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.
[Illustration: 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.
[Illustration]
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 floor of 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.
[Illustration]