The Saw Mills of Westchester County:
Through what is now the heart of the industrial and business district of the City of Yonkers, the Saw Mill River or Nepperhan, in its primitive state of natural beauty before the coming of the white men, tumbled precipitously to the Hudson River. In the course of time, mill ponds and water powers were developed at six different levels at this point where the combination of largest volume of stream flow and greatest drop afforded the maximum potentialities for power development.
From the broad expanse of the Hudson, there was a navigable estuary to the foot of the rapids. Here was the combination of natural advantages on which the beginnings and later growth of the present city of Yonkers were founded. Northward from Yonkers at intervals along the stream, mills were established at what is now Woodlands, at Eastview, Hawthorne, and at Chappaqua where there were two mill ponds adjacent to the road leading to the old Quaker Meeting House. Of the two last named, the larger one known as the old saw mill pond, was formed in a natural basin at the headwaters of the Saw Mill River twenty miles north of its confluence with the Hudson and about 450 feet above sea level.
A considerable detailed history of the Yonkers mills, industries, and their ownerships appears in Scharf’s History of Westchester County and Allison’s History of Yonkers, but little appears to have been written about the mills at locations farther upstream. A fully detailed history of all the mills would fill a sizable volume, for there were many changes in ownership.
At times the mills were operated by their proprietors and again by lessees or tenants. With the opening of the West and the decline of farming in Westchester County in the decades following the Civil War, the old grist mills and saw mills could not be profitably operated. The scope of this article is to describe briefly the location of the sites with some mention of the ownerships. An atlas published by F. W. Beers in 1867 has been chosen as one of the principal reference sources because all of the old water-power mills were in operation at that time. Various later atlases of Westchester County show changing ownerships and the abandonment of some of the mills.
A Primitive Mill by purchase from the Indians confirmed by patent from the Dutch West India Company in 1646, Adrian Van der Donck established his colony and sometime prior to 1649 erected a primitive mill to utilize the lower portion of the fall of the Saw Mill River. In 1672 Frederick Philipse made his first purchase of the Yonkers lands, and before 1700 had erected a mill on what had probably been the Van der Donck site. American independence led to the partition of the Philipse Manor lands.
In the course of time, there followed the diversified industries constituting to a large extent the economic foundation of the City of Yonkers. Following their confiscation by the State, the Manor House and a tract of 320 acres were sold in 1785 by the Commissioners of Forfeitures. The property subsequently passed through several ownerships and was sold at auction to Lemuel Wells in 1813.
A map of the Wells estate shows mill ponds at two levels and beyond its limits Guion’s Mills at the higher level known as the “Glen.” According to Scharf’s History, the Wells property included five mill buildings for grinding grain and plaster, for sawing, and for fulling. In 1835, Gordon’s Gazetteer of the State of New York gives the population of Yonkers as 1,879 people and lists one grist mill making corn meal for export, two saw mills, sawing pine, four saw mills sawing mahogany, and one hat manufactory making one hundred hat bodies per day.
There was daily communication with New York by steamboat and “very valuable water powers unemployed and for sale here.” The “Atlas of New York and Vicinity” published in 1867 from surveys by F. W. Beers shows the full development of the Yonkers Mill ponds at six different levels known as the First, Second, Third, Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Water Powers.
The “First” was the old Philipse pond at an elevation of 17.76 feet above the Hudson River level, and the Sixth Power in the “Glen” was at an elevation of 89.15. In addition to the grist and saw mills, the industries Included carpet, hat, and silk factories, machine shops, and a brewery. Ponds Were Drained By 1880 the growth of population was converting the mill ponds into sewage basins, with the added pollution of factory wastes. During the decade from 1880 to 1890, there developed an increasing public demand for relief from the resulting nuisance conditions, and in 1892 the mill ponds were drained. The largest industries, notably the carpet mills which had been founded to utilize the water power, substituted steam.
With the growth of these industries, water power on the scale furnished by the Saw Mill River and subject to fluctuating stream-flow inevitably became a minor factor. Upstream from Yonkers, the river bed follows a gently sloping gradient for about five miles and the next mill site was located at what is now Woodlands Lake.
A map of the Manor of Philipsburg prepared in 1785 shows that a saw mill had been established at the Woodlands location by John Lentz. This site was near the center of a 100-acre tract stretching for a considerable distance along the valley and purchased from the Commissioners of Forfeitures by Jonathan Odell. Joseph Howland, who had owned the Philipse Manor House and mill property from 1802 to 1813, purchased the Woodlands property in 1816 and for many years afterward it was known as Howland’s Pond and Howland’s Mills. The original mill on the west bank of the river about 200 feet south of the dam was torn down probably about 1860. In searching for Its exact site, the writer dug up a number of hand-forged, eight-inch, iron spikes which may have been used in the water wheel or mill construction.
The building frame was doubtless fastened with wooden pins. On the east side of the river about 950 feet south of the dam, a saw mill, grist mill and a cider mill were subsequently erected, and owned in 1867 by E. Riggs. This property was later included in the estate of Cyrus W. Field of Atlantic Cable fame. A more modern mill using both water and steam power was erected by Field but was not a commercial success and was torn down about 1894.
The Brown’s Mill
The sluiceway or canal leading from the dam, the mill foundations and tail-race may still be seen at what is now Woodlands Park. Destroyed By Fire Of the mills north of Woodlands, Brown’s Mills at Eastview were the largest and the last in operation by water power along the entire course of the Saw Mill River. At the time of its destruction by fire in 1920 this property included a grist mill, saw mill, cider mill and ice-house, all in active operation.
The early records of the site of Brown’s Mills show that in 1785 the Commissioners of Forfeiture sold 244 acres to John Yerks, “farmer,” who in turn sold off the mill site of 14 acres in 1793 for 91 pounds. By 1814 it had been developed to such an extent that Peter and George Lorillard paid $5,000 for the property. The Lorillards had a snuff mill on the Bronx River in what is now Bronx Park. Whether they contemplated establishing a snuff mill at Eastview is conjecture, but in 1817 they sold to Abraham Hammond. Timbers for the Hawthorne Reformed Church are said to have been sawed there in 1819. John O. Brown came into possession of the mill property in 1841. It was later owned by Caleb H. and Sylvester C. Horton, and acquired by Jackson Brown in 1870.
Mr. Brown and after his death his sons, operated the mills until they were burned in 1920. The ruins of the old stone dam and mill foundations are all that now remain. The origin and subsequent history of the mills at Hawthorne and at Chappaqua have not been fully traced by the writer and contributions by anyone having knowledge of them would be welcomed. After the Revolution About a quarter of a mile south of the point where the Saw Mill River Road crosses the river near the Staats Hammond house at Hawthorne, the ruins of a small dam, the mill foundation walls and tail race still remain.
The Commissioners of Forfeitures map does not show a mill at this point, so it was probably built some time after the Revolution. On April 13, 1827, Staats Hammond and Thirza, his wife, conveyed a tract of land to Smith Clason, but reserved to David Hammond and his heirs, a right of way from the house on the premises conveyed “to the mill as the road now runs, forever.”
In Beer’s Atlas of 1867, Hawthorne was designated as Unionville (Nepperhan Post Office), and a grist mill and saw mill at the Hammond location were operated by C. Bird. The mills at Chappaqua were established at some time prior to 1830. Ebenezer Haviland of Rye, who appears in the records as “yeoman” and again as “blacksmith,” figures as the purchaser in 1830, of a tract of 33¾ acres at this location, sold at public auction by order of the Court of Chancery. The description refers to “a dwelling house and farm of land” along a mill brook. This property apparently was included in a tract of 130 acres conveyed in 1835 by Timothy Conklln and his wife to their sons, James B. and Tristam Conklln. The lower of the two mill sites is located west of the business center of Chappaqua adjacent to the road leading to the old Quaker Meeting House. The (Continued on Page Thirteen)
Old Mills Along Saw Mill River description in the Conklin deed refer to “the little dam commonly called the fulling mill dam,” and also includes “the old or great saw mill pond.” At the lower site the atlas of 1867 ; indicates the “Chappaqua Mills,” owned by R. L. Birdsall, miller and dealer in flour and feed.
A saw mill is ; shown at the “great saw mill pond” which is designated as Chappaqua i Lake. In the seventies the grist mill . was owned by Charles B. Griffith and it is said to have been torn down about 1894. It was leased at one time by George Hunt and the mill pond became known as Hunt’s Pond. The eld mill dams were a commnation of dry-built, fieia-stone walls and earth embankment. Howland’s Pond, now Woodlands Lake, is a very valu- able feature of the Saw Mill River Parkway.
The lower mill pond at Chappaqua is also included in the parkway reservation and the dam has been rebuilt recently by the Westchester County Park Commission. At Brown’s Pond and at Hawthorne, the ponds are also included in the Saw Mill River Parkway Reservations but are drained and the river rushes through the ruins of the old dams. These primitive old mills played an important part in the life of Westchester County, some of them during the Colonial period and others for a century or more after the Revolution. In the earlier years they were turned , by the picturesque, old, overshot water-wheels, some of which were replaced by the more efficient turbines, and even augmented by steam engines. To the mills the farmers brought logs cut on their own woodlots, to be sawed into stout timbers and boards ‘ that went into their houses, farm buildings, churches and school houses.
Between the ponderously revolving upper and nether mill stones grain was ground into flour and meal for family use, and feed for horses and cattle. On autumn days golden cider flowed from the presses. The mills largely influenced the locations of many of our old roads winding down to stream valleys from farms among the hills. Travel on those old roads, at times hub-deep in mud, was largely limited to errands of necessity and the mills served a social purpose as meeting places where i farmers exchanged news and gossip ‘ or made bargains and trades with neighbors comparatively isolated, although living only a few miles away. In Westchester County, as elsewhere, the old mills have passed forever from the scene but memories of them may well be cherished.—Quarterly Bulletin of the Westchester County Historical Society.
Saw Mill River:
The Saw Mill River is a 23.5-mile (37.8 km)[2]:9 tributary of the Hudson River in Westchester County, New York, United States. It flows from an unnamed pond north of Chappaqua to Getty Square in Yonkers, where it empties into the Hudson as that river’s southernmost tributary. It is the only major stream in southern Westchester County to drain into the Hudson instead of Long Island Sound. It drains an area of 26.5 square miles (69 km2),[2]:9 most of it heavily developed suburbia. For 16 miles (26 km), it flows parallel to the Saw Mill River Parkway, a commuter artery, an association that has been said to give the river an “identity crisis.”[4]
The watershed was first[citation needed] settled by the Dutch and was the site of Philipse Manor Hall, seat of Philipsburg Manor. The land was owned by Frederick Philipse I and subsequent generations until the family lost it at the end of the American Revolution. The land along the river was later divided into multiple towns. Industry in Yonkers developed along the Saw Mill, so polluting the river by the end of the 19th century that a local poet called it a “snake-like yellow scrawl of scum”. In the 1920s, the last half-mile (800 m) of the stream was routed into tunnels and culverts under downtown Yonkers, a process partially reversed in the early 21st century when it became the first major New York waterway to be daylighted.[5]
Nonetheless, the river is home to species such as the American eel, which swim upstream to mature and swim back into the Hudson and the ocean in order to breed.
In 1639, the Dutch West India Company acquired from the Manhattans the area that would become Yonkers.[44] Seven years later, Dutch settler Adriaen van der Donck was granted part of this land, including the southern section of what he named the Saeck-kill, today’s Saw Mill River. His estate was called Colen Donck, for “Donck’s colony”. He built a sawmill and a gristmill on the Saeck-kill. After his death, his widow gradually sold the land.[46]
In the 1670s, part of Donck’s land passed to Frederick Philipse, who was rewarded with 90,000 acres (360 km2), including the lower river, for declaring his loyalty to the new British rulers of New Netherlands. Philipse named the manor Philipsborough and ran it as a quasi-feudal farm, hiring tenants to work the land.[47]:12–14 Around 1682, he built Philipse Manor Hall, a mansion along the Saw Mill River that is today a National Historic Landmark. When Philipse died around 1702, the manor was divided between his son Adolph and grandson Frederick II. In 1750, his great-grandson Frederick III inherited the whole property and moved from his New York City townhouse to the manor hall, previously used as the family’s summer home. Frederick sat in the Colonial Assembly, where he was a strong supporter of the British government that had given his family everything it owned, but he was primarily interested in managing the land. He improved the manor hall and worked to attract tenant farmers to the land. The family was known for its relaxed approach to its tenants, and the farm was very profitable.
Commercially navigable only at its mouth, the Saw Mill River itself was useless as a way to bring crops to market, limiting settlement further upriver. Nevertheless, the roots of present-day communities along the river were established during the colonial era.
Source:Wikipedia.com Uploaded 1/20/20