Little Old Mills, by Marion Nicholl Rawson, 1935.
Time and tide wait for no man. Old Saw
The Tides of Maine "Yes, the tide's right. I can set her going." It was the miller of the old tide mill run by a Perkins since 1749, who stood at the open window looking down at his mill pond below to see "how's the tide," and whether he should be able to start the mill. This old "Perkins mill" at Kennebunkport is one of the two remaining tide mills in Maine which are still grinding, the other being at Booth Bay Harbor, and one of the eight or nine tide mills still active in New England. To drop into the Perkins mill on a June morning is to step out from between the traces of a restless world into a place of peace, where the sun shines through the windows and the lush lapping of a gentle tide is heard among the water reeds. The old mill stands open alike to the stranger and the old neighbor with a grist to grind, and since it has been doing business continuously for one hundred and eighty-six years it may well be taken as an example of the best of the old tide mills in America. Mill and miller, the former grown ancestor and now numbering its days, the latter still vigorous and loving his days, seem to have been playing upon each other through the years, just as the floating meal dust has been softening the lines of the great mill rooms and tinting them in gold. Both have lived always in the beauty of a New England village with a meandering tidal river, the Kennebunk, and together have awaited the coming of the tides and together seen their ebb. One has stood along and strong upon its great timbers supported by its mighty ship's knees, while the other has, in taking the mill to his heat, taken for his own, too, its faithfulness and lessons of patience in watching twice daily the coming of the tides and its twice-daily reward. If ever a mill stood for the perfect hospitality, it is this Perkins Mill where the sun may point the hour of noon-dinner and drive on toward evening tea and the miller still stand by his wheels, if his visitor tarry overlong. When a bonnet was suitable for all occasions our ancestors called it good "for Mill or Meetin," the two pubic gatherings places and representatives of the two extremes of life, Sunday and the Everyday. The Perkins Mill stands just across dam and stream from its beautiful sister the old Meeting house, as though the two of them had been raised to fulfill the old adge, while not far away the spot of the old shipyards which made the town famous years ago, is pointing out. Here "to mill" tides come and go today as they did in 1749 - and probably several years before - with a nine foot pine dam driven into clay swung out across them from one corner of the building, impounding them at flood tide for release at ebb. They look so gentle, these tides, as they come swirling along in almost invisible Chinese patterns just below the surface of the water, and yet they play with the great five-hundred-pound stone down at the bottom as though it were nothing by an acorn, pushing it forward or letting it slip back to close the gate when their playing time is done. On the top of the gate is the "yoke" and at the ends, the "two dead eyes." The secret of power in this pine, clay-embedded dam, is that it is so thin that it gives with the tide, while one of cement would break with the action of the salt water. The old mill seems replate with lessons which those run may read, and this of the yielding dam which need never fear to great a high tide, is one of them. In side the mill building all is in order under a film of yellow meal dust which lies upon narrow stairs, ship's knees, filled grain bags, scales hopper, and even upon the faded handbills hung on the old wooden blinds which, true to the 1740's swing upon the inside of the window instead of in the open. Beneath the stairs and over the grain bin a deeply cut and shredded board is fastened, and in this sticks, handle out in the air, the remnant of an old knife whose blade has worn to a point relic from cutting many strings about many bag-necks, and then being hurled with consummate skill back into the furred surface of its boarding place. An iron-bound mallet, a huge sledge hammer and a caulking iron are still in their old paces, the last one a most needed tool where a mill must be kept as water-tight as a ship at sea. Near the scales stands "the iron to prove it by." Mr. Perkins explained: "When I was a boy there was a man accused my father, he came in and disputed him a bag of meal. Today this iron proves it." For all those years that one bag of disputed grain has been rankling in the Perkins family memory. The mystery of the hopper and the hidden stones, the slender little elevator which carries the grist up in an endless chain of tiny carriers, the big iron arm which sweeps out from the wall when the stones need attention, all these have their own perfection of order and care. Referring to the iron arm: "My father used to swing it out to take up the spindle and great the box, which was of iron in those days and so always rusted when there was a high run of tides. The normal run is about seven feet but the high run was about eleven feet, and this got into the box and rusted it so he couldn't turn the wheel." In the office which rises above the water at the rear of the mill, there hangs a really lovely old black and white map of Maine in 1821. It remains one of the great engraved calling card, so delicate is the work, and in the one hundred and fourteen years of its service it had been doing double duty, for in addition to showing the grace of this old State's outlines and interior wonders, its vast whiteness has invited the scribbled notes of the millers who wanted certain facts handy to the eye. Just as the old clock-tinkering on the inside of the old clock doors, so did the Perkins miller of the proceeding generation keep track of some of his important corrections and renewals. Written in a fine hand, carry-cornered down one side of the map, the record reads in part: July 28, 1886 Started Burr Stones. August 15, 1894 Furrowed Mill Stone, Bly Holmes & Blanford, Boston. New Pivot Spindle January 23, 1897. New Pivot Spindle June 22, 1897. New Spindle and Dressed the mill stones September 8, 1897. Some Disadvantages It must be apparent to every one that a tidal mill would have one great advantage, that of being dependent always for its running upon the rightness of the tide, and that this irregularity is bad for the miller and bad for the farmers who always planned to fetch their grain, and have it ground and back home in the same day. A mill run by a brook and dam was ready at any time, and the farmer could hitch up his horse or ox whenever he as ready "himownself" and be sure that the mill would be running. Sometimes a tide-miller was forced to take advantage of an evening or night tide to finish his day's work. Even more than the farmer bound by dews and haying laws, who can not push his clock ahead for Daylight Savings time, is the miller bound by laws laid down some eons of time before there were either farms or mills. Someone who visited the Perkins Mill some years ago wrote of it: "......re Daylight Savings - When it is full Mr. Perkins closes his gates and confines the water to a reservoir. As the tide ebbs he opens the gates to allow the water to escape into a sluice way. As the tide is about an hour later each day, Mr. Perkins cares nothing for clocks or the sun, or any other Daylight Savings plan. He is following the tide schedule as he has for many years." In the South the slaves would sometimes leave their cotton fields when the tides called them, and put in an hour or two grinding at the mill. To the tide-miller "the new of the moon" and "the full of the moon" are much more important than the rising or setting of the mere sun. In Georgia they built dikes near the early tide mills, and each locality had its own devices for gathering and releasing power. The diameter of the old tide mill wheel was rarely over fifteen feet, and its floats or cross-paddles which caught the water, were in number from a dozen to two dozen. These, set in the tide river were called "tide" or "suspended" wheels. The words used about an old mill, which tell of its parts and habits are colorful ones and, to the student, as valuable as a folk song. One finds them jotted down on old drawings of wheel or hopper, or in the careful records of an old blotter, and they go thus: Bridge tree, stringer, bottom spout plank, old sill to the flume, from top of old Mud sill to top of stringer, old flume post, meal Ell shop, and "the idle shaft." Time Honored What is believed to have been (perhaps) the first tide mill set up in the country is standing today at Flatlands, in the Borough of Brooklyn, New York City. It was built in 1636 by Gerritsen, a Dutchman, for the grinding of corn, and is still known as the Gerritsen Tide Mill. In 1650 Miller Baker set up a tide mill at the landing spot of Roxbury, Massachusetts, and there were several others built between these dates. Another New England tide mill of an early date, said to be 1715, is the one which still stands on Southport Harbor, Connecticut, but instead of grinding flour for bread it is now dispensing the bread itself to all and sundry under a tavern sign board which bears the honorable name of the old mill. But alas and alack, the old wheel, the gem of the ancient structure, is herded out of sight with the garbage can. Virginia has clung to her old tide mills until very recent years, and some of the old buildings still remain to tell their own story. It is natural that in this "tidewater" section of Virginia and Maryland, tide mills should have abounded, and one near Abington is the former was grinding until a recent date -Vance's Mill. Another is still standing at Popular Grove, (Mathews County, Virginia) although sadly scarred by time.
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