Mills in the Upcountry: a Historic Context, and a Summary of a Mill ...

If the mill research permits ancillary studies, the remains of associated structures such as
the miller’s house, workers’ houses, blacksmith shop, storage buildings, etc., should also be
recorded. Comparative archeological studies should assess the social and economic status of
millers in relationship to nearby farmers and planters, and should also compare the status of
millers who ran different types of mill operations.
Research into the mills of the Upcountry discovered an interesting pattern that deserves
attention from future studies: it appears that, per square mile, Chester, Fairfield, Lancaster,
Newberry, Richland and Union Counties, all situated in the lower Piedmont, had significantly
fewer water powered grist mills than the other Upcountry counties. Are the census data
inaccurate, or do the numbers reflect regional differences in population density, economy,
agriculture, geology, topography, and/or hydrology? Or, did small private mills or plantation
mills, less likely to be enumerated, do most of the work in these counties?
Another pattern that emerges is that, as a class of historic archeological sites, mills seem
to be poorly represented in regional archeological surveys. For example, only two mill sites have
been recorded in the Sumter National Forest (Pickens, Long Cane and Enoree Districts),
compared to approximately 1890 other historic sites (Benson 2004). This may be due to
archeological surveys concentrating on uplands, as in the case of timber harvesting areas on the
National Forest. Some mill sites are totally shrouded by thick bottomland vegetation, and only
rarely are stream beds examined for remnants of mill dams. On occasion, mill sites are simply
misidentified. In one case in Richland County, professional archeologists recorded the remnants
of a late eighteenth or early nineteenth century timber frame dam as a collapsed early twentieth
century bridge (38RD635), despite Mill’s Atlas showing “Garner’s Mill” at that location in 1820.
Assessing Eligibility
Adopting a landscape approach may facilitate the evaluation of significance of mill sites.
As noted by Stine (1997:230), a landscape approach forces managers to examine a site at different
scales (local, state and national) of significance. An individual mill site may not be considered
significant if examined on the grounds of its particular qualities of integrity, clarity and rarity, but
if examined at the regional level it could yield information about the historic landscape and how
it relates to other sites in the region.
In order for a mill site to be considered eligible for listing, it must have good integrity and
meet one of the four criteria of the NRHP. The NRHP criteria are expressed as follows:
The quality of significance in American history, architecture, archeology,
engineering, and culture is present in districts, sites, buildings, structures and
objects that possess integrity of location, design, setting, materials, workmanship,
feeling, association, and:
A. that are associated with events that have made a significant contribution to
the broad patterns of our history; or
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