Davis Mill received its name from Horatio Gates Davis, who purchased the mill shortly after moving here from Pennsylvania. The road linking Davis Mill with Salisbury Mill to the south probably passed through our property. The present-day Farm School Road still maintains some of the shape of the old east-west road through Davis Mill. As Philip Kiester describes in his book, most of these old roads disappeared after the railroads arrived, and after the land was surveyed and divided into townships and square-mile sections. However, certain parts of the old roads were incorporated into today's roads.
When Horatio Davis purchased the saw mill in 1838, he paid $4,000 for what was probably a speculative investment in a developing part of the Midwest. From 1836 to 1853, Stephenson County welcomed 10,000 new residents. All of them needed a place to live, and wood was the most common building material. However, the mill was not operational when Horatio made his investment, as the dam had not yet been constructed. But once completed, the mill became an important business in the community. So much traffic passed by the Davis Mill that in 1841, it became the first regular post office in the township.
The mill's prosperity, however, would end about 20 years after its construction. The first railroad through Rock Run Township arrived in 1857, and with it came abundant supplies of more affordable lumber. The railroad's path missed Davis Mill by about one mile, which spelled the end of the mill's importance for both lumber and postal services.
By then, the land in Stephenson County had been surveyed into townships and sections. On August 19, 1843, surveyor of public lands Silas Reed signed off on the final survey of Rock Run Township. The land was divided mostly into 36-square-mile townships, whose lines had already been surveyed in 1839. The townships were subdivided into square-mile sections in 1843.The original Rock Run Township survey map illustrated many land features, such as ponds, roads, and fields, and also noted the few houses which dotted the countryside then. An excerpt of the 1843 survey of Rock Run Township (below) illustrates Section 27 where we live today.
Although the mill is shown as "Davis Mill" on the survey map, an updated History of Stephenson County (Addison L. Fulwider, 1910) would refer to the mill as "Rock Run Mill". The book indicates that the mill doubled as a post office until 1847, at which time the post office was moved closer to Rock City. Ten years later, the mill's useful life was effectively over.