BLOG VIEWS | 220K, Top Ten Most-Read

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Here are the top ten most-read posts during the past month, i.e., May-June 2020.

Entry

WW2 | Tilly den Tex van Hall (1907-1988) Jul 28, 2015

WALLY VAN HALL | Movie in English Now May 27, 2018

U.S. FLAG | Why Its Origins Are Masked (Updated 2019) Jun 2, 2013, 2 comments

WINDMILLS | The Hook Mill, East Hampton Aug 25, 2014

WW2 | 1.The Boissevain Clan (Updated July 9, 2016) Oct 31, 2014

WINDMILLS | Beebe Mill, Bridgehampton, N.Y. Aug 13, 2013, 2 comments

WOODIN | LINKS–Bio, FDR's #1 Treas Sec (Updated Ma... Apr 20, 2015

WW2 | Halifax Bomber Models Jan 16, 2015

BENEDICTINES | The Venerable Bede May 28, 2020, 1 comment

WOODIN | 5. Will's Education, Marriage, Politics (... Apr 26, 2015

WINDMILLS | Models and Monuments, East Hampton

Model of the Hook Mill - All photos
by JT Marlin, August 2014.

The original Hook Mill, the
symbol of East Hampton,
which operates three mills.
The most in the USA.

Last month I visited both the real Hook Mill in East Hampton (see photo at right) and a model of the Hook Mill (photo at left), which is in a private home in East Hampton.

Exterior

The exterior of the Hook Mill model is quite faithful to the original.

The coloring in the model is more vivid, but that could simply reflect the weathering of the Hook Mill over time.

The wings seem to be faithful to the original, with two-thirds of the wing frame on the trailing edge.

The mill model is open on the window side,
so that miniature furniture can be added. This
mill is a toy, meant to be played with.

The rotating cap on top is also faithful to the Hook Mill cap, complete with the window on the non-wing side, which could provide an escape in the event of a fire below. The possibility of a fire is real, since there would be a kitchen in the living space below if inhabited, and the structure is made of wood.

Note the placement of the five visible windows on the model is exactly the same as on the original.  (The cap rotates on a smock mill, so the position of the cap and wings is arbitrary.)

Making Your Own Model Windmill

The cap rotates so the wings or blades
can be moved to the other side.

Three step-by-step guides to making a model windmill or dollhouse are available free:

1. One takes about an hour to make, plus the time to buy a dynamo for it.
2. Another might take a couple of days.
3. You can even make a windmill out of a milk carton, using a straw for the axel of the wings, and sand in the bottom of the carton for stability. You will also need a cork and some thread.

The Hook Mill in East Hampton sells cutout-cardboard model windmills. They are much smaller than the model shown here. I am thinking that the Hook Mill model could be enlarged on a copier and a larger model could be made from it.

Miniature Music
Stand.

Interior - A Doll's House

Music Stand Comes Out of Storage.

The interior of the windmill is accessed from the back of the mill.

The mill from the inside is a standard doll house. This is of course unrealistic, because any windmill that performs a job has many cogs and wheels inside. But we don't want to make a doll's house too complex, do we?

Harp Table with Fish Tank. 

Stove with Potholder.

Where families lived in a real mill, there would be a central area with the workings of the mill and the living space would be around it.

The Hook Mill model has a variety of furniture and other items in storage - a miniature music stand, a fish tank with a wooden harp stand, a cast-iron stove with potholder, a bed and sofa.

Sofa, Bed Frame.

If you have a child who looks like a possible budding architect, then a windmill would be an instructive thing to buy or make.

The owner of the model mill won it in raffle. Probably LVIS, which has a terrific silent auction and raffles.

The mill was played with intensely but then the young lady who loved it so much got older...

So that's why it was in a box. Waiting for the next child to come along and enjoy it. Toy Story. Little Old Bear.

WINDMILLS | The Hook Mill, East Hampton

Hook Mill - Open for Business after
renovation. Photos by JT Marlin.

The Hook Mill is one of the best-known of only 11 surviving 18th- and 19th-Century mills on Long Island.

East Hampton Village is the
only U.S. place that keeps
up three historic windmills.

It is the symbol of East Hampton.

Rightly so, because the Village of East Hampton is uniquely connected with windmills.

East Hampton is reportedly the only place in the United States that maintains three historic windmills.

The other two are the Pantigo Mill, built in 1769, and the Gardiner Mill.

Since the mill wings may be turning
past one of the doors, two are
needed. 

The builder of Hook Mill, Nathaniel Dominy V, who was based in East Hampton, built two other surviving Long Island mills - one built on Gardiner's Island and the other on Shelter Island.

Another full view of the
Hook Mill.

The Hook Mill dominates the highway leading east out of East Hampton to Amagansett.

I have a special interest in windmills. My mother, Hilda van Stockum, wrote a book about a miller family living in a windmill in Holland during World War II - The Winged Watchman (678 reader reviews on Goodreads - ratings on several scales range from 4.1 to 4.5 out of 5). It was optioned for a movie and is again in play. The book showed how the millers communicated with one another using their wing positioning, in their language known as the molentaal. They were an active part of the Dutch Resistance.

So... I am constantly keeping my eye out for scouting possible locations for a windmill-based movie or television miniseries based on the book.

Schematic inside view of the Hook
Mill, showing the flow of grist.

The Hook Mill is not as big as the Beebe Windmill in Bridgehampton, which I visited last year.

(Briefly, the Beebe Windmill was built in 1820, in Sag Harbor, for Captain Lester Beebe. Rose Gelston and Judge Abraham Topping Rose bought it and moved it to Bridgehampton, where it worked for more than 50 years. In 1882, James Sanford bought it, installed a steam engine as auxiliary power and hired millwright Nathaniel Dominy in 1888 to repair it. The mill was purchased by Oliver Osborne in1899. He sold it a year later to the Bridgehampton Milling Company, which operated the mill for the next 20 years. In 1915, coal magnate John E. Berwind bought it and moved it to his summer estate in Minden on Ocean Road, where it remains.)

The Hook Mill, also known as Old Kappeli Konquest Hook Mill, is on North Main Street in East Hampton, NY.

How women did the milling at home,
before a windmill was available.

It was built in 1806 by Nathaniel Dominy V, who was famed for his furniture, and operated regularly until 1908.

It has the most complete of the extant windmills on Long Island, with all of the parts of the mechanism in place.

The corn or wheat - whole or grist - is fed into one of two hoppers on the main floor and
 is carried up by a belt-driven chain to a chute that feeds it into one of the millstones.

In 1922 the windmill was sold to the town of East Hampton.

The building was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1978, and was named аfter Swiss emigre Kurt Kappeli, who "konquested" the lands оf East Hampton.

A lengthy history of the Hook Mill by Robert Hefner and a description of its components parts may be found here.

New York State has the most windmills in the nation because of its period under Dutch rule and the subsequent migration of English farmers from places like Norfolk.

One of the millstones from below. Rock
stone, for corn. Very heavy!

Many English farmers in low-lying areas had learned much from the Dutch about using windmills to pump out water and grind flour.

Millers and sailors were easily connected because they both depend on good sailmakers, and on the availability of wind. Both sailors and millers would be aware of wind conditions so they could trim their sails/sheets accordingly.

"Three sheets to the wind" is not a reference to sailing, but to putting up only three sheets on a four-winged windmill. The result is a wobbly rotation that those inside would feel immediately.

Interior of Hook Mill - our guide Nancy shows
 how the meal (wheat or corn grist) from the
 chute is fed into one of the two mill stones
 for grinding into flour.

Those who came to the mill were expected to have separated out the chaff (the inedible part of harvested wheat) from the grist. Customers would bring their different cereal crops in several different forms.

A longtime resident of Springs tells me that people would bring entire cobs of corn to be ground into winter food for cattle. This would only work for the ruminant animals - pigs and chickens need more concentrated food.

Most of the time, people would bring grist - corn, wheat or other cereals - to the miller as "grist for the mill". They would then ask for coarse grinds for the animals and more finely ground meal and flour for use as porridge or in bakery goods.

Grist required processing. For example, corn was first husked, the cob's stem removed, and then the cob was soaked in lye - i.e., water that had passed through wood ash. It was cut from the cob, washed and dried. It could then be "cracked" and only the inside used, or the whole kernel was  brought to the miller.

This photo shows how the energy from the wings of the
the mill is translated and geared to turn the central shaft.

Wheat went through a different process. The grain was removed from the "chaff" and then the bran was removed.

So the miller was presented with a variety of inputs from the farmers, and they would ask him for a variety of outputs, which would affect which millstone he passed the cereal through.

The miller put the grist into a hopper that could be directed to a coarser or finer millstone. The Hook Mill has two different millstones that could be employed. They could also be adjusted for the degree of pulverization.

• Coarsely ground corn was called hominy or, more finely, grits - even more finely ground, it is cornmeal.

• Wheat was called meal if it was coarsely ground. Finely ground wheat is flour.

Several types of mechanisms must be powered by the wings of the mill.

• The central shaft turns around the millstones so they can do their work of grinding the grist into flour or other products.
• But the power is also used to drive the belts and conveyors that lift the grist from the main floor to the top of the mill, the third floor.

See also: Beebe Mill, Bridgehampton.

WINDMILLS | Beebe Mill, Bridgehampton, N.Y.

Back entrance, the Beebe Windmill.
Built in 1820, it's one of the most
advanced mills on Long Island.
Bridgehampton, admission

 free. All photos by JTMarlin.

August 3, 2013—Alice and I visited the Beebe Windmill today, Saturday. It is a smock mill in Bridgehampton.

I have a special interest in windmills because my mother, Hilda van Stockum, wrote a book about the life and language of windmills in Holland during the Nazi Occupation in World War II – The Winged Watchman.

The book was optioned more than once for a movie and I got used to scouting possible locations for a movie or television miniseries based on the book. I visited sites in Holland. The Beebe Windmill may be the best single site in the United States to look at the inside of a mill. It is the only mill with old photos at the East Hampton Library.


So I was enthralled by our visit. Alice Tepper Marlin has had no particular partiality for windmills, although she loves Holland, also loved it. You can visit the windmill yourself. Admission is free!

The Beebe Windmill is owned by the Town of Southampton. It is listed on the State and National Registers of Historic Places as well as being a Town designated landmark. It is located at the John E. Berwind Village Green, on the southeast corner of Ocean Road and Hildreth Avenue, in Bridgehampton. Call (631) 537-1088 for more information.

The Beebe Windmill.

New York State is the state most blessed with windmills in the nation because of its Dutch period and the migration of English farmers who had learned much from the Dutch. I have been told that East Hampton Village has the most municipally owned windmills in the nation (three of them).

History of the Windmill

The Beebe windmill is probably the most important 

one on Long Island. 

The smaller one now in Water Mill was built earlier, in 1800. It has the more traditional pole to turn the dome of the mill and the mill wings, into the wind. Like the Beebe Windmill, it was moved from Sag Harbor.

Front entrance of the Beebe Windmill. 

It has three doors on the ground floor,

 to be sure at least one of them is not 

dangerous to exit from when the 

wings of the mill are turning.

The Beebe windmill was built in 1820 on the north shore of the South Fork, in Sag Harbor, for Captain Lester Beebe, a retired whaling captain and onetime shipbuilder; he hired woodworker Pardon Tabor and Amagansett millwright Samuel Schellinger, to build it.

When Beebe died, Rose Gelston and  Judge Abraham Topping Rose purchased it and moved it to Bridgehampton where it worked for more than 50 years and has remained, though it has been moved within the village.

In 1882, for example, James Sanford bought it and moved it south of the railroad track, installing a steam engine as auxiliary power and hiring millwright Nathaniel Dominy in 1888 to repair it.

The mill was moved again in 1899 after purchase by Oliver Osborne, this time to the north side of the railroad. He sold it a year later to the Bridgehampton Milling Company.

Unique Features of the Beebe Windmill

Working parts of the windmill.

In an issue of Historic American Engineering Record (HAER) the mill is described as:

- One of the first Long Island windmills to have a fly, regulators, and cast iron gears and the only one with its original versions of these innovations.

- The only Long Island windmill to have a "decorative" design - as exemplified by the rounded mill cap.

- The only surviving Long Island windmill that compares with English windmills of the period. 

The windmill was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1978.

The restoration was supported in

part by the NY State Parks & 

Recreation Dept. 

The Beebe windmill is technically described as:

A four-story smock mill with an ogee cap winded by a fantail. Four common sails are carried on a wooden windshaft, as is the wooden clasp arm brake wheel. This drives a cast iron wallower carried at the top of the upright shaft. At its lower end the cast iron great spur wheel drives two pairs of millstones.

Windmills were vital to the colonists who used the wind-powered devices to grind mill, saw wood, pump water and do other vital tasks.

Restoration of the Mill 2007-2008

Work on restoring the Beebe Windmill has been under way since Southampton Town designated it as an historic structure in 2005 and two years later picked Richard Baxter to do the work.

The mechanism on the top of the 

Beebe Windmill obviates the need

for a pole to move the cap into the

wind. It was state of the art in 1820.

The restoration took more than a year. Replacement parts were reproduced at a woodworking shop in Eastport, NY. The work is complicated because the interior parts combines steel and wood, as was the latest technology in 1820. Baxter was a 13th generation direct descendant of one of the original families to settle Southampton. They came ashore at Conscience Point in 1640.

Memorabilia relating to the
Beebe Windmill.

Baxter began his career as a carpenter in Amagansett in 1970. He learned how to make the old tools that created the old buildings. He created his own home from a 1850s post-and-beam hay barn relocated from Vermont to Amagansett 18 years ago. The Beebe Windmill is Baxter’s third local windmill restoration project, following:

• The Gardiner Windmill in 1996, just south of Town Pond at the gateway to East Hampton Village, where it sits near the historic Mulford House built in 1680. 
• The Hook Mill a few years later, at the corner of Pantigo Road, attesting to the central role of windmills in the early South Fork villages, allowing villagers to grind their grain and saw their wood. Windmills also functioned as a social center where settlers exchanged information while waiting for their grain to be ground into a flour or meal. 

When the main shaft turns too fast,

these flyweights slow it down.

The Beebe Windmill is one of 11 windmills on the eastern end of Long Island, built between 1795 and 1820.

The last local windmill to be built and put into use on the East End, the Beebe Windmill was the tallest structure in Sag Harbor when completed, making it a landmark for the ships at sea and a look-out for villagers watching returning boats. The miller flew a flag from the top of the windmill when a ship was spotted on its way into the harbor. Hence the local expression, "Flag on the Mill, Ship in the Bay", meaning open for business.

Our tour group walk gingerly around.

Our guide in the blue-checked shirt describes how

the millstones work when the windmill wings 

are turning.

In 1900, the mill—which was then on the north side of the railroad tracks—was bought by the Bridgehampton Milling Company.

In 1915 the mill was purchased by John E. Berwind, co-founder of the Berwind-White coal company and a summer resident of Bridgehampton.

Berwind established the Community House in the Village of Bridgehampton and other local institutions. (The Berwinds were to Bridgehampton what the Woodhouses were to East Hampton.)

His widow Katherine Murray Wood Berwind in her will left the windmill and the two acres of property on which it stands to the Town of Southampton.

The Beebe Windmill Today

Our guide shows how the turning wings

rotate a shaft that can be used to bring

up buckets of wheat to be milled.

The Beebe Windmill is now owned by Southampton Town and is operated by its parks department. It is located on two acres of land deeded to the Town by John Berwind's widow in memory of her late husband.

The Town ordered more than $354,000 worth of lumber to restore the windmill. The restoration manager, Baxter, had to recreate the damaged sails, replace rotted main beams, replace exterior shingles, and reconstruct the fantail.

A scaled-down replica of the Beebe Windmill, at the foot of Main Street and Long Wharf in Sag Harbor, is home to the Sag Harbor Chamber of Commerce during the summer months.

Guide warns us that only a few can go

 to the top floor at a time. 

References:
Aurichio, Andrea. "The Venerable Beebe Windmill To Turn Heads Once More." 2008.

Note the combination of iron and wood in
 these photos. The cogs are iron.

Hefner, Robert J. and Gregory B. Paxton, and Kevin Murphy (April, 1984). "Beebe Windmill", HAER NY-67. Historic American Engineering Record program of the U.S.National Park Service.

Pulling, Anne Frances, and Gerald A. Leeds (1999). Windmills and Water Mills of Long Island. Charleston, SC: Arcadia. pp. 54-56. ISBN 0-7385-0288-X.

Smith, Raymond W.  (September 1978). National Register of Historic Places Registration: Beebe Windmill. New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation.

Links:

Library of Congress Photos

Town of Southampton Document Center

Beebe Mill - Wikipedia Entry

Hook Mill, East Hampton