The Miller in Eighteenth-Century Virginia: An Account of Mills & the Craft of Milling, as Well as a Description of the Windmill near the Palace in Williamsburg — John Stuart Mill — John Shaqi
The Miller in Eighteenth-Century Virginia: An Account of Mills & the Craft of Milling, as Well as a Description of the Windmill near the Palace in Williamsburg
John Stuart Mill · en
In colonial Virginia the social position of the miller was less subject
to violent fluctuation than would seem to have been the case in New
England. In fact, the Virginia miller was uniformly a man of low estate,
far inferior to the owner-operator of a mill in a New England town, and
outranked also by the sturdy bourgeois millers of the middle colonies.
Those who worked for wages enjoyed few privileges, while the many
Virginia millers who were either Negro slaves or white indentured
servants had little social standing. The records contain a goodly number
of references to runaway millers who were indentured servants, convict
servants, or slaves; if any Virginia miller in colonial times rose to a
position of importance, no record has yet been found.
_THE SAID WILLIAM ROBERTSON’S WIND MILL ..._
Most windmills belonged to one or other of the two basic categories:
post mill or tower mill. The truth of this general rule is easily proved
by the exception—the composite mill that belonged to neither group, but
was in effect a post mill set on top of a tower. Another truism—perhaps
without any exception—states that since every mill was custom designed
and made by hand, no two were exactly alike.
Every English and colonial millwright had his favorite tricks of design
and construction, and often the mills of a region showed a family
resemblance that distinguished them from the mills of the neighboring
shire or colony. In addition, improvements and refinements were
developed from time to time and gradually put into use. Many of them,
like the grain elevating machinery invented by Oliver Evans of Delaware
and the adjustable lattice sails of the English inventor Sir William
Cubbitt, came long after 1716-1723, the years during which Robertson’s
original mill was built.
Clearly, this is not the place in which to describe the almost infinite
variety in structure and operation of windmills in different places and
at succeeding stages in the perfection of the mill as a machine. A list
of a few easily procured books appears on page 32 for those who wish to
pursue the subject further. This little pamphlet must be limited to a
description of the reconstructed mill in Williamsburg and how it
operates.