Baldwin's Mill

Baldwin's Mill is a water-powered grist mill on Terrells Creek in rural northern Chatham County, North Carolina. Its heavy timber frame, roughly thirty by forty feet, rests on a dry fieldstone foundation, and the dam and the mill and tail races are also of fieldstone. The mill was operating by 1807 and was bought in 1854 by Samuel Baldwin, a farmer, miller and Baptist clergyman. Around it grew a complex with a saw mill, cotton gin, blacksmith's shop and general store serving local farmers beside the Graham-to-Pittsboro road. Milling continued until the late 1920s, after which the buildings decayed. In 1941 a new owner repaired the structure, keeping the original appearance and most of the major timbers, and installed a steel overshot waterwheel to drive the millstones. That work was an early private preservation effort in the state. The mill is valued as one of few survivors of the many grist mills once found in the county, and the site may also hold archeological evidence.