William Few was born May 16, 1714, in Kennett, Chester County, Pa. (died 1794). He moved to Baltimore, Md., as a young man and settled on a farm in the Deer Creek area. He was now out of Quaker Pennsylvania and into Catholic Maryland. He met Mary Wheeler, daughter of well-to-do planter and devout Catholic Benjamin Wheeler who died 1741. William Few obtained a license to operate a tavern in his home. He was described as a man of education and was highly regarded. Some years after his marriage to Mary, he joined the Methodist Church and built a meeting house which was called by his name.

In 1744 at their Deer Creek farm called "Three Sisters Plantation", the first of William and Mary's children was born and was named Benjamin in honor of Mary's father. Five other children followed: James, 1746; William Jr, 1748; *Ignatius, 1750; and two girls, Hannah, 1753, and Elizabeth,1755.

William Few Sr. immigrated south to the backcountry of North Carolina, along with two of his neighbors, where he found rich soil and virgin forests. After buying a 640 acre tract on both sides of the Eno River in Orange County and making arrangements to have land cleared and a house built, he returned to Maryland for his family. In the fall of 1758, he with his wife and six children, five slaves and such household goods as he was able to transport on a wagon drawn by four horses and a cart drawn by two, set out for their new home. William Few Sr. prospered and enlarged his holdings. Buying and selling land was a popular enterprise; since it was both cheap and available.



For several years William Sr. considered moving to Georgia. In the late 1760's, he sent his sons Benjamin and Ignatius to Georgia to try to arrange a grant of land in that colony. Son James had assumed a leadership role in the Regulators War and on 17 May 1771 he was caught and hanged by North Carolina's Royal Governor Willaim Tryon. James was dubed "First martyr to the Cause of American Independence". In the fall of 1771 William Sr. left the younger William to wind up his affairs in North Carolina and moved with his family to Saint Paul's Parish, Georgia. They settled near their old neighbor William Candler not far from the Quaker town of Wrightsborough. The Few plantation was called "Fruit Hill". Their arrival in Georgia was during the troubled years that preceded the American Revolution. The elder Few served as a private in the Georgia army.

William Sr's wife Mary died in 1778 and was buried at Fruit Hill. He married a second time, Mrs. Ann Hunt, a widow with two daughters, Katherine and Henrietta. In 1794 at the age of 80, William Sr. died and was buried at the residence of his oldest son Benjamin in Columbia County. William Sr's grandson wrote of him: "He was a little above the middle height, and a stout, dark complexioned man, frank in his manner, and spoke with such rapidity, though with a very distinct articulation, as to make that peculiarity prominent in the memory of those who knew him."

"He was a little above the middle height, and a stout, dark-complexioned man, frank in his manner, and spoke with much rapidity, though with a very distinct articulation, as to make that peculiarity prominent in the memory of those who knew him."--letter from Ignatius Few to Mary Few 25 May 1837