Indian Allan's Mills

Edited by DEXTER PERKINS, City Historian and BLAKE MCKELVEY, Assistant City Historian VOL. 1 OCTOBER, 1939 NO. 4 BY BLAKE MCKELVEY It was just one hundred fifty years ago that the first mills were erected on the site where the city of Rochester stands today. Unfor- tunately the venturesome builders and proprietors, unable to look ahead through the years, could not see what the future held in store for their millsite; discouraged by a slack trade, they soon abandoned the enterprise, and after a few years the mills fell into decay. Luckily a sufficient number of first-hand records, and some fairly reliable tra- ditions have been preserved so that we can, in this the sesquicentennial year, reconstruct at least a portion of the story of the mills erected by Ebenezer Allan at the Falls of the Genesee in the summer and late fall of 1789. We of Rochester are prone to think of Allan’s sawmill and gristmill as the flimsy forerunners of our diversified industries, but their origin and their function were of a different sort. The Mill Lot sold to Phelps and Gorham by the Indians at Buffalo Creek in July, 1788, was planned by the Indians as a means to help them bridge the chasm that separated the Indian from the white man’s culture. The mills to be erected at the falls were to grind the grain produced by the Indians; with this stimulus at hand, the leaders of the tribesmen hoped to adjust their people to an agricultural way of life, and thus to enable them to live in peace and harmony with the white settlers soon to locate east of the Genesee River. This original purpose for the sale of the Mill Lot was for many causes never realized, and Allan’s mills became, instead of a link ROCHESTER HISTORY? published quarterly by the Rochester Public Library, dis- tributed free at the Library, by mail 25 cents per year. Address correspondence to the City Historian, Rochester Public Library, 115 South Avenue, Rochester, N.Y. between the cultures of white and red men, a useful outpost, for a few years, of the westward-moving New York-New England frontier. ALLAN AND HIS MILLS Ebenezer, or “Indian,” Allan was from many angles a dramatic and certainly a colorful figure-a man well suited to carry out the original purpose of the frontier millsite. Although as a Tory ranger he had earned a bad reputation among the settlers to the south and east, Allan had later operated for several years as a peaceful trader among the Indians along the Genesee River. He had two daughters by a Seneca wife, and his enterprising activity had made him a figure of some importance in the Indian community.l. Allan had proved agreeable to the Phelps and Gorham purchase in the summer of 1788,2 and before returning to New England Oliver Phelps chose this hardy frontiersman as the man to build and operate the mills at the falls of the Genesee. It is uncertain whether the One-Hundred-Acre Tract was given as a reward for his co-operation in bringing the Indians to terms at Buffalo Creek, or as an inducement for Allan to undertake the expense of building the mills on such a distant and unsettled frontier. In any case, title was promised by the following Articles of Agree- ment : 3 On 30 Sep. 1788: N. Gorham and O. Phelps & Co., by their agents Wm. Walker, Caleb Barton and Benj. Barton articled to Ebenezer Allan the privilege of a grist mill and saw mill with lands sufficient for mill yards and roads to the same and like- wise 100 acres of land adjoining the same; provided the said lands shall not interfere with or injure any carrying place, ferry or town plat which may hereafter be found advantageous to the Company. Always reserving one half of all mines and minerals which have or may hereafter be found on said lands, and to build a good grist mill and saw mill by the 1st of June next. Allan may have doubted the possibility of making his mills a vital link between the Indians and the white men, for, Indian trader though he was, he had recently married Lucy Chapman, a white woman, thus aligning himself more definitely with the settlers’ frontier. Indeed, Allan had already partially cleared and improved a 2 farm of 472 acres near the site of present Scottsville, and most of his few neighbors were his own relations, either by blood or mar- riage. Lucy’s parents and her sister, married to Nicholas Miller, all resided in the vicinity, as did Allan’s own sister and her husband, Christopher Dugan. Other settlers began to arrive in 1789, found- ing Canandaigua, Bloomfiield, Hartford [Avon], and Northfield [Pittsford] -to mention but a few of the pioneer communities. Allan was able to sell his Scottsville farm to Peter Shaeffer late that year for $2.50 an acre, a very good price for that day. Doubtless the prospect of an active trade with the growing settlements prompted Allan to transfer most of his interest to the millseat at the falls of the Genesee-thus taking his stand at an extreme outpost of the Genesee frontier. Mr. Morley Turpin, ablest student of Allan’s career, tells us that Allan built his sawmill in the summer of 1789, sawing timber for his gristmill, the frame of which was raised that November.4 George H. Harris placed the date of the raising at November 12-13,5 but unfortunately no original records fixing the exact date have survived. Orsamus Turner, writing in 1851 from notes gathered in part by Henry O'Reilly within fifty years of Allan’s activities, supplied a fairly reliable account : 6 Allan had erected the saw mill at the Falls, (now Rochester) in the summer previous, and had his timber out for the grist mill, The money that he realized for his farm, enabled him to push forward his enterprise. The grist mill was raised the fore- part of winter. The frame was 26 by 30, of heavy timber. All the able bodied white men in the Genesee valley were invited to the raising-and they numbered fourteen all told. It took them two days. A trading boat happened to enter the mouth of the river, while they were raising, some rum was procured, and the backwoodsmen had a dance in the mill, and a rejoicing at the prospect of something better to prepare meal for their bread than the stump mortar. The first original record of an actual visit to the millseat has been uncovered by Mr. Turpin among the few known papers of Samuel Street. We are grateful for the privilege of reproducing this letter, especially since it reveals an uncertainty in the minds of the 3 Phelps and Gorham associates concerning the proper developments to be undertaken here. No reply is at hand, but the fact that Allan was encouraged to continue the construcion and operation of the mills, as shown below, indicates that Oliver Phelps decided to waive the right to withdraw Allan’s claim on the technicality to be found in his failure to complete the mills by the first of June. Allan’s enterprise in his pioneer harvest field at Scottsville, as well as at the millsite at the falls, was justly appreciated by the frontier trader, Samuel Street: 7 Genesee 22d Aug. 1789 Dr. Sir I have not cross’d to Mr. Allens Mills, but have made enquiry and do not find any Intervale or extraordinary land near where it stands and as it will, in some measure, draw the atten- tion of settlers in that quarter and open the way for extending the settlement as soon as a further purchas is made from the natives. I do not apprehend that the Comp’y will loose any thing by allow- ing him a Hundred acres adjoining the mills. Mr. Allen has been at a great expense in digging and plowing his Race-way and his demand for his former expectations at the place he lives [his farm near present Scottsville] were by no means extravagant, all these matters considered, hope you will acquies in opinion with me. I should have cross’d to the mills but the Millwrights were gone up to the harvest and no Canoe to be found at the Landing. Iam with respect Your Most Ob’t Humb’l Servant Oliver Phelps, Esq.r. Sam’l Street. Very little is really known of the activities at Allan’s mills dur- ing these early years. We do not know when the millstones were first set in motion, nor do we know when Allan finally moved in. But it is probable that by the spring or early summer of 1790 our first miller was fairly settled in his forest-bound mill on the site occupied by the Aqueduct Parking Station on the west side of Graves Street in downtown Rochester today. 4 A small natural raceway, which ran north past his mills, left the river just south of the cascades which then formed the upper falls, located about where Broad Street now crosses the river atop of the canal aqueduct. These cascades,which dropped the river about eighteen feet within a distance of fifty feet, were later blasted away to make room for two successive aqueducts and to provide an unobstructed flow of flood waters through the city. The small stream which Allan plowed open for a raceway possibly branched off from the river near the present western end of Court Street Bridge and ran north to tumble down an extension of the ledge of rock which formed the cascades.

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