Waterloo Mills Historic District

Waterloo Mills is a cluster of stone and stuccoed buildings lining Waterloo Road in Easttown Township, Chester County, on land that was farmed and milled from the late 1790s. Its anchor is a stone gristmill built between 1796 and 1798 by millwright Richard Thomas, who also built a house in 1804. Mordecai Davis developed a farmhouse, springhouse, barn and tenant houses around 1800 and 1823, and the farm later became a dairy operation with an elaborate concrete cooling system in its springhouse basement. In the mid-nineteenth century the mill housed the township's first post office, between 1853 and 1867. The district is regarded as an unusually complete example of vernacular agricultural settlement, with dry-laid stone walls along the road and surrounding fields and forest that remain largely undeveloped. The period from 1798 to 1909 reflects the rise and decline of local farming, milling and blacksmithing before the land was sold to estate owners.