Aldie Mill Historic District

Aldie is a small Loudoun County village centered on a grist mill, a miller's house and a manor house in the gap of the Little River. Charles Fenton Mercer settled nearby in 1803, built a brick house on a hill above the Little River Turnpike, and in 1804 obtained rights to dam the river. A large brick mill was raised soon afterward, and the village that grew beside it was named Aldie in 1810. The three-part mill retains much of its original machinery, including imported French flint burrstones, and its twin overshot wheels are thought to be unique in Virginia. The two-story brick miller's house sits behind the mill, while the altered, stuccoed Mercer House overlooks the road from the north. Mercer served as a militia brigadier-general, a Virginia legislator who promoted the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal, and a congressman opposed to the slave trade. Together the buildings form an unusually complete early nineteenth-century mill complex.