Mill hands,
in the persons of Colonial Williamsburg interpreters
and tradespeople, unfurl the sails over the vanes
of the towering wind-powered machine at the rear of
the
Peyton Randolph House. |
On a cool sunny day in a steady breeze,
Robertson’s Windmill swings to life. Its huge
arms twirl and its giant gears thump and its millstones
spin. Mammoth and simple, the mill is a powerful creation
made mostly of wood—like a giant’s plaything
constructed from an enormous Tinker Toy set.
It’s a colossal low-tech machine that proudly
displays all its outsize parts. Modern technology
is not so brazen. Today’s designers cover the
mechanisms of their machines in metal and their computers
in hard plastic. A windmill reveals all at a glance.
Ed Schultz, the supervisor of Colonial Williamsburg’s
rural trades, says a windmill reduced to its basics
is just two big grooved disks of rock, grinding grain
between them. Any visitor can look inside, study its
cogs and shafts and in minutes understand its operation.
|
Robertson’s Windmill is also a show. Grain crackles
as it feeds onto the millstones. The massive wind shaft
whirrs as it carries the power of the rotating arms into
the mill. Stones whoosh softly. Sails pop. White corn dust
fills the air. Watching visitors as they watch the mill
is entertaining. They always seem captivated by the sifter.
Often, they tap their feet in time to its steady, pounding
rhythm.
Nobody at Colonial Williamsburg knows better than Neal
Black the sights, sounds, smells, and delights of a windmill.
For more than thirty years, he ran Robertson’s Windmill,
mastered it, maintained it, cleaned it. But the time came
for him to retire in late spring 2002. He visits, however,
and is on call to answer questions and help with technical
problems.
Windmills were operating in Western Europe by the late
1100s. During the ensuing centuries, they were common in
Spain, Holland, and parts of England. In their heyday, windmills
turned out flour, pumped water, and spun electrical generators—which
they are doing again.
| On the eve of the Industrial Revolution,
inventors refined mill technology, improving sail
mechanisms in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth
centuries. Windmills began to fade with the development
of steam power in the 1800s and went into rapid retreat
in the twentieth century with the perfection of the
internal combustion engine and electrical motors.
The first English settlers in North America were
aware of windmills and their laborsaving benefits.
But no one built one in the first colony, Virginia,
for fourteen years. That was in 1621, when Governor
George Yeardley erected a windmill on his James River
plantation, Flowerdieu Hundred, where a replica stands
today. The Massachusetts settlers constructed their
first windmill in 1631. |
Interpreter
Edward Schultz at the gears, hopper, and millstone.
|
Virginia has excellent sites for wind-powered mills. Points
of land jutting into Chesapeake Bay and into the broad waters
of such rivers as the James and Potomac provide clear-air
spots ideal for windmills.
The early Virginia mills tended to be on plantations.
Generally small, they served the planter and his neighbors.
During the late 1600s, however, mills began to flourish
in the Old Dominion. Mill construction and operation boomed
in the next century as Virginians began growing wheat and
exporting flour. Some operations were sizeable. For example,
Robert Carter completed a mill in 1773 with an annual production
capacity of 25,000 bushels.
David Nielsen
leans out to chat with
Terry Thon as Schultz strolls past.
Note Emily, the Robertson Windmill
mascot, beneath the cross member. |
Comparatively little is known about
the Williamsburg-area windmills. Researchers know
that during the first quarter of the century the town
had a windmill owned by William Robertson, a lawyer
prominent in civic life.
Historians believe Robertson’s Windmill was
at the corner of North England and Scotland Streets.
He deeded it to John Holloway in 1723.
Scholars are confident that Robertson’s was
a post mill—one of the two prevalent types of
North American windmills. Post mills had a house-like
structure that bore the machinery and sails. It stood
on a solidly anchored post of large timbers. Balanced
on the post, the house could be positioned to point
the arms into the wind. Millers moved it by pushing
a tail pole, which ran from the mill to the ground
and often rode on a wheel. |
| Then there was the tower
mill. Tower mills had fixed bases that contained their
grinding stones and gears. The upper level, where
the sails flew, was moveable.
Odds are good that Robertson hired a millwright
to build his structure, Schultz said. In the 1700s,
mill construction took the knowledge and the skills
of a carpenter and housewright as well as a grasp
of rudimentary engineering. The millwright had to
understand a mill’s operation, the relationships
of its components, and the strength and balance a
mill took to withstand the stresses of the wind, weather,
and its own machinery.
It is a logical conclusion that Robertson chose to
run his business as a custom mill, Black said. It
ground grain as a service, charging by the bushels
of grain processed. A legislative act in 1705 set
the grinding fee at one-sixth of the corn or one-eighth
of the wheat. Larger mills tended to operate as merchant
mills. These ventures bought grain, processed it,
and sold the flour, often for export. |
Nielsen and
rural tradesperson Ramona
Vogel point out to costumed little Molly Carr, the
daughter of interpreter Lyndon
Howlett, how the vanes spin. |
Robertson probably never considered running the windmill
himself, Schultz said. He had his legal career, his civic
duties, and his place in society. Moreover, eighteenth-century
mill operation was not for amateurs.
Modern Americans might assume a miller required little
training or skill. But, Schultz said, a windmill was a powerful,
demanding, unforgiving, and difficult-to-control machine.
A miller had three ways to adjust its operation. He could
set the sails to conform to weather conditions. He spread
canvas in light winds and reduced it when wind speed rose.
He could regulate the flow of grain to the millstones. And
he could adjust the distance between the stones.
Nielsen
demonstrates how the windmill’s
wheeled tail pole is used to turn the sails into
the breeze. The smaller pole raises and
lowers the first-floor stairs.
No gauges, dials, or computer screens told the miller
how to get the optimum mix of adjustments. He had to develop
a sixth sense about the machinery, Black said. That sense
came only with years of experience and a full appreciation
of the interplay of dozens of factors.
Weather always presented the miller his greatest challenges
because he relied on it but couldn’t control it, Black
said. The weather determined when and how hard a miller
worked as well as his productivity. “You have to know
how to deal with the elements—wind and rain,”
Black said. “You have to be able to look at the clouds
and see what sort of weather was coming.”
Without modern controls, the miller also had to rely on
his senses with the machinery. If he perceived slight changes
in movement, sound, or smell, he could adjust, shift, and
anticipate, squeezing a little more performance out of one
area and, perhaps, averting a crisis somewhere else. Anything
could signal a problem. A sound might change or stop. A
rhythm might shift.
Thon and Wayne Randolph
examine
a shock of wheat ready for threshing.
Nothing, however, got a miller’s attention faster
than the “hot” smell of millstones rubbing.
“It’s a distinctive smell,” Schultz said.
“It’s like a great, big exclamation point.”
At the end of the word “trouble.”
As an overseer, the miller had to ensure his workers were
alert and busy and pitched in periodically to keep the process
going. If time allowed, the miller instructed his apprentice,
who did most of the heavy lifting. On the basis of his experience,
Black said that a miller couldn’t relax. Everything
in the windmill seems to demand his full attention.
Interpreters
Jonathan Hallman and
Vogel unfurl the mill sails.
|
For masters of this machine, a windmill’s
output could be impressive. Black perfected a system
that worked best with three men, including himself.
Under optimum conditions, a steady wind and a lively
team, Black could produce 180–200 pounds of
cornmeal an hour.
Major repairs required a millwright. Most millers,
however, probably could stitch a sail or fix a slight
gear problem, Black said. A miller also might “dress”
millstones, keeping the furrows in the face of the
disks deep and the lands rough.
Millers typically had to know bookkeeping and had
to have skills for getting along with customers and
the mill owner. They also had to know if grain was
spoiled and whether it was ground finely enough. |
Black said the longer a miller worked at his craft, the
more the mill revealed to him. “You have to use all
your senses; you’ve got to feel what you’re
doing. You have to use sight and smell. If you smell something
hot, then you’re in trouble because something is rubbing
that shouldn’t be. You don’t really need to
touch anything. You’ve got to feel the building as
the sails move and the machinery moves. The more you work
in a windmill, the more you know. And the more you know,
the more you can feel.”
Ed Crews contributed to the summer
2002 journal “How Much Is That in Today’s
Money,” a story about determining the modern value
of colonial currency.
Learn more:
|
Historic Triangle