Water-Powered Grist Mills

There was a time, several generations ago, before electricity was widely available, even before steam powered engines had been perfected, when farm production was performed by manual labor, animal labor, or water power.

Prior to 1710, most of the Pennsylvania territory was considered the frontier. It was mostly occupied by native Americans with a few Quaker settlers and fur traders along the streams. The first significant European settlement in the area began around 1710. At that time, the Pequea and Conestoga Valleys were part of Chester County. Lancaster County would not be “erected” until 1729. As the new settlers arrived, built their homes, and established farms, it soon became necessary to build mills to process their grain. Until the first mill was built on the Mill Stream, it was necessary to make a long arduous trip by wagon to the nearest mills on the Brandywine. The Pennsylvania proprietors, to encourage someone to build a mill in the Susquehanna watershed, offered a grant of 1,000 acres at a reduced rate if they would build a mill on the property before May 1, 1714.

Grist mills were once extremely important contributors to the local economy. In an agrarian society, people needed to have their corn made into feed for cattle and horses, and they needed to have their wheat ground into flour for bread, pasta, and pastries. The local mill was the hub of the local economy. The location of the early mills often dictated the formation of the road networks. Many of them served as local post offices. The local mill was where people went to get their mail and catch up on the local news while delivering their corn or wheat to be processed into animal feed, cornmeal, or flour. And at the turn of the last century, some of them were utilized to generate electric power in the rural areas.

There were many types of mills along the waterways. Grist and flour mills ground grain for human and animal consumption. There were sawmills for producing the lumber required to build houses and barns (and mills), cider mills pressed apples into cider, distilleries processed barley and wheat into mash for beer and whiskey, oil mills crushed flax seeds to extract linseed oil. Clover mills extracted clover seeds for planting hay, and plaster mills crushed limestone for fertilizer. In the textile industry, fulling and carding mills processed wool. In the iron industry, furnaces and forges used waterpower to drive bellows and hammers. Boring mills made rifle barrels for the famous Pennsylvania rifles.

At the turn of the 20th century, the demand for water-powered mills began to decline. Some mills converted to steam and later, diesel, power. In the early days, people did all their baking at home, but eventually bread was produced in large bakeries and people bought their bread and other baked goods in stores. The market for flour shifted from small quantities at a local mill to large quantities shipped to the bakeries. Once electric power became widely available, large, electric-powered mills dominated the market. The small, local, water-powered mills could not compete and began to close. Most of them were torn down, but a few were repurposed and still survive today.

For more about Lancaster County mills, pick up a copy of my book.

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I maintain a full catalog of mills in Lancaster County Pennsylvania. You can find them at my com-panion site: MillsofLancasterCounty.com. I also maintain a catalog of mills in York County here: MillsofYorkCounty.com

The Old Mill
by Thomas Dunn English

Here from the brow of the hill I look,
  Through a lattice of boughs and leaves.
On the old gray mill with its gambrel roof,
  And the moss on its rotting eaves.
I hear the clatter that jars its walls,
  And the rushing water’s sound,
And I see the black floats rise and fall
  As the wheel goes slowly round.

I rode there often when I was young,
  With my grist on the horse before,
And talked with Nelly, the miller’s girl,
  As I waited my turn at the door;
And while she tossed her ringlets brown,
  And flirted and chatted so free,
The wheel might stop, or the wheel might go,
  It was all the same to me.

‘Tis twenty years since last I stood
  On the spot where I stand today,
And Nelly is wed, and the miller is dead,
  And the mill and I are gray.
But both, till we fall into ruin and wreck,
  To our fortune of toil are bound;
And the man goes, and the stream flows,
  And the wheel moves slowly round.