Accotink Mill (Site)

These coordinates mark the estimated site of the two old mills: a grist mill and lumber mill. No visible remains exist.


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Quakers founded the Accotink community in the vicinity of present-day Route 1 during the antebellum era. The Quaker settlement had transformed into a thriving village by the 1850s. Much of the economic activities centered around the Accotink Mill, as timber was the primary local business that drove the local economy and the mill thrived for several years after the Civil War.

These two merchant mills (a grist mill and a sawmill) were built on Accotink Creek in 1804 by Zacharia Gardner and Joseph Dean with four pairs of stones. The mill had a stone foundation with a frame siding. The three and half storied mill had a gabled roof.

In 1814, Gardner and Dean sold the mills to Jonathan Janney (1775–1849), a prominent Quaker merchant and abolitionist from Loudoun County for a price of $6,000 (Fairfax County Deed Book M-2, p. 214). Janney operated the mills as a merchant mill complex, exporting flour to Alexandria and Georgetown markets via the Accotink Turnpike (now Route 620/Braddock Road).


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Here follows an excerpt from the Woodlawn Quaker Meetinghouse application to the National Register of Historic Places that talks about the Accotink Mills:

The lands that would become one to two hundred-acre farms were purchased in 1846 by the Troth-Gillingham Company from Lorenzo Lewis, son of Nellie Custis and Lawrence Lewis. Members of the Troth-Gillingham Company included Chalkley Gillingham, Jacob Troth, Lucas Gillingham, and Paul Hillman Troth. The 2,030-acre parcel, known as the Woodlawn Tract, had been carefully selected from the Mount Vernon estate by George Washington for his adopted daughter, Martha Washington's granddaughter, Nellie Custis. The Woodlawn tract sold for approximately $12.50 per acre, and consisted of a combination of timber lands, meadows, and cropland. The wealth of old-growth timber was especially valuable, because timber rights and harvesting of oaks for shipbuilding by the Troth-Gillingham Company contributed to the land's affordability and readiness for farming by purchasers of the smaller tracts. The Company established its milling operation at nearby Accotink and for eight years, filled orders for ships' planks to a number of shipbuilders, notably Johnson Rideout Shipyards in Bath, Maine, and Page & Allen in Portsmouth, Virginia.

The 1850s were a golden period for the Woodlawn Quaker farmers, if only in retrospect, in light of the devastation that would come with the Civil War. These pre-war years were characterized by a flurry of community building, including land purchases, establishment of farms and businesses, the building of homes, schools, and the Woodlawn Meetinghouse. The nearby village of Accotink was given renewed life as the commercial center for the area. In addition to the sawmill, Accotink boasted a gristmill, blacksmith shop, school, general store and post office, along with a few homes. Best known in the village was the large dwelling of Paul Hillman Troth, later known as the Haines House for his successor at the mill. Troth built onto and operated an existing mill and would later (in the 1870s) engage in shipbuilding at Accotink.