Stallings was incorporated as a town in 1975 but its history reaches back to the early 1900s when Matthew Thomas Stallings, a prominent farmer and merchant who lived near Harrisburg, moved to Union County and bought 200 acres of land on the Mecklenburg County line - northwest of Indian Trail. The late Mr. Jim Smith once described the land as "all in timber, the finest timber you've ever seen." Mr. Stallings built a home and opened a country store near the Seaboard Railway track. Newspaper articles from that time note that Mr. Stallings "began to improve his holdings with a view to building up an important settlement and encouraging enterprise and industry in his vicinity."