Two men on a mill

by A. Harold Castonguay

First, we have to pull out the temporary retaining walls next to the tailrace, dig down below the pool, and put in a brand new wall, so that the rush of water will not tear away the earth next to the State Highway which would stop all the dear people from dashing about on the State Highway, especially the tourists.

I have often wondered what I would do if this mill doesn’t work when we get through. All sorts of suggestions have come from skeptics, the practical ones being to install a gas engine or electric motor to turn the stones. I doubt very much that we will ever do this. We are still convinced that if the early settlers and tenacious people could make this work with their cumbersome and crude tools, we can do the same thing with our so-called improved modern equipment and tools.

So now the flume is finished, a good solid bridge is built over it, and we must go and dig out and repair the tailrace and get ready to place the new turbine in its position.

This tailrace runs from underneath the building, from the bottom of the turbine out to the pool near the State Highway and then under the State Road into Lewis Bay. All the rocks which attempted to retain the embankment adjoining the State Highway were merely dumped there by someone hoping they would shore up the embankment. The result was, over the years they were gradually disturbed and found their way into the pool, and, of course, a lot of the dirt and sand from the embankment slipped off into the pool and the bottom of the tailrace.

So we again call in our stout and genial mason, Joe Carapezza, and a machine to dig out the rocks, dirt and mud. Putting the rocks back into a firm and complete wall turned out to be a little more of a job than we planned on.

Every one of the rocks, some of which weighed from five hundred to a thousand pounds, had to be handled manually, as there was no room for cranes and the like to lift them up and work them around. After about two weeks of this, we finally managed to build a fairly solid retaining wall next to the tailrace.

Just about this time the herring began their annual migration to their spawning ground, so we had to raise the level of the mill pond so that nature could take her course.

It would seem that every time a weekend came around there was either rain, snow, drizzle, or some other sort of foul weather, which didn’t help things along a bit.

In browsing through some old pamphlets by one Daniel Wing, a school master who taught school in Yarmouth about 1900, I ran across the following interesting paragraph:

“The old gristmill directly opposite the Captain Baxter residence was known as Baxter’s mill. It was at one time owned by Captain Timothy Baker, Senr., (born in the first half of the eighteenth century) and later by his son, Captain Joshua Baker, born in 1766. The mill pond was fed by several streamlets which came down from the north, but its work having been completed, the dam has been allowed to wash away; and, there being some question as to ownership, we learn that this once beautiful and interesting spot is now grown up with rushes. It seems as if the water power here might, in this day of improved machinery, be made again to serve a useful purpose.”