Rugeley’s Mill/Rugeley’s Defeat

Rugeley’s Mills was a Revolutionary-era trading post located northeast of Flat Rock and Grannys Quarter Creeks. Owned by Henry Rugeley, it was a backcountry branch of his Charleston mercantile and part of his Clermont plantation. The trading post offered goods and crops for sale as well as enslaved people for hiring out. It also included a grist mill, sawmill, barn, tavern, and inn.

Rugeley served as a Loyalist militia colonel during the Revolutionary War, and his trading post was fortified into a British outpost. In Dec. 1780 Continental soldiers led by Lt. Col. William Washington mounted a pine log resembling a cannon just in view of the outpost. They threatened to fire, and Rugeley surrendered. Washington’s men took at least 100 prisoners plus supplies and burned down the outpost.