Patterns of mill siting and materials processing: A historical geography of water-powered industry in central New Jersey

This study presents a historical geographical synthesis of the traditional watermill from a materials processing perspective and with specific reference to the landscape and settlement of two segments of central New Jersey countryside, the Stony Brook/Millstone and North Branch of the Raritan River watersheds. The underlying purpose has been to consider the role of the watermill in the spread and maintenance of rural settlement and land use in the Mid-Atlantic region, and to ponder the relative influence of environment, culture, economy and technology on the siting and operation of water-powered industry in the countryside.; The synthetic portions of the study offer brief overviews of the bi-millemial historical development of the watermill and the physical arrangement of mills in the landscape. A more comprehensive synthesis of water-powered industry follows from a processing perspective, in which basic processing actions are characterized and then discussed with reference to inorganic and organic (botanical and floral) materials.; In analyzing mills within the two study drainages, a range of influences are identified in the siting and operation of water-powered industry in the central New Jersey countryside, some of them grounded chiefly in hydrology and the physical character of the land, others relating to the resource exploiting motives of Euro-American inhabitants. Still other broader-based technological, economic and political forces are evident in the life cycle of the traditional watermill. Mills enjoyed a particularly close relationship with rivers, roads and canals, and in combination with these avenues of transportation, played a central role in the settlement process, the growth of nucleated communities and the maintenance of the rural economy. A multi-faceted human element is recognized as participating in the water-powered industrial experience ranging from wealthy provincial proprietors and merchants to farming families and corporate entities, and from industrialists and skilled millwrights to mill hands.; Traditional watermills are today largely absent from the central New Jersey landscape having completed. a cycle of existence extending over roughly a quarter of a millennium. Yet the legacy of water-powered industry remains strongly imprinted in the cultural and natural landscape, not only in settlement and land use patterns, but also in the hydrological environment and the physical record of resource exploitation.