The Grist Mill

Theodore Farnum Elliot built the grist mill in 1830 after completing the sawmill. At the same time, the dam on Sanborn Pond was raised 4 feet from its original height.

The grist mill is constructed of up-and-down sawn timbers and measures 30 by 53 feet. It has four levels including the tub wheel floor, the bolter floor, the grind stone floor, and the cleaner floor. The granite fieldstone foundation is laid in the brook next to the spillway on the upper dam. At one time the mill had a long storage shed with a single pitch roof and a vertical face next to the road which partially obstructed the door to the grindstone floor, and a gate house covering the penstock with a gable roof on the dam.

The mill and dam were both restored beginning with disassembling it in 2009, the replacement of the hurst frame (the structure that holds the millstones and their gearing) and new pine shingle siding. When at the peak of its operation in the mid-19th century, the mill’s hurst frame held three sets of stones in a row with separate drives for each set. Today, the grist mill has a pair of granite stones for grinding corn and a set of French Buhr stones for grinding wheat. A water wheel was added in 2018 to run other equipment in the mill. The original tub wheel floor, bolter, grain cleaner, corn cracker, and various bins and boxes are still in place.

A wooden flume provides water to the sawmill pond on the tub wheel floor through a 32-inch pipe run through the dam next to the pipe that feeds the tub wheel turbines for the grindstones. The penstock was fully rebuilt the summer of 2015 following the rebuilding of the dam in 2014.