the buildings to learn more about them.

And we learned incredible things, lots of evidence of activities of some of the early Indian tribes here, Sissipahaw, the Occaneechi and others making tools and they leave flakes of special stone.

The archeologists identified those.

And then we learned that starting in about the 1740s and '50s, a whole bunch of Quakers moved into this area to start settling the area along the Scotch-Irish Presbyterians.

And by the 1770s, one of the Quaker settlers, Mr. Marlett, had purchased the house and started farming here.

As the Quakers started to understand the nature of the slavery system of this area, they began leaving.

The Strayhorn family purchased the farm after that.

James Strayhorn was a successful planter.

He raised all kinds of crops and developed this land as an active farm.

He ended up, at the time he died in 1849, having 16 enslaved workers living here on his land.

And we know through his will the names of all those 16 workers, which is an amazing thing.

You don't often know that.

Our archeologist discovered a burial ground for the enslaved workers off in one corner of the property.

Very sacred site today.

We've cleared that out and identified 34 graves up there and that is now marked with an interpretive marker as part of our hiking trail system, so people can see that.

- It's amazing that someone would know and recognize this as a burial ground.

- It is amazing, you know, archeologists do this on a regular basis and they were able to identify 34 graves total, and 14 of those were children.

And I think we knew that Strayhorn owned 16 enslaved workers when he died.

But what this tells you is that these are families that grew up here, lived here, worked here, died here , and over several generations.

And so you think of, oh, he owned 16.

Well, there were many, many more members of the families here.

And just seeing the 34 graves helps me understand that.

And when people come here today and they read the sign, they get very quiet and peaceful and it's almost a place to contemplate and a sacred space almost.

It's a very important stop on the trail.

And then when Strayhorn was here, he built a new farmhouse in 1827.

There's amazing carved stones in the chimneys that show the date of that construction and then expanded the house.

And eventually after his death, the farm went into kind of disuse in the 1850s and '60s.

We think family members leased it and nobody really lived out here until Herbert and Alice Blackwood purchased it in 1906 and then they kind of rejuvenated the farm, rebuilt the farmhouse and added all these farm buildings, barns, chicken coops, corn cribs and that kind of thing.

And developed a real active farm with their eight children out here.

And they continued to own it in the Blackwood family until we purchased it in 2001 from Nannie and Mary Blackwood.

And we're very grateful for that family for kinda holding onto this land until we were able to put it into this use.

- A terrific destination for visitors to Orange County.

Love it.

- It is, it is.

[gentle music] - Blackwood Farm Park is at 4215 North Carolina Highway 86, right between Hillsborough and Chapel Hill.

And it's open daily from 8:00 AM to 7:00 PM.

To find out more, visit orangecountync.gov and look for parks.