Embreeville Historic District

Twelve principal buildings on both banks of the West Branch Brandywine River in Newlin Township make up the Embreeville Historic District. Most are stuccoed or locally quarried stone, two to two-and-a-half stories high, with plain gable roofs and end chimneys, many banked into hillsides above the river. The earliest building, house number 12, dates from about 1760, and the mill, with a stone core, dates from about 1750. A 1756 deed records a grist and saw mill here, and in 1871 James Trimble held it. The village of Old Embreeville was built between 1822 and 1842 by William Embree, a brewer, malster and storekeeper of Huguenot descent. The district is significant for its milling complex and village that remain largely intact from the 18th and 19th centuries, and for the mill's 1880s conversion to roller milling. In 1966 the mill was described as the sole surviving water-powered mill on the Brandywine.