Light spills through an old storage building. (Photo by Bill Hand)
The historic Riggs and Son Grain Mill, which has carried on its tradition of selling feed to the Pamlico County community despite its dilapidated conditions, will be closing in the coming months following the death of owner Ernest Riggs, who had doggedly worked at the mill since its inception in 1946.
Though the mill’s tin-sided buildings cover several acres of ground, only one fully functioning storehouse can be seen easily while driving by on State Highway 55, about a mile south of Grantsboro. Started as Krechel’s Mill, it was once a busy place, grinding corn and hay to make feed for the numerous family farms in the county.
But over the decades, the advent of Walmart and industrial farming started closing the doors on family-owned agriculture.
The old mill’s warehouse has stood in this spot for 50 years. (Photo by Bill Hand)
Bushel baskets lie exposed to the weather outside a collapsed storage building. (Photo by Bill Hand)
The mill has a reputation for providing some of the best sweet potatoes on the market. (Photo by Bill Hand)
In the second week of December 2025, the ailing 93-year-old Riggs made his last trip to the New Bern mill, visiting with longtime customers, handling the sale of the famous sweet potatoes, and giving a last dinner to a small colony of feral cats.
County Commissioner Edward Riggs, his grandson, promised to keep the mill running.
“I told him I’d open it up on Saturdays for him until he got better. I knew he would never be able to get back out there again by himself,” Edward Riggs said. He had hoped he could still give his grandfather a lift to spend some time with his old customers.
Ernest Riggs died at CarolinaEast Medical Center on Jan. 2.
In his honor, Edward Riggs still opens the mill from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. every Saturday, selling the inventory that remains — dog food, chicken feed, peanuts, field corn and those sweet potatoes. He hates to see the mill close, but said there’s simply no way to keep it open much longer.
The history of the mill is intertwined with the story of Ernest Riggs. He was born in Onslow County in 1932 in a house he once described to New Bern Sun Journal reporter Charlie Hall as “not much more than walls and a roof.”
Edward Riggs Jr., the grandson of Ernest Riggs, stands beside his father’s old International Harvester mobile grinding unit. Its mill was last run in 2008. (Photo by Bill Hand)
This photo shows Ernest Riggs standing by his International Harvester truck sometime in the early 2000s. (Source: Edward Riggs Jr.)
Ernest Riggs pictured in a Carolina Farmer article in 1981. Source: Phil Bowie, Carolina Farmer
Riggs lived with his mother, who washed clothes to supply dinner, and his grandmother. “There was no man in the family and we didn’t have nothing,” he recalled.
Those humble beginnings during the Depression era are said to have made Riggs stubborn, creative and resilient, despite the barest education. By age 6, he was out with his dog snaring rabbits to eat and sell. By age 9 he worked for tobacco farmers until he had $6 to buy a bicycle.
Still aiming to help keep his family fed, he pedaled into Jacksonville, where he went into the shoeshine business.
Camp Lejuene, built in 1941 in Jacksonville, had numerous Marines who needed shiny shoes. Riggs started working with shoeshine boys and soon had a business of his own with three boys under him. He charged 15 cents per shine.
Old bric-a-brac lines shelves in buildings across the mill site. (Photo by Bill Hand)
When he was 14, his mother remarried and moved to Pamlico County and there Riggs met Oscar Krechel, an educator who also dealt in coal, fertilizer and farming.
“He didn’t have a dad in his life,” his grandson said, “so Mr. Krechel was as close to a father as he ever had.”
Krechel decided to start a mill in 1946 and set Riggs to work cutting down the bushes along the property. Riggs loved the job and never left.
“He’s the only man I’ve ever worked for,” he told Hall. “He’s an honest man. He gave me a break.”
Krechel retired in the ’70s. Riggs bought the operation and renamed it Riggs and Son.
The mill grew rapidly. In the postwar years, some 50 farms dotted Pamlico along with seven dairies. Other customers came from surrounding counties. More buildings and grain silos popped up on the property.
The original grinding mill and mobile grinder still stand, though neither has been used in years. (Photo by Bill Hand)
An old advertisement for the ‘Daffin Mobile Feed U-Nit” is kept in a frame in an old office. (Photo by Bill Hand)
A locally famous fixture came in the form of a 1947 Harvester International truck, a cumbersome-looking beast with a conveyor belt, hopper and massive iron box. “Our Daffin Mobile Feed U-Nit,” an advertisement announced. “Our On-the-Farm Feed Service brings the mill right to your farmyard. Before your eyes we grind or mix your feed from home-grown ingredients — anything from corncobs to hay.”
Farmers fed their ingredients into the unit and watched it come out as feed — even mixing in molasses when the feed was for horses.
That truck lived a long life, and Riggs — who rarely missed a day of work in over 70 years — spent hours driving it from farm to farm, often so busy he had to eat his lunch as he drove.
Once, due to a bare wire, leaking gas and corn dust, his truck caught fire as he was driving near Aurora.
With flames coming out of the hood he drove to the nearest fire station, where firemen extinguished it. The truck was still running, though not stopping: The blaze had taken out the brakes. He carefully drove back to the mill.
Riggs worked tirelessly, grinding as much as 30 tons in a day. The mill also became well-known for the sweet potatoes it sold.
Eventually, the truck retired from on-the-road service, though it was still driven around the mill property. Edward Riggs does not remember ever seeing it leave the property when he was a boy in the ’70s.
A changing agricultural world and Riggs’ age slowly altered the mill’s business plan.
“As he was getting older, he stopped grinding for the public and just for himself a little bit,” his grandson said.
Edward Riggs stands in the midst of bags of field corn for sale. (Photo by Bill Hand)
Climbing about the equipment got harder. Large suppliers — Walmart among them — sold goods cheaper. Industrial farms, which did not do business with privately owned mills, took over a market that was brutal on family farms which, in turn, closed down.
In 2008 his grinding mill was rusting and stuck in place, but Riggs agreed to get it running for one last display as part of the county’s Heritage Day, where a portrait of Riggs and his son Edward was commissioned in the family’s honor.
For the past 20 years, his grandson said, the mill has sold mainly sweet potatoes, field corn and dog and chicken feed. Its grinding days are over.
Riggs raised three children and was devoted to his wife, his grandson said. Though barely able to write his name, he developed a business savvy and declared, in the 1980s, that he had already made enough money to sit back and live off the interest.
But retirement was not his way, and he continued showing up regularly to chat with locals and sell his wares until a month before his death.
The main building still stands, adorned with cobwebbed photos and memorabilia. Sacks of dog food and corn line the walls and bushel baskets of sweet potatoes await buyers behind a set of doors.
Across the property, ancient trucks — including that mill on wheels — are slowly losing a battle with trees and vines. A few of the buildings are collapsed museums of old equipment that you can only view safely from the doors, but a few other structures still stand, an odd mix of antiquity and modernity.
On a Saturday, Edward Riggs arrived at the mill in his appropriately ancient pickup truck, complete with a Dr. Who fan plate on the front bumper. He fidgeted with padlocks and swung open rickety doors. With the help of his brother Ernest, named for their grandfather, he went about preparing for a handful of old-timers and customers.
He said he expects to phase out the business by summer.
“I hate to see anything go,” he said. “Certainly, when you have an attachment to it, it makes things a little bit harder. But everything has its time. The purpose of the mill, when it was originally established — it’s gone.”
A walk through the property stirs up ghosts, tales and memories. “The first 20 or 14 years of his life were really rough, and he never forgot that,” Edward Riggs said.
An old Chevy dump truck seems to dream of past glory. (Photo by Bill Hand)
An old wringer washer stands inside one collapsed building. (Photo by Bill Hand)
“Twenty years ago, he asked me to take him to Jacksonville (where he grew up) and we went riding around for a whole afternoon,” the grandson said. “He was looking for a man who, when they were both boys, rode with him in a school bus. That boy would always give him half his sandwich because he had nothing.”
The quest was a success. “We found that boy, and he just wanted to shake his hand and thank him,” Edward Riggs said. “He remembered where he came from.”
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