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| 1705 |
A
mill for the Bankside Farmers
The
Bankside Farmers who settled in the area called
Machamux, now Green's Farms, used the gristmills on
Mill River, Southport -- but as the community
expanded, there was a need for a mill closer by.
When a 1705 agreement was made with a Mr. Oakley for
a gristmill on Compo Creek, the agreement read in
part:
[Oakley shall ...] "secure all such grain
as shall be brought to said mill or mills by any
inhabitant or inhabitants of the said town of
Fairfield at all times, and grind the same
seasonably before he or they shall grind for a
stranger, into good, sufficient, meal, taking only a
sixteenth part for toll ..." Oakley sold his
mill rights to John Cable, who built a mill within
a few years. |
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Tide Mill at Compo
Source: Jennings, Greens
Farms, from a photograph loaned by Judge
Joseph Morton. |
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1790:
The Sherwoods take over
In 1790, the
Sherwood family acquired and rebuilt the Mill Pond
gristmill to service local farmers. The
Sherwoods were millers from way back.
Patriarch Thomas Sherwood, who arrived in
Fairfield in 1648, was a carpenter and
miller, and his son Thomas was the first
miller at the gristmill on Mill River,
Southport. [See genealogy.]
According to
Jennings, the mill thrived a long time,
specializing in kiln-dried corn meal shipped to the West
Indies. The business declined by the 1860s
along with a decline in grain farming. The
mill stood idle for awhile and then ground
mineral barytes for a few years before
it
burned down in 1895. |
How
it worked
According to Jennings:
"The tide mill had an undershot
horizontal waterwheel -- that is, the
outflow of water turned the wheel by the
force of the water against the under part of
the wheel. The water-wheel was some 18 feet
long and about 14 feet in diameter, located
outside the mill, and when the gates were
lifted the water flowed out with tremendous
force, and power was transmitted into the
mill. If milling was good, two shifts, night
and day, were needed according to the tide.
The tide must be ebbing before the mill
would run, and continue till the incoming
tide equaled the outflow from the
pond." |
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