Yates Mill is a water-powered mill that operated on Steep Hill Creek in southern Wake County for more than 200 years. The mill was built around 1756, the year that Mozart was born. Restored to its late 1800s operational state, the mill will be an invaluable tool for showing the evolution of milling technology and how local industries processed foods and other materials in the past. Yates Mill ground corn and wheat using large grinding stones, sawed logs, and carded wool. The two-and-a-half story timber-frame structure is a typical 18th and 19th century grist- mill. The mill still contains four generations of mill machinery and is the only remaining mill of about forty known to exist in the area. From colonial times to the early 1900s, the gristmills served as public gathering places for rural communities, and the millponds provided fishing, swimming, and picnicking opportunities. Samuel Pearson, in 1756, had W. C. Haywood survey the site. Pearson came to the area in 1748 and established the mill before Wake County was formed from Johnston County in 1771. Pearson built and was granted the mill and 640 acres of land by the Earl of Granville who was one of the seven Lord Proprietors. Samuel Pearson also cared for an eight-mile stretch of road passing by the mill from Walnut Creek to Swift Creek. Upon Pearson’s death in 1802, he willed his land to his four sons and his personal property to his six daughters. One son, Simon Pearson, received 340 acres of land that included the old mill. Debts to the State Bank of North Carolina caused Simon Pearson to sell the land and mill in a sheriff’s sale. The sheriff then sold the property for $3,031 to William Boylan, a prominent Raleigh businessman and director of the State Bank. To make the mill a successful business, Boylan made continual changes, with major renovations between 1820 and 1850. A flood in the early 1800s may have destroyed the original mill. By the 1840s, Boylan had a sawmill operating at the mill. Boylan owned the mill for 37 years, selling it to James Penny, John Primrose, and Thomas Briggs in 1853. Six years later, James Dodd bought Primrose’s portion of the mill. In 1863, Penny, Dodd, and Briggs sold the mill and 94 surrounding acres to Phares and Roxanna Yates, Penny’s son-in-law and daughter. James Penny was named as being involved in the murder of a northern sympathizer, a Mr. Franklin, who did not pay a $700 mill debt. The Union troops tried to burn the mill by setting fire to the entrance porch. Charred wooden beams from the mill’s underside confirm an attempted burning. Penny was tried for the murder in 1866 and found not guilty. In 1902, upon his death, Phares Yates left the land and the mill to his son, Robert E. Lee (R.E.L.) Yates, a math professor at North Carolina State College. R.E.L. Yates left the land and mill to his wife Minnie Johns Yates when he died in 1937. In 1947, Minnie Yates sold the mill to the Trojan Sales Company, a subsidiary of A.E. Finley Associates, and later it was transferred to the North Carolina Equipment Company, another subsidiary of Finley. A.E. Finley built a retreat lodge for use by family and employees on the millpond. The mill was used up until 1953 when lack of business caused its closure. North Carolina State University received the title and the pond in 1963. The property was part of a one-thousand-acre tract that was purchased by NC State University Field Laboratory’s experimental farms. Shortly after NC State received the property, John Daniel Lea, the miller who had worked at the mill since 1898, operated the mill for the last time as a demonstration. Since 1963, the mill has not operated. In 2001, NCSU leased the county 158 acres for the historic park to include the restored mill building, the restored stone dam and millpond, a county park center for education and research, field classrooms, boardwalks, and hiking trails through more than 600 acres of habitat. Efforts are ongoing to develop the Yates Mill County Park, with donations being appreciated. (Yates Mill Associates, Inc., P, O. Box 10512 Raleigh, NC 27605-0512) Work Cited
© 2003 Elaine Jenkins |