Upstream: Castleberry Mill

Yeargin Mill

Downstream: Brockwell Mill on Bolin Creek.

History of the University of North Carolina (1907)by Kemp Plummer Battle, page 767-768: "We will now cross the ridge to the north, descending into the valley of Bowlin's Creek. Rising to the north we see the Iron Mountain, where excavations show a goodly quantity of valuable ore, but up to this time too far from coal to be merchantable. We pass the University water works and come to a most romantic defile, called Glenburnie. In it was the oldest pre-Revolutionary mill in this section, called Yeargin's. The mud sill may still be seen. Along the stream on the south bank is a lovely path of countless ferns, which I name the Fern Bank walk." Elsewehere in this book he refers to the miller as Benjamin Yeargin, son of Andrew Yeargin, this farm belonging in part to Oregon Tenney in 1907. According to Well Worth A Shindy, the water pumped up from Bolin Creek came along a water line along Church Street in Chapel Hill, which would have put the Yeargin mill near Umstead Park.

The Fern Bank Walk is plainly shown on the 1896/1918 topographical map of Chapel Hill at the mouth of Tanyard Branch, which is at Umstead Park in Chapel Hill (which is where Yeargin's Mill was).

This site apparently sold from Mark Patterson

to Benjamin Yeargin (DB 4, pg 25 & 37) in 1788

to William Whitted and John Craig (DB 12, pg 342) in 1805

to James Putney (DB 14, pg 27) in 1810

to Edward Robson (DB 13, pg 514) also in 1810.

The mill was apparently built by Benjamin Yeargin about the year 1790.  Yeargain petitioned to make it a public mill in 1793 (Archives).

1. Daniel Mill

2. Merritt Mill

3. Mccauley Mill

4. Lloyd Mill

5. Pickard Mill

6. Yeargin Mill

7. Brockwell Mill

8. Castleberry Mill

9. Prestwood Mill

10. Patterson Mill 2

11. Breached Dam Mill

12. Johnston Mill

13. New Hope Mill 1

14. New Hope Mill 2

15. Morrow Mill

16. Union Mills

17. D Thompson Sawmill

18. H Thompson Mill

19. Pritchard Mill

20. Powerline Mill

21. Patterson Mill 1

22. Leigh Mill

23. Jones Saw Mill

24. Meeting of the Waters Mill

Nov. 3, 1835. Orange Co., NC. Alexander CHEEK purchased 214 acres from Edward COLLIER, known as the Craig Mill Place, 1 mile northeast of the village of Chapel Hill on the Oxford Road and waters of Boling Creek, adj. Lemuel MORGAN, John HENDERSON, Thomas H. TAYLOR, & himself. (Orange DB 26, p.420).

The family located on the King Farm, near Orange Methodist Church, two and one half miles north of Chapel Hill on the old Hillsboro Road. Josiah conducted the mill on Bowlin Creek, just north of the corporate limits of the University village. The mill was later known as Emerson's Mill. In 1838, he purchased the rented farm of four hundred and seventy-one acres on which he lived on Presswood Creek, for $600.00.

Before leaving Wake County several members of the family secured letters of dismissal from Holly Springs Baptist Church and joined Mt. Moriah Baptist Church in 1836. After 10 years of farming and milling combined, in the hills of Orange County, the word spread abroad that there were great opportunities offered new settlers in the hills of North Georgia near the growing town of Rome. The Indians, ten years before, had been moved by force to the West and the new lands in Floyd and adjacent counties in Northwest Georgia were drawing throngs of new settlers.