Early Industrial Mills
Wiswall Mills
The mill complex at Wiswall’s Falls in Durham was originally constructed in 1835, when brothers Moses and Issachar Wiggin built a wooden dam and sawmill on the river. Recognizing that water wheels were no longer the technology of choice, they installed turbines that more efficiently captured the flow of water. They built other small mills on the site to take advantage of the abundant water power. Over the years, the mills here produced many goods: lumber for buildings and ships, flour, gingham cloth, knives, hoes and pitch forks, wooden measures, nuts and bolts, bobbins, axe handles, carriages and sleighs, chairs, and matches.
In 1853, a large paper mill was added to the site and sold to Thomas Wiswall & Co. for the manufacture of wall paper. In addition to his own grand house, Wiswall built houses for the mill workers and added several more work buildings to the site. For years, Wiswall and the men and women at the paper mill oversaw the production of a ton of paper per day.
Fire, a common plague among mills, destroyed the Wiswall paper mill in 1883. A flood in 1896 forced the closure of the sawmill that had remained in operation on site. J.W. Burnham (of Newmarket Light, Heat and Power Co.) bought the property in 1900 and built a hydropower station, bringing electricity to Durham for the first time. The wooden dam was replaced by a concrete dam in 1912. Electricity was produced here until 1930. As the University of New Hampshire grew, the school became the focal point of the Town of Durham and economic interest in the Wiswall site waned. The Wiswall Dam is still important to Durham, however, as it creates a valuable reservoir of water for the university in late summer and fall.
Although the buildings are gone, visitors to the site can still see granite foundations and the sluice way (originally built in 1854) that directed water into the mill’s turbines. The site is listed on the National Register of Historic Places as the “best remaining example in Durham of the town’s nineteenth century manufacturing base.” These remains were partially restored in 1999 by the LRAC and the Town of Durham with funding from the Wild & Scenic Rivers Program. In 2010, the LRAC and a volunteer committee from Durham installed an informational kiosk at the park. Plans to develop the park and make it more visitor-friendly are on-going. To view a video of Wiswall’s Mills, please click here for Part 1 http://youtu.be/GXtzNdfWWHU. Click here for Part 2 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LWGFBklyA6M&feature=BFa&list=ULLWGFBklyA6M&lf=mfu_
Wadley Village Mills
When Dr. Isaiah D. Edgerly came to Lee in the mid-1800s, he employed school children from Wadley Village to gather medicinal herbs, roots, and bark, such as slippery elm. Eight water-powered mortars and pestles became a part of the mill there. The resulting medicine was bottled and sold region-wide.
Later, in the late 1800s, a leatherboard factory became part of the mill complex at Wadley. Scraps of leather were ground up and mixed with rags to create a slurry which was then dried in large sheets. This leatherboard was used to line shoes that were made in a factory nearby.
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