Quincy’s Souther Tide Mill

Every day, thousands of commuters making their way in and out of Boston pass within 200 feet of the historic Souther tide mill site next to the Southern Artery (Route 3A) in Quincy, Mass. What had started as Ebenezer Thayer’s tide-powered grist mill about 1806 passed to John Souther in 1815 and became a grist mill and a saw mill. The site also had a shipyard, a wharf and a canal lock. Steam power and the railroad brought the end of the grist mill business shortly after the Civil War, but the sawmill continued operating until much later.

The only building remaining on the site today was mostly constructed in and after 1854 to repair and augment the fire-damaged but partially surviving 1806 grist mill. Thanks to efforts by the nonprofit Friends of Souther Tide Mill, the building has been partially restored and may someday open as a working grist mill and museum.

John Goff, an historic preservation professional and co-founder of the Tide Mill Institute, wrote two comprehensive studies and reports between ca. 1991 and 1995, which formed the basis of this edited paper. John’s paper traces the history of the site and buildings, and it explains how tidal flow powered milling and sawing machinery at the site.

Read John Goff’s “Souther Tide Mill”

For additional Souther Mill history and information about supporting Friends of Souther Tide Mill, visit southertidemill.org.

Souther tide mill location in Quincy, Mass., about 10 miles south of Boston. (Google Maps.) Click for full size map.

Undated newspaper photo of Souther Mill, probably mid 20th Century. (Courtesy of Friends of Souther Tide Mill.)

Sketch by John Goff showing how the Souther Mill site may have looked in the mid-1800s. It consisted of a grist mill, saw mill, shipyard, wharf and canal lock.

Walter Minchinton’s “Tidemills of Rhode Island”

by Patrick Malone, Professor Emeritus, Brown University

1880s photo of John Kelley’s Barrington, R.I., tide mill on the cover of the February 1998 *Rhode Island History*. (Click to enlarge.) “Tidemills of Rhode Island” appeared on pages 20-27 of the issue. (Cover reproduced with permission from Rhode Island Historical Society.)

Walter Edward Minchinton (1921-1996) was a British industrial archaeologist and economic historian. In 1964, after teaching for 16 years at University College Swansea, he became head of the new Economic History Department and Professor of Economic History at the University of Exeter. His academic publication record includes numerous studies that he authored, co-authored, or edited. Following his retirement as an Emeritus Professor in 1986, he continued to do research and write about industrial topics, with a primary focus on tide mills.

The John Carter Brown Library at Brown University provided Professor Minchinton with a fellowship in 1993 that allowed him to study early American tide mills. While in Rhode Island, he investigated the tide mills of that state and collaborated with local scholars such as Dr. Richard Greenwood, one of the early members of the Tide Mill Institute. The Rhode Island Historical Society assisted Minchinton’s investigation and provided images for the article that he submitted to its journal, Rhode Island History.

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An Early New Netherland Tide Mill

Brouwer’s or Freeke’s Mill, illustrated in *Historic and Antiquarian Scenes* by Thomas Field.

A fair amount has been written about Brouwer’s (or Freeke’s) tide mill, built sometime before 1661 on Gowanus Creek in what is now Brooklyn, N.Y. In Gowanus: Brooklyn’s Curious Canal, Joseph Alexiou calls it the earliest tide mill in New Netherland, which consisted of today’s New Jersey, southeastern New York and part of Connecticut. Its early date is reason enough for the attention the mill has received from historians. But it is also closely associated with the 1776 Battle of Brooklyn, when Washington’s Continental Army set it on fire to keep it out of British hands.

Anyone wanting to learn more about the mill’s history would do well to start with a report, “Brouwer’s or Freeke’s Mill,” just produced by Earl Taylor of the Tide Mill Institute. His report is brief but provides some history and several references to helpful books, articles, illustrations and maps. Most of these references are easily accessible on line via the links provided in the report.

Read “Brouwer’s or Freeke’s Mill.“

New Tide Mill Video – Not Just for Locals

Even if you haven’t visited southern Maine, you’re still sure to enjoy The Tide Mills of Kittery, a new 34-minute video about tide mill technology and history, exploring several abandoned tide mill sites between Kennebunkport, Maine, and Hampton, N.H. By themselves, the superb aerial video segments by Jim White are enough to make viewing well worth your time.

This video premiered at the annual conference of the Tide Mill Institute, held on line in mid-November, and all are now invited to watch it by clicking the link at the end of this announcement. The drone’s eye views of tide mill sites gives us a new way to examine these somewhat hidden landscapes. After decades of tide mill enthusiasts dealing with muddy boots or looking down from satellites with Google Earth, we now have a fantastic tool to see this history in our own backyards and in great detail.

The tour starts with a welcome by Bud Warren, a Tide Mill Institute founder and former president. Bud explains the role of tide mills in American Colonial history and describes how ingenious millers trapped seawater from the incoming tide and then released it through a channel to power water wheels or turbines. This mechanical power was then harnessed to grind grain, saw timber and perform other tasks formerly requiring human or animal muscle power.

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Where Does Tide Power Come From?

by Robert Gordon

A recent article on a rehabilitated tide-power installation describes it as a “newly revived link to lunar energy.” It isn’t. Tide power comes from the earth, not the moon. Think of a toy gyroscope. Spin the wheel and it gradually slows because of friction in its bearings and the air drag on its disc. The friction of tidal currents flowing over the sea floor is doing this for the earth. How do we know it is happening? Because the speed of the earth’s rotation about its axis is slowing. That means our day is getting longer, and the number of days in a month is decreasing. Not by much, but enough to be seen in the time kept by modern precise atomic clocks. But we already knew this before those precise clocks were invented, from the sex life of clams. Here’s how.

*Hard clam cross section clearly showing growth rings. Courtesy Florida Museum of Natural History, University of Florida.*

Some species of bivalves add to their shells day-by-day. Section a shell and you can see growth rings, like those on the end of a log or tree stump. Clams have to reproduce themselves, fairly frequently since they don’t have long lives. For some species the sex act is triggered by the full moon. Reproduction takes a lot of energy. This leaves less for growing a shell. Every month the spacing of the growth rings in the clam’s shell gets smaller for a few days. Count the number of large rings in the shell between the bands of narrow ones and you have the number of days in the month, about 30 in a modern shell.

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Filming a Tide Mill Documentary

By Deane Rykerson
TMI Acting President

Fall is definitely here and I can now reflect on the interesting summer we have had filming The Tide Mills of Kittery Maine.

Drone photo: Remains of a tide mill dam, Chauncy Creek, Kittery Point, Maine. (Click to enlarge.)

This idea got its start last year when Fred Perry suggested we compile all of the presentations about Kittery tide mills from our annual 2019 conference. I thought it was a great idea but how much greater could this be if we included drone footage of our tide mill remnants. I thought about my friend and neighbor Jim White who is an excellent documentary filmmaker and FAA-licensed drone pilot. Then I realized that this was going to be a PROJECT (which usually involves MONEY). Luckily the Maine Humanities Council was offering bicentennial grants (Maine 200), so I thought, “let’s try.” After a commitment from the board of TMI and other sponsors, I got letters of support and completed the application by early January.

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