III
Around 1870 the water wheel was disposed of and a so-called “new and improved” metal turbine was installed for a few very good reasons.
The old outside wooden water wheel in the winter became lopsided with ice forming on the paddles and the uneven motion was undoubtedly disconcerting to the miller to feel the building and the machinery wobbling about. Whenever solid ice blocked the wheel, it was useless. Further, the mill pond was limited in its volume of water (“head,” to you engineers), so that when the pond was low there wasn’t very much water to turn a large outside wheel.
Ingenious engineers of that era came up with the so-called “improved” iron turbine to rest under the water and under the mill where ice could not get at it and where there would always be some water in the pond to turn it.
the original turbineThe Original Turbine
The Original Turbine
About two or three months after we started reconstruction, my friend, George Kelley, came up with an old pamphlet put out by the J. Leffel Company of Springfield, Ohio, dated 1870, and sure enough the pamphlet referred to a “satisfied customer” as “J. Baker and Company, Hyannis,” who were successors in title at that time to the Baxter boys.
I wrote to the Company in Springfield, Ohio, and much to my surprise received a most magnificent brochure showing they were still in business after all these years, now supplying turbines to great power dams, but ready to build a small turbine. I thought it very interesting that at least there was one company left that could turn out and furnish a small turbine.
Everyone likes to play in the water, so we went to work about August 1, 1960. You can well imagine the condition of the mill. Windows were shattered, the sills were powder, the roof practically gone, and the building had a definite cant to the east’ard. It really looked hopeless.
Fortunately, most of the ancient machinery—the stones, gears, brakes, and chutes—were still intact, even the miller’s little desk where he kept his records, and the ancient bin for storage.
The beams, the corner post studs, etc. are of tremendous size and all mortised, tenoned and dowelled, and hard as rock. The stairs were worn paper thin; the floor was practically gone. Dirt and dust, of course, were everywhere.
The stones are the French buhr type, which are practically impossible to obtain today, to say nothing of the fact that probably no stone could be obtained, except in upper New England, so many of the old mills having been raided and the equipment, especially the stones, taken away for steps and other decorative purposes.
interior of the mill
Eric Sloane, in his exceptionally fine and exhaustive research entitled “The Vanishing Landscape,” refers to the pattern of the stones, meaning the furrows or grooves cut in the stone, against which the corn was ground.
Directly underneath the first floor of the mill were the remains of a wooden pit, which was filled with sand, gravel, and debris, accumulated over the years, particularly because of the raising of the adjacent State Highway from time to time, and more or less by the action of the elements.
Sticking out of the debris beneath the first floor was an iron bar or shaft, about five inches in diameter, so George and I and a couple of hired help went to work, and on hands and knees we finally managed to dig enough away to stand upright and eventually came to the top of the old turbine which was so far rusted as to be beyond reconditioning. We uncovered the complete wheel pit, the floor of which was about twelve to fifteen feet below the level of the first floorof the mill. This pit was made of hard pine, 2½ inch planks, set against 12 × 12 hard pine uprights, and was about 10 foot square and probably 12 feet deep to the lower shelf, called the “tail race.”
We had a rough time removing the old turbine with some hydraulic jacks, muscle power, and the sage advice and help of friend George.
Now, George is a married man, blessed with three children, and I noticed in our local newspaper one evening shortly after we had started work that his wife had experienced another happy event. George had not mentioned this to anyone, including me so when I suggested the next day that this was a bit of a surprise, he said,
“You know, it was news to me, too. Last night about three o’clock, my wife woke me up and said, ‘George, I think you have to take me to the hospital.’
“I muttered, ‘What for?’, and she replied that she was going to have a baby.
“You know”, said George, “I do declare that is just what happened.”
I suppose everyone has a desire to investigate, to explore into the past, and to relive some of our history and past traditions. This mill and its restoration has provided us an excellent opportunity to test our ability to do what the old folks did. They were able, with their crude tools, to build this mill and to actually make it grind corn in excellent fashion, even to the extent of doing a thriving business. It is interesting to reflect that they did not have the modern power tools available today, nor did they really have the time we have today, but these folks really built for permanence.
Eric Sloane aptly puts it by saying,
“What a shame that with all our timesavers and with our abundance of wealth, we do not have the time today and apparently cannot afford to build the way they did or to use the excellent material they did.”
Why is it impossible for our builders and architects to construct a house with a bow roof, for instance, a little more overhang on the rake, a box return with gutters, a decent-sized chimney, and many of those small things that lend charm to a house and give it character and dignity? Why are we satisfied with chicken houses, or is it that we have not made the progress we thought we had?
All these things we thought about as we went about the business of restoration.
exterior of the mill during restoration