Little Old Mills, by Marion Nicholl Rawson, 1935.
More water glideth by the mill Than wots the miller of............ Shakespeare: Titus Andronicus Act 1 Scene 1.
Mill Streams and Weirs BENJAMIN FRANKLIN made a homely but apt remark when he spoke of how "idea will string themselves like ropes of onions." It was in the minds of just such men as the famous Doctor and those of the craftsman and millers of his times, that ideas seem to have behaved in this striking manner. To a man bent upon accomplishing tasks where the taming of Nature is concerned, with only such material as he may find at hand, his ideas must range high and low, and in the setting up of a mill, his range was bound to touch the wind and water, an din touching them give him an intimacy with them which few of us know today. There is no prettier bit of the left-over yesterdays than an old crumbled dam which has once spanned a brook or slowed up a stream for a mighty fall, or pressed back a gentle stream to make it loiter in some smooth meadow for the new vigor which will come at the opening of the flood gate. A dam is really a mound to keep and raise the water, and many of these old mounds have left their scatterings and a few solid parts to point the way to some old mill-site or forgotten local industry. Naturally, before a dam is built there must be water to be dammed. With a head of water thus assured, a mill can run, but the terms which told of its running when America was young, are sometimes strange-sounding to us today. The word "weir" is an old one meaning a dam, and there is also the "mylewere," much too pretty to be lost. IT meant really an obstruction, and might be solid enough to hold back water, or be made simply of twigs and stakes, a sort of standing net to catch unwary fish out on a saunter. The watery ways connected with a mill have always been variously called. What is now the mill pond was once the "mill stank," or "mill lodge." There is a choice of terms also for naming a stream which runs to the mill from the dam, and this waterway often started a half mile from the mill, and sometimes much farther. New Jersey had such a "race" in the 1700's which ran beside a mountain road for nearly a hundred and fifty years, and is still there although overgrown now with lush weeds and water plants. This race was six feet broad, three feet deep and built of planks braced every fifteen feet with crossbars of wood which kept the sides from caving in. George Washington wrote often in his diary: "Rid to my Mill and Mill dam at the head of the Race," or "Rid to Muddy Hole, Doag Run and the Mill." In some localizes the race was "the wooden ditch," the "wooden pipe," or the "pen stock." The "sluice" us a passage for water which had a gate to control the flood. While the race might travel far before arriving at the mill, the sluice was an intimate thing, being the last channel through which the water flowed before reaching the wheel. This was called the "mill run," the mill way," the "mill stream," or the "mill fleam, and might be a stoned-up channel or a wooden runway on high post to carry water out over the wheel. After the water had flowed over or under or against the wheel, according to the nature of the latter, it became again variously name in various localities, as the "waste way," the "mill tail," the "spill way," the "mill wash," or the "tail race." The reason for building a dam where there is already a good flow of water which might itself turn a wheel, is given as follows: "The natural force of the current should be equal to the volume of water which in a given time, strikes the floats of the wheel, multiplied by the amount of the fall with a given space. In practice, however, irregularities in volume and velocity of the stream from time to time, and the loss from the friction of the stream against the sides and bottom of its bed, have shown that it is better to gather a body of water, and hence -the dam." A flow of water controlled by a floodgate can then supply the water to the wheel inane needed quantity. Log Dams There is something rather magnificent about the old long dams which still remain on some old mill streams. Their recipe was simple one, and is included here that someone reclaiming one of these old masterpieces may have first hand information. Lay heavy logs or trees the full width of the stream, and upon these lay more trees about five feet apart and at right angles, and these last may be of a slightly smaller size. This plan is continued until the dam is of the required height, when heavy planking is spiked over them running from bank to bank. The main trick to be remembered is that the cross-stream longs at the front of the dam must be larger than those toward the race, and the butt-end of the stream-line logs must lie downstream, because the back of the dam is only a small fraction of the height of the front, or at the "tumbling space." The water thus approaches not a high wall but a low one, less heavily strained by spring floods. This talk of the "front" and "back" of the dam is most unseamanly, as we shall see a little later, but describes what the landlubber sees as he leaves his car to push through the bushes and clinging vines to fine one of these oldsters.One such dam built in the late 1700's in New Hampshire had a solid stone wall on the far side of the stream from which it sprang out. Its stone flume wall was higher than the dam and rich with rock, and the mill wall itself was of great stones and higher than the flume, and yet the millwright chose logs for his dam, giving them the preference for endurance. Rock Dams Rock dams may have been made as early as log dams, although the latter were easier to make in the days when trees were being felled right and left and burned for good riddance. Some old stone dams were all of rock, "laid dry" or smeared with a lime mortar, and still others were bolted with heavy iron bars and clamps. Then it appears that what was called a rock dam was in many cases a dam of rocks and logs combined. The plan for these was interesting. The foundation walls should be of stone not lighter than the millstones themselves, with their up-stream ends laid lower than the downstream ends to prevent those things which pass down stream from catching in them; if the bottom of the stream be of sand or clay, these should be a foundation of tree trunks laid close together with their butt ends down stream, and as low as possible and upon these the dam of stone might be built; a space of twelve or fifteen feet below the breast must be left upon which the water could fall. The breast of these dams was made perpendicular with straight logs laid close one on top of the next, with the largest and longest on top' and then a little distance up stream, another fall of logs was made, laying close to prevent lamprey eels from working through (for with its sucker-like mouth it gathered stones for its nest), but his would be perhaps three feet shorter than the first one. The walls were tied together every six feet with cross logs, butts down stream, and dovetailed and bolted strongly to the logs of the lower wall, especially the upper log. Only now do we see the stones of this rock dam appearing, and their place is in the intervening spaces, and mixed with gravel. On more we have the lesson, from the gradual raising of the height of the dam, that "it's easy does it," rather than the sudden stand. It was best to build such a dam in the dry season when the low water might flow without harm through the bottom while the top was going up. When the construction was entirely raised the top was covered with flagstones. These were laid with their down-stream end on the upstream end of the logs, and extending a little above, thus leaving the other end lower so that the next tier of stones might lap over it, and so on, always growing lower as they go up stream. Such a laying of the stones will "glace" the floating trees over the dam without catching. This arrangement was particularly clever because when the dam was once finished, the water, instead of becoming too premendous a weight, did in reality help to wield or knit the whole structure more closely together. The sawyer who worked beneath such a dam had little to fear as spring freshet time, especially as therw was also an undervent to carry off the excess water. Safeguards An abutment was a strong stone wall at the side of the brook standing some distance upstream from the mill, or built against the mill itself, and so placed as to catch the first wrath and onslaught of flood-ragings descending the stream. Heavy foundations and extra heavy flume walls also helped to protect the mill itself, and yet there were mills which were washed as regularly as a freshet came, built back next and next flood. Such mill danger was generally avoided where the valley site made a change possible. "Set the center of gravity of the mill wall over the center of the foundation," is one of the old rules for the safety of the miller and his mill, and great insistence was placed up deep foundation walls which could not be budged either by the floods themselves or the refuse which they carried down stream. Where a chain of ponds stretched on behind the other up through the hills, the breaking of one generally meant the breaking of all. "The Old Back's gone out!" was a cry that went up in an old New Jersey town whenever the spring floods had come at the call of three days of hard rain, -sometimes when "the line storm" has lasted too long, - and this cry would send the villagers trooping up the valley as far as the road was still passable to see the water come rushing madly over the rocks, sweeping overhanging trees and rocks before it, smashing dam after dam, with the accumulating waters until at last the paper mill's Mill Pond would surrender and with a roar tear the foundations of the mill away, wrenching wheels and shafts from their places, and sending down stream for miles the bales of paper rags of all colors which would powder the valley with their wild litter, and clung for weeks to every overhanging bush or root. The "Old Back" was the pond farthest back in the hills, and its breaking always meant destruction, holes in the valley walls which the next generation would never be able to explain, and strangely wrenched trees which found deformity beneath the flood and were ever after twisted and gnomelike. "The Old Back's gone out, and the Somerset's breaking, and when that goes the Mill Pond at the mill will crack and sweep the First Pond dam away, and then'll go Marsh's and the meadows both sides of the brook will be flooded and all the bridges gone. And what a paper-strung sight for eyes to see." Such was the familiar talk where old dams abounded. It is no wonder that those who set the old Falling Creek Mill near Richmond, Virginia, close beside the stream, set it upon five-foot flat rock at the corner nearest the creek. The dam, built first in 1619 and rebuilt many a time, has perhaps now gone out for the last time, while the mill itself stands hard by, still firm on its pins. That dreaded little "beach in the dam," it simply must not be. On a logging stream where the spring run of logs came seething on the flood, there were long-sided runways though some of the dams where the gate was opened though which they could travel down stream to the mills below. And the fish, those ancient travelers with their undisputed right of way though the ages, they entered in by the strait and narrow gate, or went walloping over the "tumble." At breeding time the "old" went up their own fish ladders, over the dam steps, and when they have grown equal to the trip, the "young" came down the same way. Some millers contrived a basket or "mill pot" to catch and hold visiting fish. Below the great falls of the Connecticut at Bellow Falls, there still remaining ancient Indian cutting of warrior heads in the great natural sloping rock-sides of the river, and above these the first white settlers used to fasten their chairs in the springtime and reach out and causally bring in with their nets salmon after salmon, or hook them with great three-inch iron hooks, as the fish took their spring walk up stream to spawn. It is a far cry from the brook dams of New England to the now famous place of dams, but the same old methods went into the first damming of this mighty river and were used by the same keen type of person who built the easier ones. And so today we find them, dams or remains of dams of the last three centuries, built by man for his convenience and hard work, and then taken over by Nature for beautification of the land, with quick trees growing close for strengthening - and sometimes, wreaking - with ferns and flowers making their crannies bloom, with vines winding in and out about t the old logs or boulders, and the beauty of stone upon stone standing four squarely together through the years.
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