Carolina rose from a gristmill to textile manufacturing when Rowland Hazard (see under South Kingstown) purchased the town village or mill seat for one of his extensive South County textile operations. He was the client for most of the Greek Revival houses in the town as well as the earliest sections of the Carolina Mill, of rubble and cut stone masonry (c. 1841). The mill, on Main Street, is now a picturesque ruin. Together with its collapsed twentieth-century wooden extension, it has been rebuilt—adapted rather than restored—by its present owner as a private estate with occasional public access. Much of the ruins have been unencumbered of debris and stabilized in their present state. The site retains remarkable relics of nineteenth-century textile machinery. Uphill, at 25 Main Street, Ellison Tinkham, partial owner of the operation between 1868 and 1907, built a Queen Anne house of modest pretension (c. 1890), the front elevation of which is rigidly ordered by paired windows from first floor to attic. A pretty porch across the front retains its original carpentered ornamentation.