Second, during the Revolution an American soldier who kept a diary of his experiences mentioned being “near the windmill, in Williamsburgh” one night before the siege of Yorktown.
Finally, an unknown French mapmaker, presumed to be in the service of Rochambeau, drew a very careful and complete billeting map of Williamsburg and the buildings in it. On this map appears a representation of a post mill just on the southern edge of the town.
Beyond these three items the story of milling in Williamsburg has to rest on careful deduction, the cross checking of every pertinent fact, the following of every lead, the consultation of every source—in sum, on a mass of research.
For example, evidence as to how the Williamsburg windmills functioned has long since disappeared. Because Robertson’s mill was within the city, however, it can be said with reasonable certainty that it operated as a custom mill, not a plantation mill.
MILLING AND THE VIRGINIA PLANTERS
If not much is now known about milling within the confines of Williamsburg itself, a great deal can be related of milling in the larger expanse of the Virginia colony. For despite the late start of merchant milling in the tobacco colonies, the grinding of grain for export had become big business by the time of the Revolution. In 1766 Governor Fauquier noted in a report to the Board of Trade (albeit almost as an afterthought) that the Virginians “daily set up mills to grind their wheat into flour for exportation.”
Such merchant mills, as advertisements in the Virginia Gazette attest, were usually connected with a plantation. Advertisements for the lease or sale of other farm property repeatedly contained the phrase “convenient to church and mills.” A mill scheduled to be built near Robert Carter’s on Nomini Creek—too near, he thought—would be the twenty-fourth within twelve miles on the Virginia side of the Potomac, an area that included no towns.
Carter’s “new mill,” completed in 1773, had a capacity of 25,000 bushels a year and cost him £1,450 in materials and wages. Carter also built in connection with the mill a bake house, the two ovens of which would bake one hundred pounds of flour at each heating. And he hired a cooper to “get up 10 good flower caskes per day” at an annual salary of £30.
Carter estimated his total outlay to keep the mill running at £5,000 per year, but the return was correspondingly great. The mill was a success from the start, and the Revolution soon added to its importance and its business. For several months in 1780 the mill worked eighteen hours a day grinding for the state, and Carter received six bushels of corn a day in toll. After 1785, however, Carter found it unprofitable to work the mill himself, and leased it to other operators.
Although on a smaller scale, George Washington also engaged in merchant milling. His Dogue Run mill, formerly a plantation mill only, was rebuilt in 1769 as a merchant mill. He installed a pair of French burr stones to grind the export flour, while a pair of Cologne stones did the country work and ground Washington’s own crops. Washington also provided a nearby dwelling house and garden for the miller and his family, who could raise chickens for their own table but never for sale.