A few homes scattered among the pine trees on the banks of a clear pure stream called Marks Creek was called Sandhills. Nestled deep in the North Carolina Sandhills, Hamlet was founded in the late 1800s when an Englishman named John Shortridge established a woolen and saw mill along Marks Creek. In 1870, a railroad running from Wilmington passed through Hamlet to the Pee Dee River where it...