The coastland times. [volume] (Mnateo [i.e. Manteo], N.C.) 1947-1959, 1955-07-08
By BEN DIXON MacNEILL


is so enabled to exercise
ertain choice as to whether it
Was Bateman Miller, while reef
ing the sails on his windmill in
Kinnakeet began to rotate rapidly
when his son, Jones Miller, think
ing that his father had finished
with shortening sail, released the
brake and continued merrily with
the milling.
Some inheritors of this item of
Outer Banks folklore hold that it
was Mr.. Miller who loosed the
brake before his son, Jones Mil
Ter, had finished with reefing the
windmill's sails and so began to
rotate in the freshening breeze
and the creaking of the mills pom
derous gears completely neutral
lied his anguished bowling. But
the mill ran unevenly and was
presently stoppe whereupon
whichever one of the Millers it
was, descended to the earth un-
harmed.
In Great Hurricane
Either way the Millers, father
and son, continued to grind corn
and wheat, as their forbears for
perhaps two centuries had done,
until the end of the windmill in
North Carolina came with the
Great Hurricane of 1899 which
blew three days and three nights
with peak winds reaching 1876
miles per hour. The mill might
have been rebuilt but the era of
the internal combustion engine
had come and, despite the opinion
of Capt. Bannister Midget who
had installed one of the things in
a skiff, the unsanctified device
had come to stay.
There were at least ten of these
ponderous machines on Hatteras
Island. These l have discovered
record of and there are as yet not
wholly verified accounts of two
others. There were others on Ocra-
coke, probably two, at least one on
Portsmouth, another on Harker's
Island, at least three on Roanoke
Island and on the tip of land where
Camden County touches North and
Pasquotank rivers there were at
least five. These add up to % wind
mills in the tidal reaches of the
Sound country and no trace of
of them remains except, here and
there, a pair of weathered mill
stones.
Massive things they were, these
windmills, with a sail diameter of
40 feet and more and they began
to dot the landscape long before
here was a North Carolina. They
were, indeed, the subject of the
first item of legislation of general
portent passed by the Governor
and Council not long after Charles
Eden came as governor of the pro-
vince under the Lords Proprietors.
On November %, IT'S, meeting at
the house of Capt. Richard Sander
son on the south bank of Little
River in Perquimans County these
worthy statesmen passed can Act
to Encourage Windmills."
Still On Books
Here began what latter gen.
Grafton would denounce as creep
ing socialism in America. 1t was
enacted that anybody who would
agree to erect windmill for the
grinding of corn and wheat would
be given a half acre of land upon
which to establish his industry
and that the land be paid for out
of public money, provided the mill
was put into operation within two
years from the time application
was filed. The same act fixed the
tolls that miller might charge
for his services and the law con-
tinues on the statute books until
this day-one eighth of the grain
ground.
Present and subscribing their
names to the law were Charles
Eden, governor; N. Chevin, C.
Gale, Frank Foster, Tobias
knight and Edward Moseley.
And so windmills for the grind
ing of corn and wheat began to
appear. There is no knowing
which of them was the first, or
where it may have bee n,
but it is now generally
agreed by those who can
remember them that the mills built
in eastern North Carolina, below
the fall line where it was possible
to turn a milestone with water
power, were of the German type
as opposed to the Dutch type. The
books say that the windmill was
the first power plant to be devised
by man and that they were in gem
eral use in Europe before the end
of the 18th century.
Between the German and the
Dutch types Of the windmill the
essential difference was simple:
The Germans turned the entire
! house around to face the sail into
AAha x.,;nd and, tha nutch merely