Edinburg: The Mill the Girls Saved

Edinburg began as a German and Swiss farming settlement along Stony Creek in the Shenandoah Valley, first called Shryock and later Edenburg, a nod to the Garden of Eden. The town was incorporated in eighteen fifty-two, and its flour mill became the beating heart of the local economy. Then came the Civil War.

Edinburg sat directly in the path of Stonewall Jackson's eighteen sixty-two Valley Campaign, and Confederate Colonel Turner Ashby skirmished with Union forces repeatedly along Stony Creek. But the most famous moment came in eighteen sixty-four, during Sheridan's burning of the Valley. Union cavalry set the Edinburg Mill on fire.

Local tradition says two young women approached Sheridan's troops and pleaded for the mill, and the fire was put out. Sheridan's forces destroyed a great many Valley barns and mills. The Edinburg Mill was one of the few to survive.

The mill itself dates to eighteen forty eight, when the Grandstaff family built it to replace an eighteen thirteen complex that held a sawmill, a grist mill, and a carding operation. It is a three story wood frame building on a limestone basement, and it kept grinding until nineteen seventy eight. It joined the National Register of Historic Places on September seventh, nineteen seventy nine, and today it houses the Shenandoah Valley Cultural Heritage Museum.