An Essay in Molinology - The Dominy Craftsmen and the Smock Windmill Tradition on Eastern Long Island, New York, 1976

First in a series of six essays:  Our Windmills Were Our Workplaces.

By Sherrill Foster, 1976

Introduction: Her Foundational Questions on the Dominy Millwrights

By Mary Foster Morgan

In the summer of 1976, I remember my mother, Sherrill Foster, fully absorbed in a piece of research that clearly excited her. She was completing her Essay in Molinology — The Dominy Craftsmen and the Smock Windmill Tradition on Eastern Long Island, New York, as the thesis paper for a master's degree. She was not yet the Town Historian — that would come in 2003 — but now, reading through, I see how she defined scholarship: by studying primary sources, by comparing existing structures and artifacts, by interviewing experts, and even through an investigation that led her directly into the Dominy family's own library and attic.

Eight years earlier, an important book appeared on the Dominy craftsman family that my mother read cover to cover. In 1968, Charles Hummel, Dominy scholar at the Winterthur Museum, published With Hammer in Hand, his comprehensive study of the Dominy craftsmen of East Hampton — their tools, their furniture, their clocks. Yet my mother noticed that little was written about Dominy windmills — something she knew as a treasured part of East Hampton's heritage.

Hook Mill was the anchor of her thesis study. As she writes in her foreword, she had passed the Dominy house and Hook Mill every day going to and from school, then work — the mill so familiar it had become almost too familiar to observe. It took scholarship to teach her to see it again.

Not every attribution she made in 1976 would hold — but the questions she asked, and the method she brought to them, proved durable.

Working from the Dominy account books, from John Lyon Gardiner's remarkable 1795 notebook, from the English molinologist Rex Wailes' 1935 survey of Long Island mills, and from her own close observation of the surviving structures, her work yields several valuable insights. She reveals a story of two Dominy craftsmen-engineers — father and son — working together on windmill construction. That this is not how we talk about the Dominy millwright legacy is something I hope to change.

She reveals a story of two Dominy craftsmen-engineers — father and son — working together on a mill. A father-and-son transition, she suggests, that began on Gardiners Island in 1795, when Nathaniel V was twenty-five. John Lyon Gardiner's logbook records that “old Mr. N. Domine came to assist” — a small entry my mother recognized as significant: the elder, at 58, in a supporting role; the younger as master millwright. The image shows the craftsman-family succession at work — the father concentrating on clocks, turning over large-scale construction to his son, while remaining, as Gardiner's logbook confirms, present when needed.

Her research also yields what I consider a valuable discovery: full-scale working drawings of mill machinery had been made on the attic floor of the Dominy homestead — by which hand, we don't know — noted by curator Edward Mulford Baker Strong but never fully analyzed. These drawings give evidence of a profound technical knowledge and its transfer within the Dominy craftsmen family.

Her essay also illuminates the world in which the Dominys worked. The timber for their mills came from Gardiners Island — Gardiner-owned since 1639 — cut and parts prefabricated, then hauled across seven miles of water on a raft. She included a quote from John Lyon Gardiner's logbooks about Shem, a black man, and "three Indians" who felled the timber that Dominy then broad-axed. It was her honest look at the past, an acknowledgment of all the labor that history has too often not recognized and not named, and it speaks to the interwoven relationships that made up the community of East Hampton. It would be decades later when we would all learn more about Shem – likely previously enslaved – from East Hampton's Plain Sight Project.

It is in her delving into mill engineering and regional design differences that I see her mind most clearly at work. Smock mills were an advancement over the earlier post mill, once common in this area but now vanished — though many survive in England. She found records of early post mills built here, in 1644 and 1653. Unlike post mills, in a smock mill only the roof-cap turns. Drawing on a lifetime of sailing, my mother saw how an internal gear system could be devised to turn the cap. She also saw regional differences in cap design — Cape Cod’s caps are conical; in East Anglia they resemble an upturned boat; in Kent, they look like a curved bonnet. Could there be a regional signature here on the East End?

In 1976 only three of the eleven surviving smock mills on the East End were firmly attributed to Dominy — all to Nathaniel V (Gardiners Island 1795, Hook 1806, Sylvester Manor 1810). Two other East Hampton smock mills were yet to be fully documented, both dated 1771 and known as the Col. Abraham Gardiner Mill and the Huntting Miller (Pantigo) mill.

In her conversation with Charles Howell, curator of the mill at Sunnyside Restoration, about the Col. Abraham Gardiner Mill, she began to sort out its defining features — the conical, gabled cap she called “peculiar” to East Hampton, and the internal gearing cap-turning they both saw as telltale signs of Dominy construction.

Earlier scholars had noted that certain Dominy caps bore the profile of a dory hull. My mother posits that the Dominys may have been working toward a regional signature — both the gabled, conical-shaped cap and a dory-shaped one (resembling a “fair” hull in nautical terminology, sleek to reduce drag). It spoke to what she knew about the Dominys: that they were knowledgeable, inventive, and skilled woodworkers, crafting elegant design solutions. The Dominys did not invent the rotating roof-cap — that was English engineering — but they were the first to employ this new engineering here and gave it a local form so distinctive that a molinologist today can identify a Dominy mill by its roofline.

Later scholarship and HAER documentation attributed the Gardiner mill to the Dominy craftsmen — its dory cap intact — and the Pantigo to Schellinger. To be fair, Pantigo had been relocated several times and restored repeatedly, with portions of the cap rebuilt, making analysis difficult.

Her core insight held: the dory cap was in fact a Dominy signature, and she had seen it. 

Drawing together the evidence, she recognized another Dominy signature as well — the precision craftsmanship of the all-wooden internal gearing that turned the cap, and advanced smock mill construction in East Hampton. 

An Essay on Molinology: The Dominy Craftsman and the Smock Windmill Tradition of Eastern Long Island, New York

First in a series: Our Windmills Were Our Workplaces

By Sherrill Foster, 1976

Foreward

I have enjoyed becoming involved with these smock windmills. They are an important part of the heritage of Eastern Long Island. It is hoped that when HAER (Historic American Engineering Record) and SPLIA (Society for the Preservation of Long Island Antiquities) finish their research that definitive documentation will result.

As has all good windmill people, I have seen them since I was a child, having to pass both the Dominy house and their mill going to and from, first school and then work. The Hook Mill became almost too familiar to observe.

Therefore much appreciation goes to Carleton Kelsey, East Hampton Town Historian who is interested enough in windmills to have amassed a collection of the latest books on the subject; Kathy Haeft, HAER, who conducted a tour of the various mills; Bart McQuire whose own interest in mills sparked mine, and Mary Ann McElroy, custodian at "Hook Mill" whose avid interest and knowledge of mill structure and machinery helped explain some of the 'book knowledge' of the mechanics of milling.

Essay

A windmill possesses a dignity few other buildings can equal. It is a most unique engineering structure, as well as being a glamourous addition to any village.

In a recent nose count, there are more surviving grist mills on Eastern Long Island, New York, than anywhere in the United States.

Of these 11 are smock windmills, compared with 12 smock mills on Cape Cod and five on Nantucket. In the South East Counties of England, where most of the original New Englanders came from, and whose topography is similar, particularly Eastern Long Island, Kent has 17 surviving smock mills, Sussex 10, Suffolk 6 and Cambridgeshire, 12.(3)

Until recently, documentation on windmills has been primarily contained in small privately printed pamphlets written by local historians. With the exception of Rex Wailes, the noted English molinologist who visited New England and Long Island in 1935 and who wrote the brief documented paper,(4) there has been no attempt at organization, let alone documentation. Historic American Engineering Record in 1974 attempted a Long Island Inventory of Industrial Sites, and included 10 smock windmills, 8 in the Hamptons. (5)

What is a smock wind mill?  They are called that in England and America. The same structure in Holland is called a Polder mill.

A smock mill may possibly be called that because the structural braces are so boxy that the outer skin of shingles (U.S.) or clapboard (England) recalls a garment to clothe these bones.

A smock mill consists of an octagonal tower with a circular cap shaped in a windsheer pattern which moves around the tower horizontally to enable the sweep or arms with sails to move vertically, providing power for the grinding of grain into flour. This source of power is also used to saw wood.

Although saw windmills have been documented as existing on the South Fork of Long Island, none exist today. Other types of windmills documented but no longer extant are Post Mills.(6) These are square buildings, constructed to turn on a single large post braced on the ground so that it has the visual effect of a large spider. The whole square body of the mill turns to keep the moving sweeps into the wind.

In England today there are many surviving post mills, but the only post mill in the United States is at the Williamsburg reconstruction, a copy of the Bourn mill (oldest extant in England).(7)

The post mill was the first type of windmill developed. There is a drawing of one in a manuscript, The Windmill Psalter of c.1270, formerly at Canterbury, and now in the Pierpont Morgan Library in New York City.

It is believed that the mode of building a windmill with a moveable roof or cap was first discovered by a Fleming in the middle of the Sixteenth century.(8)

At this time there was much coming and going across the North Sea of Northwestern Europe and the idea of the windmill with the turning cap crossed quickly. Both the Dutch Polder mill and the English Smock mill have the same basic wooden framework (9) but the Dutch mills have an in-curving shape — an early attempt at "streamlining".

The Dutch mills are thatched so as to lighten the weight on the soft subsoil, although the mills are situated on an especially built mound. Usually the base of the tower becomes the miller's house in Holland, placing the revolving arms higher into the air. Dutch mills are painted brightly, and have a decorated board with the mill's name on it, under the windshaft, such as "The Falcon".

On Eastern Long Island the mill gets less romantic treatment. It is usually called by the present owner's name, the largest stockholder's name or by the miller's name. An exception is the "Hook" mill which is named for the shallow meandering hook of "Hook Pond," a freshwater pond separated from the salt ocean by a line of sand dunes.

East Hampton was settled in 1648/49 by a group of 34 families, originally from the South Eastern Counties of England — Kent presumably, for their first name of the village was Maidstone. These families had spent ten years or so in New England, arriving first at Lynn, Massachusetts. They were sophisticated settlers when they arrived on Eastern Long Island, probably well chosen for their trades and skills, as was the practice at that time, and obviously compatible as there was very little moving in and out throughout the first 150 years.

The Colony of New Haven was anxious to keep its area under English control and therefore was most helpful in settling the eastern end of Long Island. The Dutch had Manhattan and the very western tip of the Island, Brooklyn and Flushing.

The population of East Hampton was not large, 1,250 people in 1776. It grew to 2,076 in 1840 when it started to attract summer visitors, its present main industry. (10)

Mills are first mentioned in the Town documents as early as 1644 at Southampton (settled in 1640) and in 1653 at Northwest Harbor (the port of East Hampton, settled 1648) five miles from the village main street.(11) There are some recorded post mills; one in Amagansett that was sold in 1822, (12) and another in Sag Harbor on a site that became a ship-yard in the early 19th century.(13)

East Hampton's Main Street remains wide to this day. The thirty-four "home lots" of 8 to 12 acres were placed next to each other along this wide area where the small animals such as pigs and geese were allowed to wander. The barns were built alongside the houses, right up to the street, although no barn is so situated today. Early descriptions of East Hampton mention the wide main street with a windmill at each end.(14) This is true today, although the growth of shade trees has obscured this effect.

Most of the surviving smock mills have been moved up and down the East End, which leads to much confusion in research and discussion. Even though these mills have been much moved, nine of the surviving eleven mills have most of their machinery. This machinery should be operated occasionally in order to keep it in condition, preventing some of the wooden cogs from turning into heaps of dust, and other weaknesses that wood machinery is heir to.(15)

The eighteenth century was a time when milling for these self-sufficient people was important, both for sawing lumber to make the charming saltbox houses that still remain in the East Hampton area, and to grind the raw product into flour for human subsistence. While there were Native American Indians in the area with their mortar and pestle, the colonial housewife liked to use the even ground meal from the mill.

Milling was a full time operation. Vagaries of the wind did not allow a successful miller much free time, and stories are legion of millers being excused from church because the wind had started to blow after a long calm spell.(16)

A contemporary account captures the experience of a mill coming to life:

An old (post) mill, coming quietly to life in a steady breeze invites comparison with a sailing ship getting underway. The miller performs his preliminary ritual, pulling down the sails in turn and spreading the cloths…When all is ready the brake is pulled off and the sails begin to turn, slowly at first, then with steadily increasing speed. As they sweep past the windows, light and shadow alternate within the mill. The structure trembles slightly, like a ship feeling the first faint motion of the open sea, and the impression is strengthened by the presence of the great post, rising like a mast through the centre of the buck. On climbing the ladder to the floor above, one finds that the whole mill is alive with quiet movement. The interior is surprisingly silent in operation, but a number of small sounds combine to produce a low murmur of activity. It is possible to pick out the rush of the circling sails, and the clucking of wooden gears as the stone nut spins against the rim of the brake wheel. The timbers of the buck creak as a gust strikes the mill, there is the dry rustle of grain as the miller fills the hopper over the stones, and loudest of all, the insistent rattle of the damsel against the shoe. A curious rising whisper comes from the stones themselves, where the runner sings like a ponderous top in its wooden casing, and a thin white smoke of flour drifts upwards to hang in the air above. The mill is full of the smell of fresh meal. White dust lies on every ledge, and hangs in the cobwebs under the rafters, while the worn floor boards and ladder rungs gleam as if wax polished through the action of meal trodden underfoot. (17)

The miller also had to re-dress his stones every three months or so, constantly checking on the repair of the machinery, and still produce a clean, healthy product — both for human consumption and for animal feed.

In East Hampton it is not yet documented as to who were the early millwrights. By the 1700s there were apparently several. One was the Schellinger (present day spelling) family of Amagansett.

The other was the Dominy family of East Hampton who have been well documented with regard to their clock making and furniture making by Charles Hummel of the Henry Francis duPont Winterthur Museum in Wilmington, Delaware.18 Hummel only slightly mentions millwrighting.

The documented Dominy mills are dated 1771 to 1810. Nathaniel Dominy IV (1737–1812) and Nathaniel Dominy V (1770–1852) are the two Dominy craftsmen most intimately connected with the mills. All the Dominys lived together in a 1715 saltbox house on North Main Street, East Hampton, ‘Down Hook,’ which is very near to the artificial mound on which the 'Hook' mill is today. In their house were two workshops, one with a small ingenious forge for clockmaking — they averaged one a year from 1769 to 1814 — and another larger shop with two workbenches for the woodworking projects, such as their famous chairs, tables, stands, a desk or two. This woodworking shop was in existence by 1760. (19)

The Dominys as craftsmen begin with Nathaniel Dominy (I), a weaver who died in 1687, through the other four Nathaniels to Felix (1800–1868) who lived to see the demise of the skilled home craftsman. As Hummel observes, (20)

the fact that the Dominys could complete with skill and competence almost any task their neighbors asked them to perform was a distinct asset. It was a reason for the long period in which they were able to exist as craftsmen. A breakdown of their activities from 1765 to 1830 reveals that they functioned in this community as clock makers, watch and clock repairers, cabinet makers, house and mill carpenters, wheelwrights, turners, toolmakers, gun repairers, metal workers and surveyors.

A very versatile family unit.

In the Dominy account books, there are constant references to the repair of mills. In the account book of 1769 is this reference.(21) In 1769, Nat Dominy (IV) and Abraham Mulford and others obtained permission to set up a Sawmill in 'Sandy Hook' on the site of a previous mill. It isn't clear if this is a new building or a repaired one. The mill could have been ruined by being tail-winded.

In the account book under "Saw Mill Debtor — April, May 1769," this is written:

To work of my self and Jereme on s(ai)d Mill at Sundry times building and mending. Viz myself 20 days at 5s 6d per day Jereme 18 days at 3-6 per day 1770 to wrk on Mill putting in head Beam.Sept 29, 1771.To work on mill putting in head beam 1 at 5 and 2 days at 3.The same mill now tended by Capt. N. Hedges.To making cogs and rounds for the MillTo Nat at the Mill 6 days at 6/6and Asa 5 days at 3/61780Abraham Mulford's mill to 3 days work on sills and braces 8c at 7/ and 3 days of Nat at 22/61800To hang Grindstone to work on C(art, cog) Wheel Saw Mill Debtor To 4 days hooping Cogg wheel, etc. To Roughing out 10 coggs.To 2/3rds of Day and Boy 1/2 day fasten Gudgeon and Make Box etc.To 2/3rds Day and Boy fasten Gudgeon and put iron under shaft To make 1 Cogg To 1 day and 2 boys put in StockTo 8 Geer Shafts To Tram'l Iron Head (Parsons Mill)1810 To half day and Lewis Ditto (fitting new saw for hanging in Saw Mill) mend crane, etc. To Isaac Peter work on Mill To put Tail in Mill 1 1/3 day. (22)

One of the best customers of the Dominys were the Gardiners, of Gardiner's Island, Lords of the Manor, an English grant of 1639.23 Access to the Island was and still is by boat, and the Dominy men (at least) were on the Island enough to know what great stands of timber it held.

Two of the three documented Dominy mills are constructed of timbers cut from Gardiner's Island. Most recently, in 1971, when repairs had to be made for the "Hook" Mill, timbers were secured from Gardiner's Island. The East Hampton Village, which now owns the mill, had written unsuccessfully to lumber concerns both in the U.S. and in Canada without finding suitable material, only to find it right at home where Nathaniel Dominy had found it originally. (24) 

In order to fell the timber for this mill:

Dominy took over to Gardiner's Island, three Indians and an old negro called Shem. Dominy broad-axed the timber while the others felled it and did the rough work. It was then towed over on a raft to Fire Place, so called from the fact that when necessary to call attention of Gardiner's Island for any reason, such as a passenger waiting to cross, a fire was built on the shore at this spot. It took two days to bring the timber across, and it was then hauled by oxen to the present site. (25)

This would be a distance of about 7 miles.

The Gardiner's Island mill was made by Nathaniel Dominy (V) and the following extract from John Lyon Gardiner's notebook gives some interesting details: (26)

May 23rd, Monday, 1795. In the morning began to raise my new mill with about 20 of my own and carpenters and eight more that came on. Raised her well before night and no one much hurt. She came together but needed no cutting, and her frame is good. She has some Mulberry and her trunnels are locust and mulberry. Nat. Domine Junr., David and Jonan Baker and their 3 prentis (i.e Lewis Baker, David Edwards and Jim terry) and old Richard King framed her. Her frame is entirely new and she stands about 3 or 4 rods N/W/ of the old Petticoat mill.July 5th, the Carpenters went off. They had two thirds covered the mill and nearly finished cog wheel.Aug. 23rd, Domine and his prentiss and John Baker's prentiss began. the mill cost compleat 307 pounds.New wind Mill — was raised monday May 23, 1795. Nat Domine Junr. Master workman, Jona Skillenger and others from Amagansett came to assist and old Mr. N. Domine — the old Petticoat mill built by Mr. R. Homan and Mr. David Gardiner in the year… was crazy and gone to Decay very little care taken of her in the war from 1775 to 1782.Memo of Cost of the New Mill as nigh as I can ascertain — finish all off Novr. 8th 1795.

An itemized list follows of parts, number of days boarded on the Island, etc. The cost was $773.36 or in English money, £309.7.0. It is interesting to note that the stones came from "Becket of Lyne" and cost $40, and that the "time of getting them and freight" was $6.27

Nat (V) was asked by Moses Cleaveland of Southold, L. I. for an estimate on the rebuilding of a windmill. Here is his answer:

East Hampton, April 13th, 1810.Sir, — I received yours of the 9th inst. which informs me, that if your timber will answer, you have concluded to put two run of Stones in your Mill — I believe it will do well. 2nd. If you frame girders across for your bridge beams to lie upon 8 Feet and 4 Inches from top of stone beams to top of said girders, the lower storey will answer as agreed upon, but if you conclude to have the bridge beams lie on those girths which support the upper floor perhaps the lower storey had better be as much as 10 feet high. 3rd. The top had better be enlarged as much as the bottom or the arms will come too near. 4th. The stone beams may be 2 Feet and 10 Inches apart, and the posts under them stand flush with the inside of the beams and 5 Feet between them the other way. 5th. The post in the centre of Mill may be from 18 to 24 Inches and long enough to rise 4 feet 8 inch above the stone beams.6th. The plank rim to be in 6 pieces — 7 Cogg wheel to be 8 feet diameter and Spur wheel 5 feet 3 ins. with 52 coggs each 3 1/2 by 1 3/4 and 12 inches long Cants of spur wheel 17 inches wide and 2 thick. The wallower 3 Feet 10 Inches diameter of plank 2 Inches thick, each head to be double thickness and the plank to cross — 25 Rounds 14 inches between shoulders and 3 Inches diameter.The rim that holds the coggs for turn in the tip of Mill may be 5 inches thick and 9 or 10 wide. Stocks 34 or 35 Feet long 8 Inches thick and 10 deep at Center and the ends proportioned so as to suit the joints when hewed 8 Inches on end and 4 1/2 the other and the thickness of the stock about 3 1/2 or 4 Inches at end. Size of Burr Stones 4 Feet 4 Inches diameter and the rock Stones 4 Feet 8 or 9 Inches diameter and the runner 17 or 18 Inches through the eye. N/B/ The Post in center may be crotch'd on one of the sleepers and a large stone placed under the end. Yours, etc., Nathl. Dominy Junr.

The cost of the work on this mill, completed in 66 days in November 1810, was $111.00.28 This mill, presently on Shelter Island and now called the Sylvester Mill, is one of the documented Dominy-built mills. The other two are the mill on Gardiner's Island (see above) and the ‘Hook’ mill in East Hampton, property of the Village.

There are two other mills having the same interior gearing of the turning cap. These are presumed to be by the Dominy Craftsmen by Rex Wailes.29 Charles Howell, molinologist at the Sunnyside Restoration at Tarrytown, New York, also concurs.(30) These other two are the Colonel Abraham Gardiner mill of 1771, still on its original site (36 James Lane, East Hampton) and the much-moved Huntting Miller–Pantigo–Payne Memorial mill, also of 1771.

Both of these mills have the conical gabled cap peculiar to Eastern Long Island. The documented Dominy mills have the boat-shaped or dory cap. Their dates are 1795, 1796 (or 1806) and 1810. If we assume as Hummel has (31) that Nathaniel Dominy IV preferred to work on clocks, he would have allowed Nat V to do most of the construction of the mills.

Nat V was 25 in 1795, the year that John Lyon Gardiner had his new mill built. Gardiner says that "old Mr. N. Domine…came to assist." "Old Mr. N. Domine" was 58 in 1795 — certainly not an enfeebling age, but an age where one would like to develop preferences. ("Old Mr. N" would live another seventeen years.)

In checking the list of attributes of the mills (see Appendix) the two 1771 undocumented mills have the conical gable cap, and could have been constructed by "Old Mr. N" (IV) who would have been 34 at the time — his son not yet born. Therefore it seems probable that Nat (V) constructed the more windsheer dory cap.

The skill developed in the 18th century in using wood for the windmill cap created strong, regional characteristics in cap design.32 On Cape Cod, the caps are conical. In East Anglia the sides are strangely bowed as on an upturned boat. In Kent, the clapboarded cap is shaped like a curved bonnet.(33)

The unusual caps devised by the Dominys, as well as the sturdy structure of the mill frame, show an excellent knowledge of engineering and stress. How could the Dominys have acquired this knowledge? There are many "how to do it" builders' manuals; there were, especially between 1731 and 1735, the years of intense publication. (34) These were long on structural problems. Clocks and mills were the only examples of complicated mechanisms in the 17th century, and these machines were developed in the 18th century. (35)

The Dominys were well educated for their time and had business and social connections among the upper class of the community. Obviously they could read and write well, as their account books attest. Among the list of purchases in these books, in 1762, was the book published in London in 1761, N. Colson's The Mariner's New Calendar. The purchase was made in Newport, Rhode Island. It was a book of much interest as all the succeeding Dominys inscribed their names in it also. (36)

It has been noted by the previous curator of the Payne Memorial, Edward Mulford Baker Strong, that drawn on the attic floor of the Dominy homestead (demolished in 1946) were full-scale drawings of the workings of mills. (37) This is a remarkable feat of memory, to be able to reconstruct those parts precisely in another place, such as on Gardiner's Island.

The framework of the mill structure is derived from belfry construction in England. The diagram of the order of assembly of the belfry of Navestock Church (38) becomes more vivid when coordinated with Gardiner's description of the raising of the mill. About 30 or 32 men helped to raise the mill "and no one much hurt." The diagram in the Appendix shows where that number of men could have been used. 

The belfry has four cant posts, and the windmill has eight. On the second level are the great cross braces, the same as on the second level of the ‘Hook’ mill. This belfry has been dated by carbon 14 analysis as c. 1250.(39) This type of bracing and raising had been known for centuries. 

The ‘Hook’ mill has a diameter of 21'6" on the ground or meal floor. The diameter across the curb at the top is 16 feet. The cant posts are oak, 10½ inches by 9 inches. The beams are nine inches square, and the joists are 5" x 4". The oak floor boards are 15" wide, and are very tight fitting, even today.

Care had to be taken to keep the mill clean and fresh. A little sour flour could spoil the contents of the mill and create bad feeling and loss of business. Rodents were kept at a minimum via natural means — the mill cat. In the ‘Hook’ mill there is an oval opening in the ground floor labelled for present-day visitors "Cat's Door."

All the cant posts and beams in this mill have Roman numerals at their joinings. These highly visible cuts are about 1/4" deep and about 4–5" high. On the meal floor at ‘Hook’ the framing members between the cant posts are across the corner of the right angle of the cant posts and the beam supporting the stone floor.

The ceilings are high, machinery is overhead, and the doorways (not opposite each other) fit in easily without any cutting of the bracing structure. The windows, too, are let in in places where the structure would not be cut. The exterior framing of these guillotine windows have little pent roofs over each one. On the stone floor are the great X-braces, derived from Romanesque wooden structure. This type of bracing against the winds and the shuddering of machinery has been used as recently as 1968 in San Francisco, where the Alcoa Building, a curtain wall office building, has X framing on the exterior middle courses — a Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill design.

By the early 19th century, when the Dominys were the busiest with windmills, steam power was invented. The small smock mill owner tried to cope with changing conditions as best he could, sometimes buying another mill to have it moved next to his original one (so that one miller could run two mills), but by 1918 it was all over. Today smock mills are museums.

Conclusion

A windmill is an extraordinarily sensitive and sophisticated machine. The unreliability of the wind creates varying demands on a miller. He needs a weather eye and a mechanical ear; he needs sure judgement. In a rising wind the mill might "run away" beyond the control of the brake and burn to the ground before his eyes. If he could keep the stones supplied with grain throughout the storm, he might ride it out in the mill. Once the hoppers were empty, fire would ensue.

With this universal danger, windmill mechanics and engineering seem to have become common knowledge in the 18th century. As each more sophisticated element was invented, each area used it in their own way.

Rex Wailes has determined that the Dominys built their mills with a conglomerate of influences. Some Long Island mills have fantails — that is very English; the conical cap with small gables are found only in France and the Iberian Peninsula — and on Eastern Long Island. The internal winding gear is common in Holland and the Mediterranean — and in all the Dominy-built mills. However the nomenclature is purely English. The windmills seem to be, like everything else in America, a little of this and a little of that.

Windmills remain ethically the most satisfactory machines devised by man, with an unfailing source of power.

— Sherrill Foster, 1976

Notes

1.  Peter H. Stott, ed., Long Island, an Inventory of Historic Engineering and Industrial Sites. Introduction by John Gable, PhD. (Washington, D.C., 1974), p. x.

2.  Rex Wailes, "Windmills of Eastern Long Island," in Jaray, The Mills of Long Island (Port Washington, 1962), p. 25.

3.  Susanne Beedell, Windmills (Charles Scribner's Sons, 1975), pp. 136–137.

4.  Read before the Newcomen Society of England at the Science Museum, South Kensington, London, April 24th, 1935.

5.  See note 1.

6.  Russella Hazard, Early Sag Harbor (c.1952); Jeannette Edwards Rattray, The Old Hook Mill (East Hampton, 1966), passim.

7.  Beedell, p. 123.

8.  Stanley Freese, Windmills and Millwrighting (Newton Abbot, 1971), p. 5.

9.  Beedell, p. 13.

10.  Charles Hummel, With Hammer in Hand (Charlottesville, 1968), p. 215.

11.  Rattray, Old Hook Mill, p. 9.

12.  Ibid., p. 32.

13.  Hazard, p. 3.

14.  Morgan Dix, unpublished diary, East Hampton Free Library, n.d., u.p.

15.  Freese, p. 91.

16.  Rattray, Old Hook Mill, p. 15.

17.  Reynolds, p. 89.

18.  See note 10.

19.  Hummel, p. 6.

20.  Hummel, p. 236.

21.  Hummel, p. 354.

22.  Hummel, pp. 383, 391.

23.  Jeannette Edwards Rattray, East Hampton History and Genealogies (Garden City, 1953), p. 339.

24.  Conversation with E. L. Sherrill, Village Trustee, 1974.

25.  Wailes, p. 5.

26.  Wailes, p. 27.

27.  Wailes, p. 27.

28.  Wailes, p. 29.

29.  Wailes, p. 25.

30.  Conversation with Charles Howell, August 1976.

31.  Hummel, p. 221.

32.  Freese, p. 28.

33.  Reynolds, p. 86.

34.  Helen Park, "Carpentry Books Available in the Colonies Before 1775," S.A.H., Vol. 20, no. 3 (October 1961), p. 115.

35.  Freese, p. 15.

36.  Hummel, p. 20.

37.  Conversation with E. M. B. Strong, Summer 1976.

38.  Cecil Alec Hewett, Development of Carpentry: 1200–1700 (New York, 1969), p. 32.

39.  Hewett, p. 32.