James Hunter (1740-1821) located on Beaver Island Creek before 1772 and lived there the remainder of his life. Hunter was active in meetings of the pre-revolutionary North Carolina "Regulators" and was called their "general". After the Battle of Alamance the British outlawed him; in the post-revolutionary period he served as county sheriff and county treasurer. (His cousin, Alexander Martin, also a landowner and a resident in Rockingham County, served as the new state’s first governor.) The style of this house suggests it was built at the end of Hunter’s life. The house burned c. 1980s.