BLOWING IN THE WIND
by Anita Rafael
Too breezy for a beach day?
Then it’s the perfect weather for windmill watching. You can find the state’s last three historic smock-style windmills still standing in Jamestown, Middletown and Portsmouth.
Stop and think about this simple logic for a minute: on a small island such as ours, or one like Conanicut to our west, there are no mighty rivers. No rivers means that early settlers, except when there was a springtime freshet in the small streams, could not reliably harness flowing water to run their gristmills. What our coastal islands lack in waterpower, however, they more than make up for in strong and steady sea breezes for windmills. In the late 1800s, more than 20 windmills were still standing throughout the state, most of them in and around Portsmouth.
The Jamestown Windmill
382 North Main Road, not far from the historic Watson Farm
Claim to fame This is the only surviving 18th century windmill in the state.
Records show that in 1728, the people of Jamestown built themselves a windmill for grinding corn, saving themselves the trouble of having to ferry it over to Aquidneck Island and back. That one was replaced in 1787 by this one, which was faithfully run and maintained by a succession of eleven different millers until 1896. Unlike the two other windmills still standing on Aquidneck Island, the Jamestown windmill, which does not seem to have a proper name, is in its original place, atop a rubble-stone foundation. The miller’s house (not open to the public) sits in its shadow, closer to the road.
The structure quickly fell into disrepair once the millers left, but within a decade, it was rescued by a concerned group of preservation-minded island residents. They worked to save it beginning in 1904, giving it to the Jamestown Historical Society eight years later.
Situated to take full advantage of the wind from all directions on a rise that became known as Windmill Hill, the tower’s exposed location also meant it was especially vulnerable to hurricane damage. It has been restored again and again. The mill narrowly made it through “the big one” in 1938, but after the 1954 hurricane, the 25-foot vanes had to be replaced and the tower had to be stabilized with hefty oak timbers. In 1974, all four vanes were broken off in a gale, and again replaced. The last touch-up it received was just five years ago. The once-rotating cap is now fixed to face Narragansett Bay’s gentler southerlies.
In a picture-perfect setting, the windmill seems to stand guard over acres of farmlands that are still being worked, just as it has for nearly 300 years. With the land around it, which reaches from shore to shore at this part of Conanicut, now in trust as preserved open space, it is not likely to ever be developed. That leads to a reassuring thought: If you take your children to visit the windmill this summer, and someday in the future, if they take their grandchildren to visit it, the landscape and the 30-foot high tower will hopefully look the same as they do now.
On Sunday afternoons this summer, when the winds are favorable, volunteers from the Jamestown Historical Society with a mariner’s knack for predicting the shifting sea breezes, will set the canvas sails so you can watch the windmill in action. No meal is sold here, however.
The Windmill at Prescott Farm also known as The Sherman Mill
2009 West Main Road, Portsmouth
Claim to fame This windmill has twin sets of grinding stones.
“It’s typical for windmills to have been moved from time to time, and this one is no exception,” says Robert Foley, preservation coordinator of the Newport Restoration Foundation, owners of the 4-story windmill at Prescott Farm. This wood-frame tower happens to be particularly well-traveled, and is now at its fifth site. Originally built about 1811 in Warren, Rhode Island, it was moved to Fall River, Massachusetts, then again to Quaker Hill in Portsmouth. The mill became known as the Robert Sherman windmill with that relocation because he was the one who took it down and put it back up. It was moved to yet another site on West Main Road, and then in the early 1900s, the Newport Historical Society owned it even though it was in Portsmouth at the time. Almost 70 years later, it changed hands again, and was moved one more time.
Are you wondering how you move a windmill? Foley remembers: “We used a crane to lift off the bonnet, or the top, which is easy to do since it is a separate piece that is meant to rotate into the wind. Then, we cut all the pegs and tenons in the tower, dividing it into two halves which we laid one at a time onto a flat bed trailer truck.” He makes it sound so easy, but nearly two years elapsed before the mill was in working order again.
During the rehabilitation, it was hoped that the mill might someday earn its keep by grinding enough meal to sell and so the restorers installed Department of Health-approved stainless steel bins for the grains. This particular mill, however, has mostly been non-productive, but nonetheless scenically so, for more than twenty years.
“It’s a big, dangerous machine,” Foley says. “Watching the wind and the weather is as critical, if not more so almost more so than on a sailboat. Basically,” he says, “when the wind turns, you have to tack.” That explains why a miller is sometimes called a dry-land sailor.
This summer, mill is running; however no meal will be sold there. On your visit, be sure to ask the site manager for a mini-engineering lesson on how the double grindstones work. State-of-the art for its day, this windmill was designed so that the miller could engage just one set, or both.
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A recent grant from the Rhode Island State Heritage and Historic Preservation Commission made it possible for the Newport Restoration Foundation to build new sail panels (the lattice-like wooden frames that hold the cloth sails), in addition to installing two new 45-foot stocks or arms.
The Windmill at Paradise Park, also known as Boyd’s Gristmill
Green End Avenue, Middletown
Claim to fame This windmill has eight vanes.
It has been one hundred and four years since Benjamin Boyd decided that eight vanes were better than four on the old smock mill that his grandfather had bought in 1815. He was hoping that double the sail area would boost the power output of this giant grinding machine, especially in light winds. Did he realize he was making twice the work and worry for himself as well? Apparently so. Even though Boyd himself said it was “an experiment like Noah’s Ark,” five years later he gave up trying to furl and unfurl all that canvas across the giant arms and instead, he installed a gasoline engine to rotate the millstones.
Built in 1810 by John Peterson at the corner of West Main Road and Mill Lane in Portsmouth, the mill became known as Boyd’s Mill when William Boyd leased it not long after. It was a typical hard-working four-vane mill until his grandson Benjamin added four more arms in 1901. According to Stanley Grossman of the Middletown Historical Society, young Boyd’s engineering, although based on sound English designs, may have caused the vanes to spin themselves to pieces, necessitating the gasoline engine after all.
By the end of the 20th century, the mill had been unused for more than fifty years, and in summertime, was partially hidden by tall trees that had grown up around it. Weathered and silent, thousands of people zoomed by it on the busy road, and few ever glanced its way. In 1990, Boyd’s heirs donated the structure to the Middletown Historical Society, but before it could be restored, it had to be moved.
Eleven years later, after being dismantled and trucked to the new Paradise Park location and then rebuilt by a team that included Newport architect Richard Long and millwright specialist Andrew Shrake of Dennis, Massachusetts, Boyd’s Mill was dedicated at a great celebration. It is now on the National Register of Historic Places.
On Sundays, visitors can see for themselves what kind of life the three-generations of Boyd’s led. Volunteers from the Society share all they know about the Boyd family, and in fair winds, they demonstrate the step-by-step process of grinding corn.
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In the end, Benjamin Boyd was the last miller to earn his living there. His reminiscences appeared in the Fall River Herald News. In 1942, he wrote about knowing how fickle island weather can be and the importance of having steady nerves while running the mill in a sudden gale.
When the miller was running his mill … in one of these storms, he could not tell whether in five minutes a heavier squall would wreck him, or whether he might be in the midst of a calm.
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Shipwright or millwright? The mill’s builder, John Peterson, cut the oak timbers for his mill across the bay, bringing them to Aquidneck Island on his schooner. When the vessel was wrecked, he salvaged oak knees and timbers from it to finish constructing his mill. The total height of the mill 38 feet. It is 18 feet wide at the bottom and 15 feet in diameter at the top.
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