Volunteers Spent Four Years Saving Patchin’s Mill. Now They Are Looking to Its Future.

After years of water intrusion, insect damage, and two vehicle strikes, the historic Patchin’s Mill in Pine Plains is nearing the end of a major structural project intended to keep the 1840s building standing. The work marks a milestone in a broader effort to open the site to the public and, perhaps one day, return the mill to working order.

Friends of Stissing Landmarks, the Pine Plains nonprofit formed in the 1980s to save the Stissing Mountain Fire Tower, has spent the past four years working to preserve the mill, its dam, and the Patchin family home across the road.

Susan Patchin Drury, one of the last living descendants of the Patchin family to live on the property, died in 2021 and left the property to FOSL. The organization took possession of the mill, the dam, a 12-acre mill pond, and the large 19th-century family home in 2022.

“Susan wanted to leave it to someone who would take care of it, preserve it, restore it,” FOSL member Keith Sisco recalled. “It was in disrepair.”

The mill, built directly into bedrock around 1840, had sustained significant damage. Decades ago, a truck rounding the sharp curve on Route 83 struck one corner, damaging the foundation. A car hit the same corner a few years ago.

A leak in the large pipe that once carried water from the dam to power the mill compounded the problems.

“Water was flowing through the mill, which caused a tremendous amount of damage,” FOSL member Bill Hedges explained.

Beams were rotting, and insects had damaged the structure. The family house had also sustained major water damage.

“We tried to stop further deterioration,” FOSL member Scott Chase recalled.

In early 2023, volunteers cleared debris from the mill and house, both of which had been used for storage. FOSL put a new roof on the house, replaced siding on its west side, rebuilt the front porch, and added gutters to both the house and mill. Beneath the porch, volunteers found a grindstone that is now displayed near the dam.

“We put that new roof on two years ago,” Chase said. “Bill was 78, I was 70. We both like to build but we’re not that fast anymore.”

FOSL hired a painter for the home’s white exterior, while the town graded the road near the property in an effort to prevent future collisions.

The dam presented another challenge. When FOSL took possession of the property in 2022, it was no longer functioning. On the far side, where a long-defunct sawmill once stood, a sluiceway had failed several years earlier, allowing water to escape in that direction rather than flow over the dam.

“We rebuilt the dam a couple of years ago,” Sisco said. “Bill and I worked on it. Bill was the engineer for the whole thing. It was a great day when we finally closed it with four-by-eight steel plates, and the water came over the dam. It’s been going over ever since. It’s the focal point. Everyone wants to see the water going over the dam.”

FOSL installed a bench between the mill and the dam, where visitors can sit beside the water.

“Our whole goal is to make this available to townspeople,” Sisco said.

This year, the group turned to the mill’s foundation. FOSL hired Robert Koch, a local mason with experience in historic preservation, to rebuild sections with stone and brick. More recently, timber framers from Woodworth Barn Repair in Syracuse began rebuilding the timber layer above the foundation.

“We tried to get locals but with no success,” Hedges said.

That work is nearly complete. Over the next month or two, siding, windows, and doors removed during the foundation project are expected to be restored and reinstalled.

Hedges also hopes to replace the concrete loading dock with a more historically appropriate wooden structure incorporating an accessible ramp, “so when we do open it to the public, it will be ADA-compliant.”

With the structural work nearing completion, FOSL members said the mill is now largely protected from further deterioration and collapse. The next challenge is deciding what the site can become.

In 2025, FOSL brought in Elise Quasebarth, a Pine Plains resident and architectural historian (she is married to Steve Neil, a member of The New Pine Plains Herald’s board of directors), to help guide that work. Her firm, Higgins Quasebarth & Partners LLC, has worked on the preservation of New York City landmarks including the Woolworth Building, the original MetLife building, the TWA Hotel, and the Ford Foundation, as well as affordable housing projects.

Now retired, Quasebarth donates her own time to FOSL while helping coordinate additional research, editing, and production work performed by the firm for pay.

According to Quasebarth, the first person to survey the area was Charles Clinton in 1743. The vast, 18,000-acre Little Nine Partners Patent had been granted by the king to wealthy colonists earlier in the century but was only then being divided into parcels and formally surveyed.

Of Lot 48, where the mill now stands, Clinton wrote: “It has some good land in it especially dry swamps along the Chekemeko [sic] Brook … it has a very good fall for a mill where a dam may be made with a little expense …”

Records indicate that at least two mills were built there over the next three decades.

“The mill that exists today was built in the early 1840s by Mark Patchin, who was a carpenter,” Quasebarth said.

The Hoffmans owned the land from 1801 to 1878, and the site was known as Hoffman’s Mill and later simply as Shekomeko Mill. Anthony Hoffman hired Patchin to build the mill. In 1878, Hoffman’s son sold it to Patchin, who began operating it.

From about 1840 to 1878, the millers were Edward Chase and his son Thomas. Edward’s younger son, Enos, was an ancestor of FOSL member Scott Chase — a connection Chase said he only recently discovered.

“I knew my great grandfather Enos had a general store in 1861 in Pine Plains, but I didn’t know that his father was a miller before that!” Chase said.

The original wooden dam and a later stone dam were destroyed by floods. In 1918, Mark Patchin’s son Frank, with help from his son Gould, hired George M. Briggs, an engineer from Poughkeepsie, to design and build a new concrete-and-stone dam.

Gould began installing the mill’s current machinery in the 1920s. The mill processed wheat, rye, corn, and buckwheat, as well as lime used to make plaster, until 1946.

“The grist mill, surrounded by farmland, anchored a substantial settlement within Pine Plains,” Quasebarth said. “Mark Patchin had his house and carpentry shop across the road, and there were barns and other buildings. There were two sawmills, a blacksmith shop, a school and, in later years, a milk bottling plant. It was its own little hamlet, a subsidiary of Pine Plains.”

Today, the Patchin’s Mill, dam, mill pond, and house are all that remain of that settlement. The Patchin family continuously occupied the house until 1989.

Quasebarth said the survival of the larger complex makes the property particularly significant.

“Mills in general are susceptible to fire,” she said.

Few remain intact, she added, making the collection of structures at the Patchin property unusual.

“There aren’t a lot of mills still standing. But not only is this one standing, there’s a house and a dam and a mill pond. It’s a little hamlet ecosystem.”

The property also holds artifacts from generations of Patchin family life, including hundreds of letters sent by a family member serving in France during World War I.

“The more you know about something, the more you love it,” Quasebarth said. “I love a good story.”

Now, FOSL members are considering how to tell that story to the public.

At a round table inside the Patchin family house, Hedges, Sisco, and Quasebarth recently discussed what comes next. There is broad agreement on one goal: opening the property to visitors.

It is not ready yet.

The timber framing crew is also replacing a beam and adding posts to better support the mill floor, which remains weak and is covered with plywood in some areas.

“I don’t want to replace the floor, because there are some elements of it I really like, but I certainly want it more secure than what it is now,” Hedges said.

Sisco said public access may not require every section of the building to be immediately available.

“When you go into some museums, there are areas that are cordoned off, so we can do that to be more safety conscious.”

Then there is fundraising.

FOSL has paid for nearly all of the work over the past four years from its general funds, spending about $100,000. The organization has now set a dedicated fundraising goal of $150,000, in part to replenish those funds and in part to complete the current phase of restoration.

To help launch that effort, the group is planning a “Mill Day,” possibly over a full weekend, when community members could tour the mill and house, visit the dam, and learn about the site’s history. Quasebarth may develop educational materials and give a talk.

“We’re ready to do some storytelling,” she said.

The event will also offer opportunities to donate or volunteer. FOSL members said both are needed.

In the meantime, Sisco said, “Anyone is welcome to stop by any time.”

Sisco, Hedges, and Chase are frequently at the property, and Hedges and Sisco live nearby.

Mill Day will likely be held this fall.

FOSL members also hope the mill itself might operate again someday — perhaps as an educational site, or even as a working mill supporting local grain producers.

Much of the equipment installed during the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s remains in good condition, according to the group. With sufficient expertise and funding, members believe it could be restored to working order.

Sisco and Hedges were planning a trip to Hanford Mills Museum, a restored water-powered mill near Oneonta. “They restored the whole thing, and we just want to go take a look at it,” Sisco said. They have already visited a working mill in North Carolina with a structure similar to the Patchin’s Mill.

For Hedges, the long-term vision is both mechanical and personal.

“I would like to see the mill operate, and the house look like it was the day people walked out of it,” Hedges said. “There are so many old buildings and structures in Pine Plains that we’ve lost. I would like this not to be one of them.”

To volunteer, donate, or learn more about Friends of Stissing Landmarks, reach out to Keith Sisco at kjsbla@gmail.com or 518-755-2394.

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Correction: An earlier version of this article incorrectly described Susan Patchin Drury as the last living descendant of the Patchin family. Her brother, Tom Patchin, is alive, as are his children and other descendants of the family.