Benajah Cook Sawmill and Farmstead

Side A: Benajah Cook and the families who settled in Harlem Township, Delaware County are honored for creating a community of productive farms. The Benajah and Cassandra Cook family arrived when the land was forested and settled on 500 acres of the 4,000 acres that Benajah purchased at a sheriff’s auction on June 12, 1807. The millrace, visible along the north side of Duncan Run near the Gorsuch Road bridge is the last vestige of the sawmill operated by Benajah on the Cook farmstead. The Cook farmstead was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1977. Side B: Upstream from the millrace are traces of the foundation for a dam or wooden weir constructed across Duncan Run. Logs were floated down Duncan Run at times of high water and stored in the mill pond. They were then sorted and moved single file along the race to the sawmill. The millrace facilitated the movement of logs and turned the mill wheel that drove the up and down motion of the saw. The lumber produced was used primarily in construction on local farms, and the cleared land became farm fields.