It seems fitting that the tiny commercial center of historic Carolina village is anchored by a fabric shop, a nod to the neighborhood’s homespun character, as well as its history as a cotton- and wool-mill village.

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In addition to the fabric store, called The Remnant Shop, there is a flower shop, Amy’s Wild Ideas, and a ceramics studio, Que Sera Ceramics, together in the same building. Amy Pelissey, who owns the flower shop, also has a collection of mailboxes and posts outside her door — the mailboxes are a sideline business operated by her husband. The crafts businesses have only one commercial neighbor, a pizza and sandwich shop, across the street.

Nancy Morgan, who works at The Remnant Shop, said that Carolina, for all its charm, isn’t exactly abuzz with activity. The shop’s location at the intersection of Route 91 and Carolina Main Street (Route 112) is “a little bit of a crossroads,” she said, but many people stop by simply because they’re lost. “People go, ‘Where the hell am I?’ ” Morgan said with a smile. “That’s why I have a map here.”

Carolina village, built around a grist mill, and expanded after a cotton mill was built there, is part of two towns, Richmond and Charlestown. Morgan said one of the village’s best-known residents, retired journalist John C. Quinn, who is “sort of like Mr. Carolina,” often says that “he eats in one town and sleeps in another.”

The development of Carolina village began in 1802, when Joseph Nichols dammed the Pawcatuck River and built a grist mill, which he later sold to Rowland Hazard, of South Kingstown. In 1842, a cotton mill was built of stone at the site, and in 1862, it became a wool mill. Hazard named the village Carolina after his wife, Caroline Newbold Hazard, and built a number of houses and public buildings in the village, including a school and a post office.

There is still an interesting array of historic housing along Carolina Main Street, most built for the mill workers and their bosses. The part of Carolina Main Street from the octagon house to the intersection of Routes 112 and 91 is now a protected historic district, Quinn said.

One of those historic houses, a 1780 Cape, is on the market. Asking sale prices for houses in Carolina this month range from $259,900 to $485,000.

Quinn, a former executive with Gannett and editor of USA Today, is a fifth-generation Carolina native. He and his children decided to buy the decaying Carolina Mill complex about 25 years ago as a gift for his late wife, Lois, he said. At the time, the 80-acre property was home to 32 “derelict [mill] buildings,” Quinn said, and the owners, who had inherited the property and were facing a large estate-tax bill, were considering selling the land to an auto-graveyard business. Quinn remembers touring the mill complex back then. “I shook my head and said, ‘I’m too old for this,’ ” he said. “That was 25 years ago.” The mill property is directly across the street from Quinn’s family homestead, which at one time was owned by his great aunt and her husband, the chief financial officer of the mill.

Today, 20 of those formerly derelict buildings are “in some kind of civilized use.” Although the field house is kept for Quinn family gatherings — “weddings, wakes and funerals” — Quinn said most of the rest are made available to community groups. Today the entire mill property is owned by the family as a whole.

“I’ve done all I’m going to do” at the mill site, said Quinn, who spends a good part of the year in Florida these days. “It will be