Using Old Maps to Find A House Site
One More Search - The Starch Factory
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After the success finding the old cellar hole, we moved
on to look for the sawmill site which was co-owned by Urban Woodbury. No
map shows Urban's name by a mill, but an old county history states that
"...Woodbury & Wards saw-mill...on Pond
Brook...was formerly used as a starch factory...converted in 1881..."
The Beers atlas (1878) shows a starch factory on Elmore
Pond Brook, and the older map shows a saw mill there. This must be the
spot. I thought we could walk right to it, as mill sites usually had
large stone foundations, and this one was shown near a road. But we
couldn’t find the road! |
The 1878 Beers atlas shows a Starch Factory (later a sawmill) just
upstream from the main road leading northwest from Lake Elmore. The
portion of this road in the Town of Elmore is no0w abandoned. The town
line is just above the mill. |
At present there are two roads paralleling the brook on
each side, but on the 1878 map - the one with the starch factory - there
is only one road beside the brook. A second road leads off that road at
an angle, crossing the brook at a point just south of the Starch
Factory.This same road alignment still existed in 1930, but is not the
case today.
Now the road crossing the brook is abandoned and is very
difficult to find on the ground. There was no evidence of its junction
with the present main road (we discovered later that lots of fill used
in road-widening was the cause.) |
This modern map shows the same area as the Beers map. Now
there are two roads on either side of the stream. The former "starch
factory" road is not shown |
After some bushwacking we discovered traces of the old
road on the south side of the brook. This led to the old brook crossing
- a sizeable stone bridge abutment perhaps 10 feet higher than the
stream. At first we thought this overgrown stone structure might be the
mill dam, but the lack of nearby stonework convinced us that it was the
bridge. We looked downstream (north) for the mill. The right bank was
very steep, while the far side looked like it had some level land that
might support a mill. So we went back to the truck (the brook was deep
and cold) and drove around to the other road (new road since 1878), to a
spot near a white house (probably the "V. Slayton" house on the 1878
map) we had seen from the bridge. There we found the remains of the old
road less obscured than on the east bank, and walked down towards the
stream. The woods were quite thick, though we could see a little better
than we could at the old house site. Before we reached the bridge
abutments we saw some debris off to our left which led us to our second
success of the day. We found the old mill site - with stone foundation
remains, odd pieces of steel, and even some fragments of a wooden dam
still intact in the stream. |
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Most of the mill site’s remains are on the west side of
the brook. It was a little hard to discern what structure was where, but
after some review we felt that there had probably been a large dam or
perhaps two, and a sawmill building perhaps 30 feet square. While the
site was labeled a starch factory on the 1878 map, its later use was as
a sawmill. The 1883 Gazetteer reports that the sawmill had planing and
matching machines and a shingle saw. It could cut 1000 board feet per
hour. |
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One striking feature is this 4-foot wide section of what
is probably the remains of a wooden dam. This view is from just upstream
of the boards. |
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It isn’t clear from the text whether this was a
water-powered mill or if steam was used at that time. Since Lake
Elmore was the source it is possible that the abundant water supply
might have kept this mill running the old-fashioned way well into
the steam mill era. One of Elmore’s other 1883 sawmills was listed
as being operated by both steam and water power. |
And thanks are especially due Arlo Sterner of Wolcott, without whose
help this search would have been much longer and a lot less fun! |
So, I’ve now trod in the footsteps of my ancestor
Urban Woodbury - I have found all four of the Darling and Woodbury
sites shown on the old maps - 3 house sites and one sawmill. It took
two days of searching but it was worth it. The maps - especially the
Beers atlas maps - proved surprisingly accurate. |
David Allen, doing business as "Old Maps", has
scanned hundreds of old Vermont maps and made them available on
CDROM. Last year he re-issued all of the 1850s county wall maps, the
oldest detailed Vermont road maps. This year he has published the
1870s atlases by F. W. Beers. These two map series are available on
separate county map CDROMS. He also has a single CD containg all of
Vermont’s first USGS topographic maps. Allen sells the CDs for $30
each through bookstores and his web site www.old-maps.com. He can
also be reached at 413-772-2801 (days) or at at Old Maps PO Box 54
West Chesterfield, NH 03466. |
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