Tacketts
Mill was originally settled as part of the Tackett (Tacquette) land grant in
the late 1600s. Tackett's Mill was one of the earliest mills in Stafford County
and was originally built to serve the Huguenot populace that began settling Stafford County in the late 1600s.
According to tax records in Stafford
County's public records
the original land grant was in excess of 350 acres of land. It may well
have been much larger. The mill and its surrounding property included a
grist mill, a saw mill and a textile manufacturing mill as well as a school for
girls and a store which was the only store that served the area during the
middle parts of 19th century. To this day the road that our farm faces is
known as Tacketts Mill Road.
The original mill had an overshot wheel and was powered by water. The
crumbled stone foundation of the original mill still exists as do remnants of
the mill race. This mill also went by the names of Skinner's Mill
(willed to Lawrence Skinner after Tackett's death and then owned by Peter
Goolrick of Goolricks in
Fredericksburg). This mill was considered the "center of the
universe" in Stafford during the 1800s.
It was such a huge part of Stafford County history and I'm surprised the only
known remains are now located in Woodbridge, VA, in Prince William County.
The farm
house dates to the 1850s and local legend says it was occupied by Union forces
during the civil war. That is believable since large parts of Stafford County
played unwelcome host to Yankee soldiers and Tacketts Mill and Farm are
strategically located on Aquia Creek, a tributary of the Potomac River. The
farm house sits on high ground above the creek and commands the approaches of Tacketts Mill Road.
As far as we know this farm house is one of the only remaining structures from
the original Tacketts Mill complex.
Tacketts
Mill, besides being a commercial enterprise, also describes the local
area.On February 27th, 1837,
the Virginia General Assembly passed an act stating that a separate polling
station will be opened “at a storehouse, near the mill called Tackett’s.”In 1855-56 the Virginia General Assembly recognized
Tacketts Mill as a separate voting precinct within Stafford County.Also in 1856, Tacketts Mill is listed in the
Post Office Directory.David W. Combs is
listed as the postmaster with an annual salary of $10.57.It was listed again as a separate precinct in
1862 by the Commonwealth’s General Assembly, when Virginia was a Confederate
State.Even modern maps show the area as
Tacketts Mill, in spite of the fact that there is no longer a mill or a
separate voting precinct and the closest Post Office is in nearby Ruby.
Tacketts Mill During the Civil War
We know
that both Union and Confederate forces moved through this area and assume that
the mill complex was alternately occupied by each.A mill producing food, clothing and ammunition
would be a strategic target for both sides.John E. Tackett is listed in “Virginia at
War, 1862,” by William C. Davis, James I. Robertson, as being one of
121 producers of woolen goods that could be used to clothe the Confederate
Army.There is mention in “Confederate
Industry,” by Harold S. Wilson, that Tackett may have been commissioned to
supply wool blankets for the Confederate Army.
My
current research indicates that Wisconsin elements of the “Iron Brigade” of the
Army of the Potomac arrived at Tacketts Mill in November, 1862, expecting to go
into winter quarters, but were soon ordered south in the attack on
Fredericksburg the following month, December, 1862.They may have encamped just south of the mill
and the bridge spanning Aquia Creek, which would be the area around our house
and across the road from our house, now containing a widely spaced sub-division
called Mill Brook.
Union
dispatches from the civil war describe the area of Tacketts Mill as being on
the outer, western edges of the Army of the Potomac’s Area of Occupation.At that time the area was a virtual “no-man’s
land”.In April, 1864, a number of
dispatches between Major General Philip Sheridan, Commander of the Cavalry
Corps of the Army of the Potomac, and Brigadier General Gregg, Commander of the
Second US Cavalry Division in Warrenton, VA, ordered that US Cavalry scouts be
sent to “the vicinity of Grove Church, United States Ford, Stafford Courthouse
and Tackett’s Mill” to deal with “numerous rebel scouts,” and that, “Major
General Meade is exceedingly anxious to have them driven from the country,
killed, or captured, and directs the officer in command to be very vigilant,
and to collect as much information as possible of the enemy.”Numerous other dispatches from April, 1864, direct
Union Cavalry to send scouts “as far out as Tackett’s Mills”, seeming to
confirm the belief that Tacketts Mill was the outer edge of the area under
Union control.
A passage
in volume 28 of Confederate Veteran Magazine, published in 1920, entitled
“Scouting in Lee’s Army”, by William Johnson of Warrenton, VA, describes the
author’s activities as a Confederate scout in 1863.According to his story he crossed the Rappahannock River
from Culpeper, VA, and met up with a number of other
Confederate scouts at Tackett’s Mill.From
here he and another scout struck North with the intent to capture some Union
troops, which they ultimately did.
Far downstream
on Aquia Creek from Tacketts Mill is Aquia Landing, a port on the Potomac River
used extensively by Union forces as a logistics base and a power projection
platform for Union forces moving south.It
was also a holding area for captured Confederate troops being sent north to
more notable prison camps.
Stafford
County also played a major role in the Underground Railroad.Stafford
County was the goal for runaway slaves
heading north along the Potomac towards Washington.Once a fugitive crossed into Stafford County they were “free” because they
knew Union forces would transport them north.
Post-Civil War Tacketts Mill
Tacketts
Mill appears in several post-war records in the Stafford County Courthouse tax
and property records through the late 1800s.Clearly, the mills continued to operate even in the deeply depressed
reconstruction era.In the December,
1892, edition of the Farm Journal, E. L. S. of Tacketts Mill, VA, (one of the
Skinner family, perhaps?) wrote in to ask a question about raising chickens. According to the Electrical Review, a national
listing of telephone companies and telephone lines, Tacketts Mill received its
first telephone line in 1905.In 1910
Tacketts Mill is listed in the Virginia Department of Agriculture’s list of corn
and wheat mills with a capacity of 100 bushels of corn meal per day.In the same year the publication, “The
Operative Miller” lists L. A. Skinner and Son, operators of Tacketts Mill, as
having purchased a steel, overshot water wheel, 14 feet in diameter by 3 foot
face, from the Fitz Water Wheel Company.It is highly likely that this steel water wheel is the same one donated
by the Emerts to the Tacketts Mill shopping center in Woodbridge, (which was
subsequently never used) and is pictured on page 67 of “Stafford
County, Then & Now”, by Anita L. Dodd and M. Amanda Lee.In 1914, L. A. Skinner is listed by the
Virginia Secretary of the Commonwealth as the Constable of Tacketts Mill in the
Rock Hill Magistrate.
In 1942
the property was purchased by the Gutches family and the place was known as
Gracewood.At that time there was still
no electricity in the area and the house was heated by the fireplaces and wood
stoves and lighted with lanterns.There
was no indoor plumbing either. The
outhouse and well were still in use.The
mill was still standing, but in disrepair.Mr. Gutches sold some lumber off of the land and as payment had the
lumber cut to repair the mill, including the 12” x 12” support beams.As it turned out, however, no one was willing
to do the repair work.He contacted all
of the local historical societies and no one was interested in the mill.Over the years the mill continued to deteriorate
and eventually collapsed.The lumber Mr.
Gutches had prepared for the repair work stood outside and eventually rotted
away.The portion of the property the
mill stood on was sold and the subsequent owners, the Ermerts, donated the
mill’s remnants.
Ghost
Stories.
A neighbor told us a tale of a
farmer who resided on the mill complex going out to meet the approaching Union
Army during the Civil War.According to
the legend, the farmer was lynched from a nearby tree.It is not known whether the farmer lived here
or in one of the other nearby old houses.
When Mr. Gutches purchased the house
in 1942 a couple of sisters who lived nearby told him to be very careful as the
house was haunted.The house had stood
empty for some time prior to Mr. Gutches purchasing the place, they said, and
previous tenants had told them of being extremely frightened when dishes came
flying from the cupboards and smashing on the floor.Mr. Gutches and his family told of hearing
footsteps in the house when no one was there and once, when Mr. Gutches was
sleeping alone in the house he heard the distinct sound of someone walking
around in the kitchen.He went
downstairs with a pistol and a flashlight (there was no electricity) and found
no one in the house.He opened the
kitchen door and went outside to see if someone was out there.He found no one, but upon returning to the
kitchen door he found it locked from the inside!There was no way to lock it from the outside
as it was a screened door secured by a hook and eye.It took some force to get the hook through
the eye to secure the door, so there is no way it could have simply locked
itself.He was forced to let himself in through
a ground floor window.We have heard
strange noises in the house as well, but we usually discount them as “old house
noises”.On one occasion, however, I
heard the unmistakable sound of men talking in the one of the upstairs
bedrooms.I automatically assumed that
the children had left their TV on when they left the house, so I went upstairs
to turn it off.When I opened the door
to the room the TV was off and the room was quiet.There was no other TV, radio or computer on
that could have cause the voices and, try as I might, I could not come up with
a logical explanation for the voices.On
another occasion my wife was laying in bed at night, everyone else was asleep,
and she heard the faint sound of music playing.She could not determine the exact type of music because it was very
faint.She determined that the
children’s radio was off and there was no other explanation for the music.We later learned from the Gutches family that
there had been a Victrola in the living room and that on weekends during the
summer the family used to play music together on the front porch.When she heard about the Victrola she
commented that the music sounded like old music one might expect to hear on a
Victrola.Not exactly enough evidence
for us to call TAPS and have the Ghost Hunters film a show here, but
interesting all the same.Lots of old
places have ghost stories, so why shouldn’t we?
