Monroe Grist Mill (Site)
GPS Coordinates: 38.7929692, -77.1438393
Closest Address: 5792 Valley View Drive, Alexandria, VA 22310

These coordinates mark the estimated location where the mill once stood. No visible remains exist.
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Here follows an excerpt from the "Jaybird's Jottings" online blog in 2022 written by Jay Roberts:
Beth Mitchell’s 1760 landowners map shows a mill about three miles west of Alexandria. The modern-day location is somewhere near Langton Road. This mill site stands out as the rare case of homes being built right by and around its site. Most of the others in the county are on the long run of a creek. This is a small branch.
By 1760, the land here is owned by John Monroe, who owned three enslaved humans, and the land was leased by Thomas Monroe. George Washington sold him 16 yards of cotton in 1767.
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Here follows an excerpt from the Fall 2008 edition of the "Franconia Legacies" newsletter published by the Franconia Museum and written by Jim Adams:
Thomas Monroe’s Colonial Franconia Water Mill:
The earliest known water grist mill on the west side of present Franconia was built by Thomas Monroe about 1756. It was on what is now called Runnymeade Run, located near or under the Capital Beltway west of South Van Dorn Street. Roads or paths to the mill from both the east and west are pretty clearly shown on three 1700s property surveys and a Civil War map.
Until Monroe built his mill, the nearest mills were around Accotink Village, or present day Lorton, and those serving Alexandria. In fact John Carlyle’s mill, near Alexandria, was in the northeast tip of what is now Franconia. John Colvill’s mill was probably there also.
Thomas Monroe was a relative of President James Monroe. However, James was a baby when Thomas died. John Monroe, maybe Thomas’ brother, married Sarah Harrison who inherited the mill property. They sold it to Thomas in 1760 for £74.
Thomas won court approval in 1756, to erect the water grist mill on his land, along what was then known as Quarter Branch. There was already a “path by a branch” there in 1757, according to a survey of William & Isabella Harrison’s heirs’ land allotments.[Fairfax Record of Surveys Vol. 1, page 72]. The path was near where Hepburn Mill Road to Alexandria would be decades later [Surveys Vol. 2, page 65 & 1862 Civil War map].
A 1790 survey shows a heavy line with an arrow that must be a path to Thomas’ mill, and later the Hepburn mill. The path ran from near Old Franconia Road up over Valley View at Scotch Drive, then north between Marilyn and Larkspur drives to the Runnymeade area (Record of Surveys page 12).
The location of Thomas’ mill may be under the present Capital Beltway. It was close enough to Backlick Run for Thomas to dig a canal or raceway about 1775. This canal diverted Backlick water to his mill. You can see why. Runnymeade looks too small to reliably run the mill, especially in drought years, even if Thomas had a mill dam much like the bank that present Langton Drive runs across.
That Backlick canal got Thomas into a squeeze. He borrowed £376 to dig it so he must have thought he had permission to run it across an absentee neighbor’s land. When Alexandria merchants William Hartshorn and George Gilpin bought that land, they had Thomas sign an agreement in 1776, allowing him to run his Backlick raceway across their new land. So Thomas would continue to operate his mill -- for a maximum of 15 years, in return for his giving them a lease on other Harrison land near Alexandria. They planned to build their Old Dominion Mill there.
Thomas was in his 50s, so may have been ready to take the deal. He died three years later, in 1779, during the Revolution. His three sons and three daughters living nearby did not keep the mill in operation, but they had done well with it. Even after paying off the £376 loan, and other debts, Thomas’ estate distributed £1,050 among his heirs.
The Old Dominion Mill was near where John Carlyle had operated a mill that had probably been built in 1733 by John Bruff, according to historian Beth Mitchell. The Old Dominion was part of a new class of high production merchant mills, built for exporting Virginia flour abroad. The mill building still stands on Wheeler Avenue, serving as Flippo’s construction headquarters.
William Hepburn and a partner, Dundas, built another of these high volume mills about 1789. This mill was located on the Backlick and Indian runs, very near Thomas Monroe’s old mill. Edsall Road was built to it from the north. They petitioned in 1798 for another road from their mill “to Colchester road (now Telegraph) near Cameron Run,”
Two points of their Hepburn Mill Road are shown in a 1794 land survey near Thomas’ 1757 “path by a branch.”[Record of Surveys Vol. 2, p 65] A road is shown there on the Union’s 1862 military Map of Northeastern Virginia and Vicinity of Washington.