George Washington's Gristmill Miller's House

Miller’s house:
Constructed 1770-1771. From 1770 to 1799, George Washington employed several millers who lived in this cottage.

The miller's house was built at the same time as the gristmill; the reconstructed house was sited on its original site. The design for the building is based on archaeological evidence and a mid-nineteenth-century drawing. Its wood-frame structure rests on a stone foundation. It is clad with beaded weatherboard. In 1970, a 1+1⁄2-story addition doubled the size of the building. The interior of the original section is laid out in a hall-parlor configuration with two major rooms and a small bathroom. This area is used as a gift shop. The new section of the house includes a kitchen, pantry, and additional retail space for the gift ship.


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The following history was written in 1968 by Mattie B. Cooper, then principal of Woodlawn Elementary School.

Woodlawn School has an interesting history as it dates back to the early settling of the area by the Quakers who believed in their children being educated. The name was logical as Woodlawn Plantation was originally a tract of two thousand acres known as the Dogue River Farm, which Washington left to his niece, Nellie Custis, and Major Lawrence Lewis, who gave the name WOODLAWN to the place. Their son, Lorenz Lewis, sold the property to Chalkley and Joseph Gillingham, Quakers, who were among many Quaker families that moved into the area about 1846.

A large room in the mansion served as a meeting place and, for awhile, it was used also as a school because the Quakers were advocates of the education of every child. This arrangement was not satisfactory and thus they sought a new location. The miller's cottage adjacent to Washington's Grist Mill was chosen as the new school. The roof of the mill could be seen from the front steps of Woodlawn and close beside it the miller's cottage. The miller's cottage, standing serenely on the hill, was put in repairs and became the first school in the area. Emily Reynolds Green, who had recently married at Woodlawn Mansion, became the first school Mistress. Thus Woodlawn School came into being.

James Charles Robinson stated "interesting experiences between September 1847-1849 with the other children" attended school in a small schoolhouse near Washington's old stone mill. The memory of those school days remains as a part of me. Here I learned to write and first studied geography and arithmetic, prospering under the patient efforts of Emily Reynolds. Even so quiet a school mistress had not learned to rule without a rod at that date and many times resorted to it to enforce order."

The Quakers continued to keep the school open even though they shifted the location to Gray's Hill Mansion, where Anna S. Wright taught, and on to the Quaker's Meeting House, which is still standing at Fort Belvoir. Seeing the need for a public school in the area, E. E. Mason and Courtland Lukens each granted to the Trustees of the Woodlawn School, on October 22, 1869, property for and in consideration of the sum of one dollar, land adjoining that of each other and containing one half acre strick measure. This property was situated on the Accotink Turnpike opposite old Haddon Hall. The name of this road was changed later to Richmond Highway.