The coastland times. [volume] (Mnateo [i.e. Manteo], N.C.) 1947-1959, 1958-05-23
COASTLAND EARLY
INDUSTRY MAY BE
RECONSTRUCTED
The Old Windmill on Ha++eras
Island Began Business 235
Years Ago
BY. AYCOCK BROWN

BY. AYCOCk BROWN
Manteo, N. C.-Long-planned
restoration and continuation of the
Coastland's oldest industrial estab-
lishment will take a long step to-
ward reality this week when AL
bert Q. Bell, who restored, Fort
Raleigh on Roanoke Island and,
more recently, colonial structures
on jamestown Island in Virginia,
goes down to Hatteras Island for
detailed look at what remains
If the wind-powered grist mill that
began grinding corn at. Kinnakeet
in the year 1928.
Little except the mill-stones,
imported from the West Indies in
1920, will be found but throughout
the neighborhood he will find
score of older residents of the
community who remember the an
cient mill wildly and he will find
a scale model of the structure it.
self, with its 36-foot sail wheel"
that for nearly two centuries dom
mated the skyline of the village.
In the course of time, ten other
but similar establishments were
built on the island.
Authority for the establishment
of the facility was granted by the
Governor and His Council at a
meeting on a plantation in Pas
quotank County in IT'S, thirteen
years before North Carolina was
formally established as a separate
province under the British crown.
Under the resolution passed on
that November day other mills
We're established at many points
along the North Carolina coast
and at one time at least five such
plants We're in operation at what
became known as Windmill Point
in Camden County.
Neither corn nor wheat have
ever been grown along the islands
of the Outer Banks of North Caro-
lima but from their earliest his
tory there were populous villages
in need of bread. Even before IT'S
there had spring up a brisk trade |
between these villages and the
mainland plantations where dried
fish could be traded for grain.
But a mill to grind it was needed,
and by 1928 the first of them was
in operation.
There followed a brisk trade
between these villages and the
West Indies where most of the
mill-stones in use here were quar-
ried, a point that has been veri-
fled by U. S. Bureau of Standards
after examination of chips of rock
Pounds on Hatteras Island. The |
stones are of volcanic origin, most
ly from Martinique, whose Mont |
Pelee belched up lava that cooled
for generations before it was
quarried for use here.
History of the grist mill business
on the islands of the Outer Banks
was developed by Ben Dixon Mac
Neill in the decade that he has
devoted to research into the folk
lore of the region that is set down
in his Forthcoming book, "The Hat
terasman" which is scheduled for
early in June. Bell and
MacNeill have been close friends
since the Fort Raleigh reservation
period and they will again be in
collaboration on the windmill
project on Hatteras Island.
Earlier this year MacNeill, with
the help of his neighbors, retrieved
the stones, which weigh more
than one ton, from the shallow
waters of Pamlico Sound off Avon
and they are presently taking the
weather outside his cottage on the
Point of Cape Hatteras. All of the
early mills were on the sound side
of their communities, near to the
docks where mainland corn was
The years have eroded
the shore the length Of the island
and the site of every mill is now
under water.
The oldest of these plants,
known variously by the names of
the families that owned it through
its two centuries of existence as
The Miller-Scarborough-G Gray mill,
was badly damaged by the August
storm of 1899 but continued in
operation until erosion-and the
replacement of wind-power by gas
oline-razed it about 1906. These
are the stones that have been re-
trieved from the sound.
On their recent visit to Hat
teras Island at the time of the
dedication of Cape Hatteras Ma
tional Seashore, Governor Luther
Hodges of North Carolina, Paul
Mellon of Pittsburg and Washing
ton, Conrad Wirth, Director of the
National Park Service, Huntington
Cairns and Admiral H. C. Moore
Of the U. S. Coast Guard spent
some time at the MacNeill house
and inspected the stones and the
working scale-model of the ancient
structure that housed them. Both
Mollon ond uodnoc xxra,.a LaanIxy