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Souther Tide Mill Quincy, Mass.

by John Goff

Tide Mill Institute

July 15, 1998

The Souther Tide Mill site accommodated various commercial activities over hundreds of

years. The story of the mill that operated on tidal power is central to the history of the site.

Ebenezer Thayer’s tidal grist mill at the Souther Tide Mills site, built about 1806, was a

major agricultural landmark in the early community because it was used by local farmers to

grind a variety of grains into meal, flour and bran. Portions of the earliest grist mill

(including the first floor framing, some recycled charred timbers and the mill dam) are

believed to survive on the site beneath and within the fabric of the 1840s re-built structure.

Built in 1806 and repaired after a fire in 1846, the Souther Tide Mill is the last of four tide

mills known to have been built in Quincy, representing the continuation of a local historical

tradition that its roots in the 17th century.

Tide Mills

Tide mills — industrial buildings designed to perform work using tidal water-power —

were started in the United States by the first Puritans who settled Boston in 1630, bringing

to New England a technology that had been established in England many centuries before.

The earliest known tide mill was established near Mill Creek in Boston in 1631. With the

spread of English settlement, the technology was transferred north and south along the

coast to hundreds of sites.

Undated newspaper photo of Souther tide mill. (Courtesy of Friends of Souther Tide Mill.)

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Most tide mills were built where there was inadequate sloped land to construct river mills

at waterfalls, as well as where the advantages of good maritime accessibility and ever-

present water supply would offset the principal disadvantage, which was that workers’

schedules had to be structured around a changing natural tide cycle. The most common

type of New England tide mill—and that which is represented by the Souther Tide Mills—

was one which used stockpiled water from a mill pond re-filled periodically by ocean tides.

The reservoir of impounded water is an energy bank waiting to be used.

The Quincy tide mill was created by building a dam across the mouth of the Town River,

creating a large salt water millpond eight or nine feet deep at each high tide. The mean tidal

range at Quincy is 9.5 feet (2.9 meters)

Drawing by John Goff in The Souther Tide Mill of Quincy, MA: A Brief History & Its Significance by John Goff. Report for Friends of Souther Tide Mill, 1988.

Aerial photo from The Souther Tide Mill of Quincy, MA: A Brief History & Its Significance by John Goff. Report for Friends of Souther Tide Mill, 1988.

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The mean tidal range is the vertical difference between the highest high tide and the lowest

low tide. In other words, it is the difference in height between high and low tides. The most

extreme tidal range will occur around the time of the full or new moons, when gravity of

both the Sun and the Moon are pulling the same way (new moon), or the exact opposite way

(full moon). This type of tide is known as a spring tide. During neap tides, when the Moon

and the Sun’s vectors make a right angle at the Earth, the difference between high and low

tides is smaller.

A central opening in the mill dam fitted with large one-way gates crafted from wood

guaranteed that the mill pond would retain its level, even after the tide receded. At or near

low-tide, the stockpiled water in the pond was run off through a sluice-way to provide

power to the grind stone until the water rose again to a level that slowed the movement of

the horizontal wheel.

Whatever the dam, pond and waterwheel

configuration of any particular mill complex, the

means of obtaining and releasing water was fairly

universal. The power of the incoming tide would

force open one or more pairs of tide gates (or valve

flaps) to admit the flow of water into the millpond.

These gates would automatically close by natural

force of the water current turning at ebb tide. This

impounded both the tidewater and any incoming

fresh-water from behind. Once the tide dropped

below the level of the water inside the dam, the

trapped water could be released through a sluice to

fall on the wheel and set it in motion.

Even in coastal areas with freshwater falls nearby,

tide mills offered the unique advantage of a water

supply that was entirely dependable. They were

typically free from the risks of drought or upstream

diversions into manmade reservoirs, canals or

irrigation flow of water into ditches. Compared to

windmills, tide mills had the obvious advantage of

Top: water flowing into the mill pond. Bottom: when the tide starts to recede the gates shut automatically. (Illustrations from The Spice Mill on the Marsh by Thomas P. Smith, 1925.)

The concept of tidal range. (From Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Tidal_Range.jpg. By Jared at English Wikipedia.)

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not depending on the strength or direction of the wind on a given day. Indeed, too-strong

winds were a hazard to the sails of windmills. They were often cheaper to locate and build

than water mills because no dam was needed; however, they were usually more expensive

to keep in good working order over the long term.

The most efficient operation of the mill occurred when the tide fell to a point below the level

of the entire waterwheel, allowing it to "run clear." The wheel would continue to turn until

either the water behind the dam fell below the level of the sluice, or more frequently, until

the water level in front of the dam rose above the sluice at high tide.

Of course, tide mills had the major disadvantage that the tides, while predictable, occurred

at different times of the day. Humans naturally follow the sun to determine their activities,

but tide millers worked according to a tidal calendar chiefly determined by the moon. The

lunar day being 24 hours and 50 minutes long placed the tide miller among the earliest

categories of rotating-shift workers. At harvest and other peak times, all-night duties were

common. A tide miller would need to split his "full-night's sleep" into nap periods during the

twice-daily incoming tides. The miller would have to wait to begin milling until the mill

pond was full and the tide had dropped below the bottom of the wheel or turbine. Then the

miller could mill as the tide continued to fall to it lowest point and rose back up to the

bottom of the wheel. When the water rose to the bottom of the wheel, it would impede the

turning of the wheel. It seems that this schedule would result in working shifts of about 6

hours on and 6 hours off, the cycle being about an hour later each day.

Mills on rivers and streams could make use of the drop in the elevation of the land to allow

water to flow over the top of a water wheel, called an overshot wheel.

Overshot water wheel. (From "Medieval Roots of the Industrial Revolution” by Terry S. Reynolds. Scientific American, Vol. 2512, No. 1, July, 1984, 122-131.)

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Tide mills more often used undershot wheels where the water would strike the underside

of the wheel or most commonly horizontal water wheels connected by vertical shafts to

millstones or other machines.

Undershot water wheel. (From "Medieval Roots of the Industrial Revolution” by Terry S. Reynolds. Scientific American, Vol. 2512, No. 1, July, 1984, 122-131.)

Horizontal water wheel. (From "Medieval Roots of the Industrial Revolution” by Terry S. Reynolds. Scientific American, Vol. 2512, No. 1, July, 1984, 122-131.)

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One advantage of the horizontal waterwheel was that its axle was easily extended to turn

millstones directly, without need for conversion gearing. Another advantage was that it was

highly resistant to freezing, allowing the Quincy mill to work year-round.

A tub wheel is a horizontal water wheel with blades that revolves in a wooden or masonry

tub enclosure.

In order to grind the grist, a pair of millstones were needed. With so much granite available

in Quincy, the stones used at the Souther Mill probably were quarried locally. However

most millers came to consider French burhstone the best material. Pieces of millstones

were exported to America, and millers fitted and cemented these pieces together and bound

them with iron hoops and backed them with plaster. The average diameter of a millstone

was about 4 feet.

The millstone picker created furrows using a mill pick or bill on both the upper stone, called

the runner, and the lower stone, called the bed stone or nether. Furrows were a pattern of

cuts on the bottom of the runner and on the top of the nether. The area left uncut between

the furrows was called the land. Earlier patterns were sickle-shaped; later ones were made

with a variety of straight-line designs. Stones needed constant re-sharpening since dull

stones produced coarse cakey flour, preventing the sifting of the the flour into grades of

fineness (bolting). A pair of millstones needed to be redressed every three or four week and

in that time a pair of millstones could grind two to three hundred thousand pounds of grain.

The edges of opposing furrows acted like shears, ripping off the grain’s outer husk. The

furrows acted as channels to pass the ground flour to the edge of the stone as well as air

vents to carry away the heat generated by the friction of the stones. The land did the actual

grinding of the kernel into flour.

Stones were moved around with a crane, grappling hooks and screw hoist.

Millstone picker's tools laid out on the face of a millstone. (From The History and Future of Naturally Powered Buildings by David Larkin. New York: Universe Publishing, 2000.)

Furrows on millstone faces. (From The History and Future of Naturally Powered Buildings by David Larkin. New York: Universe Publishing, 2000.)

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The stones were contained within a wooden vat with a hopper on top. The grain would be

fed into the hopper from which it dropped through the hole in the runner stone to be

ground between the stones. The ground meal would be channeled out through a wooden

spout and stored in sacks.

These mills were ideally suited to foster trade through their location on the coast or in tidal

estuaries, giving them easy access to shipping.

The Fire of 1846

Prior to the arrival of the railroad, Henry Souther had been doing a good business at the

Souther Tide Mills grist mill. Extensive amounts of grain were brought to the mill by ship

and cart and were processed to create a wide assortment of flours, meals, and brans. Henry

Souther had bought out his junior partner, Micah Humphrey, and was sole proprietor of the

“old stand” Souther’s grain store at the corner of Washington and Coddington Streets. The

Souther shipyard did a bustling business, launching schooners, brigs , stone sloops and an

occasional full-rigged ship. A saw mill near the grist mill cut logs into plank and boards.

Industry and prosperity halted abruptly in December, 1846. Shortly before Christmas that

year, Henry Souther received news that both the tidal grist mill and the tidal saw mill were

destroyed by fire. An unidentified “incendiary”—possibly a new urban drunk &

disorderly—torched the buildings in the night, and the valuable complex with its contents

was proved to be a near-total loss come morning. Henry Souther had been insured

Millstone terminology. (From “A Glossary of Mill Terms” by Theodore R. Hazen. https://www.angelfire.com/journal/ pondlilymill/glossary.html)

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adequately for his customers’ lost grain, but he had inadequate coverage to replace the

wood industrial buildings.

Townspeople of Quincy made donations, and Henry Souther sold his “carry-all” (a form of

horse-drawn wagon) and rented rooms to raise additional funds. The project to rebuild the

grist mill was further supported by the fact that the fire had not burned the whole mill

privilege entirely. The dam, stone wharves, first floor framing, and some of the first floor

planking survived in good enough shape to be re-used. Charred evidence of that horrible

fire still exists on the underside of the mill, where old floorboards were flipped and re-used.

The pre-1846 tidal saw mill was not rebuilt until some thirty years later.

Henry and his younger brother, Edward B. Souther, were “adventurous and enterprising”

men who left Quincy for California in 1850 after gold was discovered there the previous

year. Both of them returned east by the mid-1850s, and E.B. Souther took over the

operation of the tidal grist mill. Souther’s nephew, Josiah Adams Fenno, visited the mill in

1857-1858 and recorded his observations. These insights are helpful to imagining the

scene of 150 years ago. “Some of the corn was brought by schooners. I remember one lying

at the mill full to the hatches, and the corn being hoisted up to a window in the gable. There

were probably other cargoes, but most of it came by rail, was carried to the mill and ground,

then as meal taken back to the store by a team … [The mill] was a clean, sweet place, the

floor and stairs smooth and polished like a dance floor. The rumble of the stones, the jar of

the mill, the smell of the meal and over all a fine dust that covered the inside of the building,

it all comes back through the years … On the second floor were the bins full of corn, two sets

of mill stones … each at the top of a vertical shaft at the bottom of which [beneath the mill]

was a horizontal wheel against which a flume directed the water from a gate in the bottom

of the dam over which the mill was built.”

The expansion of wheat farming into the northwest states and Canada and the introduction

of new technology in the grain-producing regions of the country brought a huge change to

the industry of flour production. Beginning about 1870 “new process” milling turned

Minneapolis into the new capital of the American wheat belt. Many small mills were put of

business by the new western challenges, and most of these were older traditional mills

located in the east.

Around 1875 Joseph Loud & Company became a tenant in the grist mill. Loud owned a feed

store operation near the Quincy railroad depot and had earlier been associated with the

Southers in helping them import grain and export cornmeal by railroad. Following the Civil

War, Loud installed a new steam-powered grist mill in his downtown store. According to

Fenno, this single action by Loud effectively ended the Souther tidal grist mill’s long career

as an operating grist mill both because the Souther mill could not compete commercially

with the new steam power and because Loud was located closer to the Old Colony Railroad.

The Southers apparently made the best of the situation by securing Loud as a long-term

tenant.

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Then sometime after 1877 but before 1888, John Souther, Sr., erected a new saw-mill on the

site of the ancient Souther Shipyard Saw Mill, which was lost along with most of the old grist

mill in the fire of 1846. The new saw mill was run by tide power, off one of the old

waterwheels beneath the grist mill. The building survived until the fire of 2007 as the

Quincy Lumber Company “Planing Mill.”

The Souther Tide Mill site was sold to Benjamin Johnson in 1888, and it is likely that the

original interior machinery of the grist mill was taken out at that time to accommodate

lumber storage. Johnson operated and expanded the sawmill and lumber yard business

over the next two decades.

For a pictorial history slideshow about the Souther Mill, visit:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pdp6_S47hfc&feature=em-subs_digest-vrecs

References

John Goff. The Souther Tide Mill of Quincy, MA: A Brief History & Its Significance. Report for

Friends of Souther Tide Mill, 1988.

Hobart Holly. "History of Souther Tide Mill."

https://southertidemill.wordpress.com/history/.

Historical American Engineering Record. Mass 11-QUI, 11-. “Souther Tide Mill Dam.”

https://www.loc.gov/item/ma1294/.

"An Act to authorize Ebenezer Thayer, of Quincy, and others to build a Dam across Quincy

Town River, so called." The Perpetual Laws of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts ... Vol IV.

Containing the Laws from January 1801, to February, 1807, inclusive. (Boston, 1807), 365.

William Pattee. A History of Old Braintree and Quincy. (Quincy, 1876), 495.

George Whitney. Some Account of the Early History and Present State of the Town of Quincy in

the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. (Quincy, 1827), 47-48.

W. French. Plan of Quincy Surveyed 1794-5. Massachusetts Archives on Digital

Commonwealth.

https://www.digitalcommonwealth.org/search/commonwealth:2227np632

Henry F. Walling. Map of the Town of Quincy, Norfolk County, Mass.: Surveyed By Order of the

Town (1857).

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About the Author (Updated 2021)

John Goff is a retired historian, architectural historian, restoration architect and water

powers enthusiast who grew up in Bath, Maine, in the early 1970s. He later studied History

and American Civilization at Brown University in Rhode Island as well as architecture both

in Boston, Mass., and Oregon. First introduced to historic tide mill sites in Winnegance and

Phippsburg, Maine, Goff later became an historic water powers specialist while working

with the Maine Shakers at Sabbathday Lake. However, he came to recognize that there was

very little written about New England's tide mills by the 1990s – when hired to prepare two

restoration plans for the Souther Tide Mills in Quincy, Mass. To remedy the deficiency, he

began corresponding with tide mill operators and historians all over the world, and

published a newsletter called Tide Mill Times. He also organized conferences of tide mill

scholars in Quincy and Dorchester, Mass. Beginning in 2005, a new and larger Tide Mill

Institute was formed with the cooperation and support of Earl Taylor (president of the

Dorchester Historical Society) and Bud Warren (teacher and tide mill researcher in Maine).

TMI continues the work of promoting knowledge of historic tide mills by hosting

conferences, while supporting research and historic preservation. Since retiring from the

preservation field in 2019, Goff winters in Florida where for fun he pursues art photography

while crafting new slide shows on various historic subjects.

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