No. 5167 Painting of the house at Tileston Grist Mill on the face of brick from the house
Edward A. Huebener, a former Board member of the Dorchester Historical Society, was a collector of materials relating to Dorchester history including a very large collection of graphic materials, including prints and photographs, now owned by the Society. His very own contribution to this group of materials was the idea of taking a brick from a house that had been demolished and asking a local illustrator to paint a picture of the house upon the brick. The painted bricks may be viewed at the Dorchester Historical Society.
Although this brick is labeled as the Grist Mill, it may be the Tileston home. A photograph in the collection of the Dorchester Historical Society has the handwritten caption: Tileston House, Mill Street. Mill Street must have been named for the Tileston mill, but it is possible that the brick is mislabeled, confusing Mill Street with the mill itself. Or it could be that the house and the mill were one and the same.
The mill was built by Edward Breck who probably came to Dorchester in the second migration in 1635, and he purchased a Mr. Burr?s land in 1642. Breck lived on Adams Street. Clap cites town records for December 17, 1645, saying, ‘There was given to Edward Breck, by te hands of most of the inhabitants of the town, Smelt Brook Creek, on the condition that he doth set a mill there.’ He built the mill; then he sold half the mill to William Robinson who sold it to Tileston in 1664 for 96 pounds. The description at that time was: a ‘little house’ and ten acres of land on ‘Tide-Mill Creeke, and half a corn water-mill standing on the tide in the creeke, commonly called Salt Creeke or Brooke, near Captaine’s Neck.’ Robinson when he was ‘drawn through by ye cogwheel of his mill, and was torn in pieces and slain.’ Since he died in 1668, he may have been working at the mill after he sold it.
No. 5261 Detail from 1874 Hopkins atlas. The pink area shows the Tileston property at that time. At a later date all of the inland water was filled in or diverted into tunnels. Mill Street is at top left and at that time became Preston Street when it crossed the railroad tracks. The location of the mill was probably at the strip of land connecting the Tileston land with the land where the railroad tracks are located. Mill Street and Preston Street together are today called Victory Road.
The Tileston fortune began with this mill, but the Tilestons are more well-known for the paper mills along the Neponset begun in partnership with Hollingsworth in the late 18th and 19th century.
As for the other half of the mill, we know that Breck’s widow Isabel sold it to Timothy Foster in 1671.
No. 3193 This photograph, which was once owned by Huebener, is now in the collection of the Dorchester Historical Society.
In the late nineteenth century, the mill was owned by a descendant from the Tileston family and Henry Nichols Blake’s father.