Reflections: Mills once dotted banks of the Fox River and Kendall creeks

Kendall County’s pioneer millwrights followed closely behind the county’s earliest settlers.

While the pioneers who settled the Fox Valley in the late 1820s and early 1830s were a pretty self-sufficient bunch, they eventually needed the services of a few craftsmen, including blacksmiths and millers. The community’s blacksmith could repair or even manufacture just about any metal item the settlers owned, and also could shoe horses, oxen and mules. Millers were needed to grind the corn and wheat pioneer farmers grew into flour and to saw logs into lumber to build the houses and outbuildings they needed.

Pioneer millwrights – the people who built the mills and the dams to create water power to run them – were extreme multitaskers. They had to have an eye for hydraulics to build the dam to power their mill at the best place on a creek or river. They had to know how to build the structures in which their milling machinery was to be located and they had to know how to build the machinery itself. After their mills were built, they had to know how to operate them and then had to have enough business sense to operate at a profit.

From accounts by the county’s early historians, it seems pioneer millwrights were a footloose group that enjoyed building dams and mills, but didn’t seem to have nearly as much interest in actually running the mills they created. Instead, they left running their gristmills and sawmills to millers who had more interest in the business side, as well as expertise in operating the average mill’s complex machinery.

When we hear the word “mill,” most of us think of the traditional water-powered mill with an overshot wheel that provided power to grind grain into flour or saw logs into lumber. Kendall County had quite a few of that sort of mill early in its history. But the era of the water-powered mill was relatively short and was quickly overtaken by mills powered by steam engines. That’s because water-powered mills are labor- and maintenance-intensive operations. Dams need constant maintenance and repair, and sometimes need to be completely rebuilt after floods. Water-powered mills rely on a steady supply of water to run their machinery, and in the Fox Valley that can be problematic. The extreme cold of winter can freeze milling machinery and the annual spring ice breakup can badly damage both mills and dams. In the summer, dry weather can force mills to close until rains replenish the water in millponds behind dams. For instance, on Aug. 21, 1879, the Kendall County Record reported from Yorkville that “The water in the river is so low that the paper mill had to shut down Tuesday.”

But for some years, water provided the primary power to run the county’s mills. The mills were numerous and were installed on just about every creek of any size in Kendall County, along with the Fox River.

Here’s a chronological list of water-powered mills that did business in Kendall County on which I’ve been able to find information:

1834: John Schneider builds the county’s first mill, a sawmill at the mouth of Blackberry Creek in Yorkville.

1834: Ebenezer Morgan builds a dam and a sawmill on Morgan Creek.

1835: A Mr. Ball builds a mill on Big Rock Creek near Plano.

1836: Jesse Jackson and George F. Markley build a sawmill on the river at Millington. They had finished the dam across the Fox to power it in 1835.

1836: Henry Elerding builds a corn mill on the Fox River at the Millbrook ford.

1836: Merritt Clark builds a dam to power a corn mill and chair factory at Oswego.

1836: Two of the county’s earliest settlers, Elijah Pearce, who helped settle Montgomery, and William Smith Wilson, Oswego’s first settler, build a sawmill on Big Rock Creek three miles above modern Plano. The pair were related by marriage, Wilson having married Pearce’s sister. The pair nicely illustrate the footloose pioneer millwright because they traded their mill and dam to Eber M. Shonts in 1838 in order to move farther west. Shonts, in turn, traded it to his brother David H. Shonts in 1842.

1837: Levi and Darwin Gorton buy Merritt Clark’s dam and corn mill and build the first true gristmill at Oswego at the west end of the dam. They sell the operation to Nathaniel Rising in 1845, who opens a store. In 1848, Rising adds a sawmill at the east end of the dam. He sells the operation to Canadian native George Parker in 1852. In the 1860s, Parker adds a furniture factory to the sawmill on the east bank of the river.

1837: George B. Hollenback and Henry Elerding build a sawmill and gristmill at Millbrook. The sawmill was powered by 24-foot overshot wheel. The pair sold the milling operation four years later.

1837: Titus Howe builds the Yorkville dam and gristmill on the Fox River just above the mouth of Blackberry Creek.

1844: George Hopkins builds a dam and sawmill on Waubonsie Creek, just upstream from its mouth on the Fox River in Oswego.

1846: The Millington gristmill adjacent to the sawmill is opened by J.P. Black and Samuel Jackson

1855: E.A. Black builds a paper mill on the long millrace at Yorkville. It is driven by six water wheels.

1857: Lane & Arnold build a new gristmill at the mouth of Blackberry Creek, replacing Schneider’s old sawmill. By this time, Kendall County is served by the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad, which can ship in lumber cut and sawn in Michigan and Wisconsin cheaper than it can be made in local mills.

1857: Frederick Post builds a dam and gristmill at the mouth of Little Rock Creek.

1857: Post builds a dam and a sawmill on Big Rock Creek that proves financially unsuccessful.

1868: The Millington Woolen Mill is built on the millrace at the dam. The mill closed in 1871.

1870: Frederick Post builds a huge dam across the Fox at Millbrook, and Brownell Wing adds a three-story stone gristmill. The mill, bypassed by the railroad, never opens and the dam is destroyed by a flood.

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