by Tim Richards
Author's note: This posting follows three earlier postings on this website to complete the chronology of the Truro (Mass.) Tide Mill from 1790 to 1878, at least partially filling the historical gap. Thus far, the research has been based primarily on maps, histories, census records, deeds, and probate documents. However, if a proposed tidal restoration project proceeds and requires excavation around the mill site, that project could provide an exciting opportunity for an archaeological study of the mill.
Small-scale grist mills powered by the tide had little place in the industrializing economy of the late 19th century. The demise of the Truro Tide Mill, however, occurred earlier than that of most other North American tide mills.
When the proprietors upgraded the Truro Tide Mill in 1844 (see “A Better Mill for Truro” on this website) the Truro fishing fleet and associated industries were prospering. The town’s population had increased twenty-four percent between 1830 and 1840 and was continuing to grow.
To be sure, storm clouds were on the horizon. Truro grain production declined between 1840 and 1850, even as the town’s economy and population grew. Millers should have been the first to spot this development, but perhaps the decline was not apparent by the early 1840s, even to millers.
The mill owners certainly knew of another threat. Access to the town harbor became a pressing issue as the fishing fleet transitioned to deeper-draft schooners. Because of shifting sandbars, the new schooners could not navigate the harbor’s channel at low tide. As a result, by the 1850s Truro’s fishing fleet began to shift to Provincetown, with its sheltered, deep-water port (see Chart 1). Truro’s population, driven by the fortunes of the fishing industry, dropped from 2,000 in 1850 to about 1,500 in 1860, and the decline continued into the 20th century.
Given these developments, the owners’ decision to re-invest in the mill in 1844 might appear rashly optimistic. Yet that decision was modestly successful for more than a dozen years. After the upgrade and through at least 1855, the Truro Tide Mill maintained sufficient business to support a miller, Anthony Snow Collins and evidence suggests that the value of the mill rebounded from $240 in 1840 to over $400 in 1856.
However, the improvement proved temporary, and the end came rapidly. Faced with a declining town population, reduced local agricultural output and the nationwide Panic of 1857, the tide mill went out of business. The 1884 History of Plymouth County, states that the tide mill was “abandoned before 1860 and taken down.” By the 1860 federal census, the only miller in Truro operated a windmill. That census recorded Anthony Snow Collins’ profession as “seaman” rather than “miller.”
In 1861, six mill proprietors sold 8 of the 41 shares, pegging the value of the mill complex at only about $120. At some point between 1861 and 1864 the mill pond was sub-divided into pie-slice lots through a “Deed of Division.” This deed converted the proprietors’ shares into individually-owned slices of the pond, which they could sell or cultivate.
Interestingly, the sale of a Mill Pond lot in 1864 included a requirement that the new owner maintain the dam and a ditch leading to the spout in the dam. This time-consuming maintenance would seem intended to preserve water flow to the mill. Possibly, therefore, the mill remained capable of operation into the mid-1860s. In any case, an 1867 deed definitively closes the chapter on the mill’s operations, referring to Mill Pond as “formerly the mill pond.”
The mill building appears to have remained standing through most of the following decade because deeds from 1874 and 1878 refer to the mill in describing property boundaries. The mill must then have been dismantled or moved before completion of the 1884 history. Over 150 mortared foundation stones remain in the vicinity of the mill site, although there is no clear evidence of whether these stones came from the mill.
The last significant components of the Truro Tide Mill were its mill stones, which lay abandoned on the site for more than fifty years. Many mill stones on Cape Cod enjoyed second careers as doorsteps, but one of the tide mill stones took on a different role. As noted in the first posting of this series, early in the 20th century Charles W. Snow repurposed one of the two mill stones as his family gravestone.
Memories of the Truro Tide Mill and its place in the town’s history faded. By 2013, a study for the planned expansion of tidal flows into Mill Pond sketched the history of the site without reference to the mill.
Notes
- Estate of Benjamin Hinckley, Jr., Barnstable County probate records, 1840.
- Estate of John Mayo, Jr., Barnstable County probate records, 1856. The $400 valuation is based on the assessed value of one share in the mill in 1856, assuming 41 total shares at that time, as there were five years later.
- Issac Small operated a windmill near Highland Light until 1866. Barnstable Patriot, Tuesday, June 12, 1866; p 1.
- A deed held in a private collection describes the sale of 8 shares by six owners; in the same year a 9th share in the estate of Allen Hinckley was similarly valued, Barnstable County probate records, 1861.
- Deed for Lot 25 of the Mill Pond. Barnstable County Registry of Deeds, Book 86; p 252.
- Barnstable Registry of Deeds, Book 93; p 101.
Previous Truro Tide Mill Posts by Tim Richards
“Discovering a Tide Mill in Truro”
“Cape Cod Mill Values: Tide vs. Wind”
“A Better Mill for Truro”
This article and Tim Richards’ other articles about the Truro tide mill have been incorporated into a single research paper, “Ebbs and Flows of a Cape Cod Tide Mill,” published in the December, 2022, issue of International Molinology. This paper is available here with permission from International Molinology.