The Page Begins Here
Little Old Mills,
by Marion Nicholl Rawson, 1935.
LITTLE OLD MILLS
CHAPTER 3. THE MAP OF MILL BEGINNINGS
He's been though the mill.
-Colloquial
The Very Firsts
What is called the pioneer industry of our country was glass-making, one mile outside of Jamestown, Virginia, from 1608 to 1609, at which later date the glass-makers were massacred. It was here that the first articles for exportation was produced, a little glass bottle blown in the wild forest of North America. If only it might have been left on its native heath and come down to us, as has the two-quart iron pot made by Joseph Jenks in 1645 in the Colony of Massachusetts Bay, the first piece of iron cast to our national credit.
Following the Jamestown glass industry, the first mill was constructed in 1619, three hundred and sixteen years ago, parts of which still stand on the side hill above lovely Falling Creek as short distance from Richmond. This should perhaps be called a furnace or forge rather than a mill, since iron ore was there smelted, but since the business was suddenly ended after a short three-year period, by tomahawk and fire, and John Berkeley and his twenty-two skilled iron-workers vanished from the picture, and fifty years later William Byrd took the old building over to remake for a grist mill, it may rightly now come under out heading of mills. Throughout these more than three centuries the old "Falling Creek Mill" has been on and off in its various milling activities. Today it is a roofless four-walled enclosure ingrown with sizable trees, its rough stone stretching generously on all sides until the front corner is reached, where one steps from the great mill door down towards the creek and here the stones are dressed and finished as a city mansion might be, probable work of some restorer after the great conflagration. Perhaps no building in the country has such foundation stones as hold these old marker of time upright upon the earth. Southern houses have never needed to be hoisted upon high, cellar-forming foundations against the frost and cold, but there at the old mill, five-foot surface rock sustain the walls on the old part of the building, protruding on both sides of them. Above and below all of the doors and windows huge monoliths are placed, some of them cracked by age, and these firmly reinforced by great oak timbers of some later period. The narrowest walls are a yard through and those on the creek side measure five feet, while across the space where the old where used to turn, another wall of there-foot thickness still stands close to the water's edge. Between the first and second floor, or where they used to before the forest came back, there runs through the wall a belt-course of flat rocks. The wonder its, not that the old walls stand, but that they have ever yielded an inch to sun and wind and rain.
Old records show that, in the 1630's, Hugh Bullock owned more than one sawmill in Virginia, thus being perhaps the first chain-store owner. Thomas Cock of Henrico had a flour mill in 1686; Fitzhugh's mill ground not only corn but wheat in 1686, and the important Wormley ran his own mill at the end of the 1600's, supplying grain for many mouths on his wide plantation. It is safe to say that after 1650 Virginia had her full share of mills. Maine has already been credited with the Gorges gristmill in 1620, and new shows a further credit of a sawmill in York in 1623 and one at South Berwick in 1631. One of the rarely interesting old mills in Maine, dating from 1747 and running continuously until today, is the Perkins Mill at Kennebunkport of which more will be told later. Salmon Falls, New Hampshire, had its first power sawmill in 1663 and soon became a spurt to shipbuilding in that section.
Massachusetts claims its first sawmill for Scituare in 1640, but had a gristmill at work at Watertown in 1631, another at Dorchester in 1633 and one at Ipswish in 1639. In 1633 Stephen Dean was permitted by Assembly authority to build upon famous old Town Brook at Plymouth, a "beating mill" which was undoubtedly one of the crude maze grinders of mortar and pestle type, larger than the old hand-pounding kind and run by water power. When Dean died the following year his mill was not finished and the General Court had previously suggested an added foot in the depth of the wheel pit, and also told Dean that he was responsible for supplying the "yron work." Upon this same brook in 1636 John Jenney built another gristmill - not called a beating mill - and within a couple of years was indicted for "not grinding well and seasonally." The grinding business seems to have been bad for the miller's health, for again we find this miller gone beyond and his widow being "presented" because the mill was not being kept clean. Governor Winthrop with an eye to business ordered "that runs of stone where corn and meal could be ground be established on all available water sites."
In 1638 a woman might buy herself a spinning wheel for a mere three shillings, and, because flax was hard to get, weave herself thread from the wild hemp. In 1654 John Pearson erected for Master Exekial Rogers, the first cloth mill in the country, at Rowley, where such thread and woolen yarns and cotton were made into "cloath and rugs of cotton wool, and sheep's wool."
Rhode Island has within her borders at Newport the famous Old Stone Mill which was for many years believed to have been erected by the Norsemen about he year 1,000. At present we are told that it was built by Governor Benedict Arnold for grinding grain, because in his mill he spoke of it as his "stone built mill." There are some who do not accept the new theory because of the early traditional which have come down to us an because of the investigating done by some modern Norseman. It stands today as splendid specimen of stone building, circular in form, the walls cut with high arched openings in regular spacing about the whole structure. As doors, these openings would have been not only unnecessary but extremely bothersome in a gristmill, and unlike any others constructed in the 1600's, and of a perilously coolish nature for a New England mill which needed enclosing walls with doors as small as was possible. As perpetual strength for a tower meant to defy the centuries, these beautifully arched openings could not have been improved upon. It is quite possible that Governor Arnold might have used this ancient tower for mill purposes, and included it within his last will and testament as his won "stone built mill" since it stood upon his land. One wonders why this particular mill should always have been a point of wonderment and not as well known in its history as all the other New England mills which arose in a neighborly way, if it had indeed been built along with the others of that early period, and why men have been talking for centuries of the old Norseman's tower? There is such a thing as learning to far back in the effort to be honest.
Connecticut had Fowler's Mill at Stratford, grinding grain from 1639 until 1889. This was the first gristmill in New Haven County. Once when a freshet had damaged it badly, it was "voted whatever aid was needed that each man should contribute one day's work." Between 1650 and 1653, what is now known as the "Old Town Mill" was built and started running at New London. A man living there today says: "My grandparents lived across the street from the mill and many is the time I've watched the water turn the great mill wheel and talked with the old dusty miller who looked as if he might have built it. It doesn't operate now but it kept up in good condition by the city and historical societies." In the Norwalk region a sawmill was erected in 1688 on the Silver Mine Stream, and this is one of the few remaining mills which have been running continuously since the 1600's.
In 1626 the Dutch Reformed Minister, Reverend Dr. Jonas Michaelius, of New Amsterdam, wrote in a letter: "They are making a windmill to saw the wood and we also have a gristmill. They bake brick here., but it is very poor......" At Flatbush on Long Island the Vandeveer windmill whose parts were brought separately form Holland, ground all of the corn used in that early Colony, and until this century its foundations of stone were still discernible. In 1626 the Gerritson mill arose by the tidal stream of the Flatlands, where it still stands, and ground grain for the family and the neighbors. When Jacob Swart settled in New Utrect n 1654 he counted his first needs to be a pound, a blockhouse and a mill, and built them all. Up on the stretches of the Mohawk River at the "sand kil" west of the early settled Schenectady, we find Cornelius Van den Bergh of Albany, miller, has established in his mill another miller who is bound to him for two years. About 1715, as the country opened up farther west, the Old Groot Mill was set up in the Mohawk Valley at Cranesville.
One of the old mills which clung tenaciously to life for long usefulness was the old Ogden Mill south of Red Lion Inn, in Elizabeth, New Jersey, which was built about 1666-67, according to a student of Jersey's past, John Ogden was one of the original proprietors of the Elizabethtown grant and built his new bridge upon the King's Highway. This mill served varied masters and purposes, being first a sawmill, then a gristmill, later a fulling mill, and then a paper mill. Through this last phase it take its place as a double "first," for under William Bradford it ran as the first paper mill in the State. Its timbers were still visible as late as 1864, having laster for two years less than two centuries. Captain Robert Treat and Sargent Richard Harrison -both laying aside the military for a purely useful occupation -did their part in the establishment of early Newark by establishing a mill in 1666 on the stream which became Mill Brook. Designed for grinding corn, it became "the corn mill," after these to gentlemen had been assisted by a committee of neighbors appointed to "search the country round for Millstones." A second gristmill of stone was erected on Bound Creek, Newark, in 1680, and the story goes that the man who was running it "in 1790" was forced to hide in a hollow tree near his home to avoid capture by the British, although just why any Britishers should have been capturing Newarkers at that time is not explained.
Pennsylvania, barring perhaps Massachusetts, was foremost among the Colonies in its manufactures, and provides an interesting resume which reveals that by the 1740's she was fast becoming independent of the Mother Country. IN 1641 John Printz was sent from Sweden to be Governor over the land claimed by that country along the Delaware. He made his home on the side of Chester, and while he spent much time in raising forts all about, in 1643 he also erected a mill on Cobb's Creek or "Water Mill Stream," near the old Blue Bell Tavern on the King's Highway. This highway went from Kingsessing to Uplandt, or in present-day nomenclature, was Woodland Avenue from Philadelphia to Chester. This mill ground "early and late" flour both coarse and fine, and is called Pennsylvania's oldest mill, although from the Governor's own words we discover that there was one running even before his time. I a report to the West India Company in 1647 he says:
"This place I have called Mondal, building there a water mill working it the whole year long to get advantage for the country, particularly as the windmill formerly here before I came would never work and was good for nothing." This earlier mill must have been built in the 1630's. Close to the dam of Printz's mill, or old "Swede's Mill," there are still holes in the rocks to show where the post were sunken nearly three hundred years ago.
In 1678, still before the coming of William Penn, it was thought necessary that a mill be erected at Captain Hans Moen's falls on the Schuylkill, and to Jan Schoetan the court granted "a small marrish" (or cripple, or swamp) "lying at the aforesaid great mill fall, at the end thereof; that is to say, so much as is fit to mow for stack of hay, and the said mill fall being a run that comes in the Schuylkill." Had there been an earlier mill to give this spot the name of the "great mill fall"?
The coming of William Penn and his family in 1682 gave us among other things, the city of Philadelphia and a spur to millering. Before leaving England he formed a partnership with nine other men, for the erection of mills in his new land. These were his partners: Philip Ford, John Bellars, Daniel Worley, Daniel Quare, John Barker, John Bickley, Thomas Burberry, Richard Townsend, and Caleb Pusey. Samuel Carpenter was another who was associated with him, and it is he with Richard Townsend and Caleb Pusey who are best remembered as the active workers in the new mill building. Twenty acres were bought, some on each side of Chester Creek, and in 1683 the first of their mills was built at Upland, the earlier name for Chester. Pusey was made the agent and manager of this mill. There was apparently two wash-outs and a third mill built in 1899 which was the bearer of the quaint and most unique weather-vane which was made by some free-hand blacksmith artist, and so designed as to include the initials of Penn, Pusey and Carpenter, probably the three interested in the mill at that time. Penn and his associates "set up" three or four mills, the most important being "Town Mill," which was a great success and shone in achievement and splendor in comparison with the horse mills which had been taking care of the grindings during the days when Sven Sener, or Swanson, owned the old site of the new Philadelphia. Two of these mills were called "unhappy and expensive" and one burned in 1739 "from the wadding of guns fired at wild pigeons."
Certain interesting touches remain to us of these Swedish and English mill:
"The great mill (Governor's) was a low structure reached by traversing a morass, later Pegg's march and run, and on the other side wade the brook."
1696 "The water mills are made by Peter Deal, a famous and ingenious workman, especially for inventing each such machines."
"The primitive Swedes generally located near the freshes of the river."
"The first gristmill in Philadelphia County (later called "Robert's Mill") stands in Church Lane, a mile northeast from Market Square, built in 1683 by Richard Townsend, "Public Friend."
Concerning this last item we have Townsend's own notes:
"After some time I set up a mill on Chester Creek with I brought ready framed from London, which served for grinding corn and sawing boards, and was a great use to us. As soon as Germantown was laid out, I settled my tract of land which was about a mile from thence where I set up a barn and a corn mill which was very useful to the country around. But these being their a few houses, people generally brought the corn upon their backs, many miles. I remember one man had a bull so gentle that he used to bring the corn on his back."
Pennsylvania has the first paper mill in the country, erected by William Rittinghuysen in 1690, on Paper Mill Run two miles above the junction of the Wisshickon and the Schuylkill. While several mills have been washed away or otherwise destroyed here, the old mill settlement still remains, minus the mill itself. About 1695 Thomas Livezey built himself a gristmill on the Wisshickon; the mill is gone but the surroundings still smack of the old days.
The famous old house built at four different periods, with its amazing chimney place in the second oldest part, is in good condition. To one of his friends and patrons Miller Livezey wrote this note, which proves that millers could be poets too.
Respected Friend I've sent thee bran
At neat and clean as any man.
I've took Great Pains for feat of Loss
to thee in foundering thy Horse
It's ground with Bur, and Ground so nice
Looks as if 'twas bolted twice.
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Not will it Even Dust his Clothes
Not give the Horse a Mealy Nose.
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On Pennypack Creek, the "Pemmapeck Mill" was built in 1697 to serve exactly two hundred years before burning to the ground.
Maryland's oldest brick house, "Cross Manor," was built by Thomas Cornwaleys in 1643, but not until after he had established his wherewithal-producer, a water mill on St. Inigoes Creek. Maryland still has her famous Murray's Mill on Upper Hunting Creek (Linchester), built in 1681, with part of the original structure still visible. In 1773 it was recognized as one of the boundary markers for Caroline County. According to a survey made in 182, this mill was originally the property of Thomas Pattison. (The Wye Mill stands in Wye Mills, Maryland, that was built in 1671.) "Mount Mill" in Queen Anne's County, takes its name from the mill built there before 1698 by Jacob Seth. This mill ground both corn and wheat into flour, but operated under the second name of "Bloomingdale's" and later as "Sallie Harris's Mill."
The oldest water power for turning a mill wheel in the Carolinas was developed in 1702 on Kendrick's Creek "hard by Cabin Ridge Plantation," by Captain Thomas Blout. This spot is in the town of Roper, North Carolina, today, and the old sawmill which still stands there was once the only mill in the entire province and later the center of the industrial life of the South Shore settlement. Although Blount died only four years after the mill was set up, his work was not lost, for Thomas Lee who married his relict took over millering and handed it down to others who in turn handed it down for continuous service until the preset day. It has been known as "Lee's Mills" and had various outputs; since it first owner was a blacksmith and ship's carpenter, it was given over to these trades during the summers, and for the winters became a sawmill.
In 1740 Georgia had her Ebenezar Mill, which is still turned by an old wooden undershot wheel.
The Spanish settlers in Florida were, in 1576, "grinding" maze with the greatest difficulty, in reality, pounding it with a mallet. The names of these mills have not survived but may have been only hollowed coquina rocks beneath a magnolia. In 1633, however, William Hilton, relating the good and bad points on the Florida coast, made a note of the fact that "we saw several good places for the setting up of corn or saw mills."
Ancients and Honorables
Slowly but surely our interest in the customs of our sires has been leading us to the resting places and the hiding places of our old mills. Here and there a county newspaper runs a story of some old local mill, and not infrequently this story is copied by the metropolitan presses, showing a broader field of interest. Individuals have discovered an old relic near some hidden stream and rescued it for a tearoom or a museum. Historical societies are awakening to the value of these old brook side or tide side centers of man's workadays of the past, if not out of genuine love of antiquities, at least because they have found that their quaint beginnings attract the public's eye and assist in their advertising schemes.
Rex Wailes, four years ago, ran a story of the old windmills of New England in the magazine "Old Time New England." Out in Indiana, where antiquity is not as antique as in the East, the State historical society has appointed a special committee to study its old mills, and Frederick Polley this last winter ran a series of articles and charming sketches in the "Indianapolis Sunday Star" on the subject of the old mills of the State. What is probably the oldest mill there, is at Bonneyville, and bears across one end of its three-story height, in cut-out wooden letters, "Bonneyville Mill, Established in 1832." Old timers remember that this mill was "Set up" by Edward Bonney and Nathan Whipple was erected in one day by a hundred of the settlers who gave their work.
While one can hardly collect old mills, they do still make a thrilling game of hide-and-seek for the person who wants to play it. There are more really old mills standing than is generally believed, and very many of these have stood upon their foundations since the 1700's, wearing thus a crown of nearly two centuries although looking strong and able, in their present-day dress. No attempt is made here to list them in an exhaustive way, but a few of those still standing of a venerable age, in part or in whole or marked by some hollow in the earth were sturdy logs remain, are give below.
Mills Still With Us from the 1600's
1600's or before- Old Stone Mill, Newport, Rhode Island.
1619- Falling Creek Mill, Chesterfield County, Virginia.
1636- Gerritsen Tide Mill, Flatlands, Brooklyn, New York.
1643- Swedes Mill, Cobb's Creek, near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Holes in rock.
1643- Rowley Mill, Jewel Mill, a fulling mill, Rowley, Massachusetts.
1644- Wrenn's Mill, or "Hardy's," Lownes Creek, Virginia.
1650-53- Old Town Mill, New London, Connecticut. Runs occasionally.
1655- Anacape Mission -Sugar Mill, Tomoka River, Florida. Ruins.
1655- Spanish Mission -Sugar Mill, New Smyrma, Florida. Ruins.
1671- Wye Mills, Wye Mills, Maryland. Sill running.
1681- Murray's Mill on Upper Hunting Creek, (Linchester) Carolina County, Maryland.
1688- Sawmill, Silver Mine Creek, Norwalk, Connecticut. Sill running.
1690- Rittenhouse Mill -small building and miller's house, Germantown, Pennsylvania.
1690- Old Miller's House, Ardmore, Pennsylvania.
1698- Seth-Sallie Harris Mill, Mount Mill, Maryland.
1699-1700- Harbor Mill, Block Island, Rhode Island.
Possibly others. Information welcome.
(Note: I have added two more.)
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