Mill Monday 06 – Rothsville

Welcome to another edition of Mill Monday! Every Monday morning, I feature a grist mill located in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. Today, we travel back to Warwick Township to another mill on the Lititz Run called the Rothsville Mill, also known as Pfautz’s Mill.

The Rothsville Mill lies between Rothsville and Lititz where the Rothsville Road (Rt. 772) crosses the Lititz Run. It is a two and a half story limestone mill. The mill was powered by two turbines, fed from an eight and a half-foot dam on the Lititz Creek by way of a fifty-foot headrace. The water returned to the creek via a fifty-foot tailrace. The mill had a capacity of ten barrels of flour per day.

In 1790, Philip Roth built a tavern at an elevated point on the Newport Road. The village that grew up around the tavern was named “Rothsville”. About a mile down the road toward the Moravian village of Lititz, on the stream that was then called Carter’s Run, now Lititz Creek, was a hemp and oil mill operated by Jacob Geyer. Geyer had been operating his mill since at least 1772 on land owned by Johannes Pfautz. In 1793, Pfautz built the present 2.5-story stone grist mill.

Johannes’ son, John Pfautz, Jr. took over in 1807 and owned the mill until 1814. Peter Hall, Jr. operated the mill from 1814 to 1824. Next, Henry Becker purchased the mill and it remained in the Becker family for approximately fifty years. J. K. Krantz purchased the mill in 1870.

In 1883 the mill was purchased by Benjamin Flory, who operated the mill for 28 years. Benjamin Flory’s son Jacob became the owner of Flory’s mill in Manheim Township. Benjamin Flory sold it to John Herman in 1911. Herman sold the mill to John Zook in 1912. Finally, in 1917, it was purchased by Isaac G. Bushong, who closed the mill in 1927. In 1973, the mill was part of Warwick Farms. The mill had been converted to a studio and office in 1995.

The mill is located at 1299 Rothsville Road, Lititz, PA.

More information about this mill including more photographs can be found on this website at Rothsville Mill

See you next week for another Monday Mill!