TIDE MILL INSTITUTE reports that it has received the bulk of the research papers of a noted tide mill historian. The late Peveril Meigs III began studying Atlantic Coast tide mills when he retired, but died after a decade or more of study and field work about tide mills. He wrote only a few articles about them. His extensive collection of data about this early American industrial technology has been unavailable for sixty years.
The institute reported this week that it has received the bulk of the Meigs papers – information about 300 tide mills from Nova Scotia to Florida – and will begin organizing them for eventual deposit in an academic museum archive. The papers were saved and carefully protected by his son, Willard Meigs of Lewisville, North Carolina, whose hope has been to have them preserved for scholars.
TIDE MILL INSTITUTE will sort and arrange the papers for study, according to Bud Warren, president of this educational and research organization dedicated to the history of tide mill technology. The group, consisting of scholars, historians, archaeologists and others, has been working for a decade to acquire the papers and make them available for study. “Meigs was an important and very careful researcher,” notes Warren. “His papers are the most significant existing collection of information about one of America’s first industrial activities. We’re honored to be able to get them ready for students, scholars and the general public.”
Warren indicated that a description of Meigs’ work will be presented at the institute’s fifteenth annual convention in Kittery, Maine, on October 25th and 26th. For more information about the collection, send email to info@tidemillinstitute.org.