Most agree that walking Taylorstown is the key to appreciating it . To do so yourself , come by Taylorstown or Loyalty Roads . Their intersection is at the heart of the village .
At Taylorstown Road and the winery ’ s Anna ’ s Lane is Hunting Hill , the ancient small stone home built by Pennsylvania emigrant Richard Brown about 1737 . Its “ cat slide ” roof extending over the porch was common in Virginia before the American Revolution and there once were multiple examples in our region . This one has survived to become Loudoun ’ s oldest building . For many years in the mid-20th century it was the home of “ Miss Anna ” Hedrick , Virginia ’ s first female attorney . Builder Richard Brown went on to construct a mill nearby , damming the creek for power .
The Stone and clapboard Taylorstown Mill across Taylorstown Road is not the original Richard Brown built , but an updated rebuild by Henry Taylor done sixty years later . Incorporating a fully-mechanized “ Oliver Evans
The Taylorstown Mill on a winter ’ s walk . Built by Henry Taylor in 1798 , it ground grain into the 1930s .
system ,” this mill operated off a mill pond and sluices created by a dam over Catoctin Creek that sat where today ’ s bridge is . If careful , you could walk over the dam to Hoysville , and most did .
In 1854 , the newly built Furnace Mountain Road connected the mill to the new bridge over the Potomac that led in to the village of Point of Rocks , Maryland , and to both the C & O Canal and B & O Railroad to ship grain . This old road out of the village is still an intriguing walk or drive . The mill
Hunting Hill , Loudoun ’ s oldest house , built by Richard Brown , 1737 .
survived the Civil War , grinding until 1932 , closing in 1958 . It is currently a private dwelling .
If the Taylorstown Mill survived the Civil War , the conflict nonetheless brought woe . The new Point-of-Rocks bridge was blown up as a military necessity in June of 1861 cutting the village from their key markets . Because of its cross-river trading contacts and Quaker and German heritage , support for Virginia ’ s secession and the new Confederacy was marginal . Miller Henry S . Williams , afraid for his mill , supported the Confederacy but was reported by his neighbors and arrested when the first Union forces presented themselves in early March 1862 .
That same summer , here in the village , Unionist Waterford miller Samuel Means recruited members for the new Independent Loudoun Rangers , a cavalry unit that would scout for and guide Union forces when in the area . They would become bitter opponents of two units made up of their Loudoun neighbors : E . V . White ’ s 35th Virginia Cavalry and John S . Mosby ’ s famous Rangers . They often met in deadly combat , leaving bad blood in northern Loudoun for years after the war .
Crossing the broad Taylorstown Road bridge over the Catoctin , you are following the route of the old mill dam ; the mill pond formed upstream from here . People walked over the dam , but history records a drowning or two by those who slipped . The dam virtually washed away on in the
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