Israel Stoughton built Dorchester’s first mill in 1634.
The Dorchester Town Records contain an entry for Monday, November 3, 1633 that says “It is generally agreed that Mr. Israel Stoughton shall build a water mill, if he see cause.”[1]
By the following January, the mill and a bridge over the Neponset River were completed, and the town voted to allow Stoughton the privilege of erecting a fish weir provided he would sell alewives to the town at five shillings per thousand or a lesser price. The Massachusetts General Court confirmed these proceedings in September, 1634.[2]
Orcutt, in his book Good Old Dorchester, says that Stoughton “had the distinction of building the first mill in New England to grind corn by water.”[3] He was probably aware of the statement by James Blake in his Annals of the Town of Dorchester that in 1633 the “Plantation granted Mr. Israel Stoughton liberty to build a mill upon Neponsit River, which I suppose was the first Mill built in this colony, and the said river has been famous for mills ever since.”[4]
Although the Stoughton mill was not the first mill in the colony, it may have been the first water mill (i.e., river mill) to grind corn by water. Orcutt may have picked up this distinction from footnotes provided by William Blake Trask in his transcription of the Early Records of the Town of Dorchester. Trask mentions that on July 12, 1633, the town of Lynn gave a privilege to Edward Tomlins to build a corn mill. Trask cites the History of Lynn as stating the Lynn mill was the second mill in the colony, the first having been built at Dorchester. If the 1633 date is correct, the Lynn mill would seem to precede the Dorchester mill. Trask quotes a deposition published in the History of Lynn made by Clement Coldam who testified that the grant of the old mill was July the 12, 1633, to Edward Tomlins, which was the second mill in this colony.[5] This statement does not mention that Dorchester was the first. Could there have another mill that preceded the Lynn mill?
Was Stoughton’s mill the first water mill to grind corn in the colony? That may imply that an earlier mill or mills might have ground something else or that an earlier mill or mills might have been powered differently. Stoughton’s was a river mill. Was the Lynn mill a river mill? Did it grind corn? Did Boston have a wind mill earlier? May there have been tide mills earlier?
[1] Dorchester Town Records: Fourth Report of the Record Commissioners of the City of Boston. 1880. Second Edition, 1883. (Boston, 1883), p. 4.
[2] History of the Town of Dorchester, Massachusetts. (Boston, 1859), p. 34.
[3] William Dana Orcutt. Good Old Dorchester. A Narrative History of the Town. 1630-1893. (Cambridge, 1893.), p. 57.
[4] James Blake. Annals of the Town of Dorchester. By James Blake. 1750. (Boston, 1846), p. 12. Also, see Records of the Governor and Company of the Massachusetts Bay in New England, 1628-1641 (Boston, 1853). vol, 114.
[5] Early Records of the Town of Dorchester, Mass. Transcribed by William Blake Trask. (Boston, 1867), p. 9.