Flour milling in United States

One of the early mill, gristmills, such as the one at Jamestown in 1621, ground corn and wheat for meal and flour help to feed the colonist while making the millers key local figures.

The vast majority of mills up to about 1800, operated as custom mills that ground the farmer’s grain for a toll in flour paid to the miller.

In the late eighteenth century Oliver Evans invented labor-saving machinery which greatly increased the productivity of flour mills.

Eastern mills that had relied on soft wheat felt competition from larger western millers based in Minneapolis and other Midwestern cities that used new machinery to grind the hard wheat that predominated in the Midwest.

As the population moved westward and grain production increased, four milling became an important industry.

As early as 1850, flour milling accounted for almost 10 percent of all industrial establishments an over 13 percent of the value of all industrial products. The milling industry became increasingly centralized.

In themed 1800s there were an estimated 25,000 mills in America; by 1900 there were only 13,000 mills, by 2000 there were a mere 1oo flour milling companies.

With an expanding rail system, flour milling could be concentrated and product shipped to markets throughout the country. By the end of the nineteenth century, American and Canadian flour exports to Britain had grown steadily.

Baltimore was the early leader in flour milling, developing a flour trade with the South, Latin America, and Europe, while Rochester and Buffalo growing in stature after completion of the Erie Canal.

The most important western milling town was St. Luis. This city with its fine river and rail transportation facilities captured markets for flour in the South and the East.
Flour milling in United States

The first steam flour mill in London

The steam engine was early used in flour mill, in malt mills for breweries, in flint mills for the earthenware and china industry and in mills for crushing sugarcane for the West Indian refineries.

The firm of Boulton and Watt began in 1783 to build, in London, steam powered flour mill, known as Albion Mills.

In 1786 London’s first steam mill was erected on the bank of the Thames. These mills equipment was arranged by Watt himself with help of John Rennie, who later was to design Waterloo Bridge.

The mill began operating with one engine in 1786 and the second engine was not brought into operation until 1789.

Barges delivered the grain directly into the basement of the unimposing building. Inside the mill, two 50-horsepower steam engines together moved 20 pairs of millstones.

The output was expected to reach sixteen thousand bushel of flour a week. The Albion Mills were said to be means of sensibly reducing the price of flour in the metropolis, whilst they continued at work, for they occasioned a greater competition amongst the millers and meal-men than had ever existed before.

The Albion Mill was so productive that it provoked the resentment of its competitors. After five years, in 1791 a fire broke out, accompanied by the derisive howling of the London mob.

Although the Albion Mill was destroyed, may other steam engines continued to operate in and around London.
The first steam flour mill in London 

History of windmill

The invention of the ancient world was used by the flour millers of the Middle Ages, but in the twelfth century a new construction reached the European continent: the windmill that probably originated in the Orient.

It is known that windmills began to appear in Europe in the 12th century AD, in flat areas where rivers ran too slow to turn waterwheels for mills.

For areas that did not have easy access to running water but still required flour for bread, the windmill was the solution. The revolving sails, which can be trimmed according to the direction of the wind, turn the mill shaft.

The invention of the windmill appeared to some scholars to have originated in the east, because of the prior evidence of vertical, rather than horizontal axle, windmills in China and Afghanistan as early as the 700s.

Windmills were used first to grind wheat and later to pump for drainage. In Afghanistan they were used to grind flour.

Although the windmill was probably not a European invention, medieval Europeans made significant improvements.

Around AD 1100, the Mediterranean windmill began to appear in Italy. However, Mediterranean windmills only worked when the wind blew from the correct direction and when it blew within the correct range of velocities.

The first practical windmill emerged sometime around 1250. This design called ‘post mill’. Post mills were first developed in the Low Countries and spread very quickly to England.

Fifteenth-century windmills were larger, more stable and more efficient than earlier versions.

Probably the first windmill in United States was one erected at the Flowerdew Hundred Plantation on the James River not far from Jamestown, Virginia in 1621.
History of windmill