Young’s Mill, built in the 1820s by the Young family near Denbigh Plantation, stood at a long-used crossing over Deep Creek where a dam and pond had supported a mill since the Colonial era, and where the Great Warwick Road linked Hampton, Newport News Point, Warwick Court House, and Williamsburg. After the June 10, 1861, Battle of Big Bethel, Confederate commander John Bankhead Magruder established three defensive lines across the Peninsula, and Young’s Mill became the western strong point of the 1st Defensive Line, which extended east to Harwood’s Mill and then along the Poquoson River to Ship’s Point. Fortifications near the mill, including redoubts and rifle pits, served as the Confederate forward base for operations against Federal forces at Camp Butler. When Union forces advanced toward Richmond, Gen. McClellan sent Brig. Gen. Erasmus D. Keyes’ IV Corps up the Warwick Road to outflank the Confederate positions by way of the Half-Way House west of Yorktown, but Magruder abandoned the 1st Defensive Line for a stronger stand on his 2nd Defensive Line along the Warwick River to Yorktown. Keyes’ troops then moved through the entrenchments at Young’s Mill with little resistance, occupying the position and the huts and barracks the Confederates had left behind, and on April 4 Keyes expected from there to reach the Half-Way House the next day.
