Among the hundreds of mills that once stood on the East Coast in colonial times, only a few survive and fewer still operate. The Wye Grist Mill, dating to about 1682, is Maryland's oldest working mill and has been part of three centuries of war, nation-building, industrial invention, and agricultural heritage. The mill and the village that grew around it were established soon after Thomas Williams received the 1665 patent for Wilton, a large tract later joined by Wilton Annex to total 1,350 acres around present-day Wye Mills. The first grist mill on this site was built around 1668, and in 1682 Edward Barrowcliff built a mill on the site of the present structure, operating it from about 1683 to 1693 before selling it to Richard Sweatnam, a carpenter and miller who had built Talbot County's first courthouse at York in 1682. Sweatnam ran the mill until his death in 1697, and his son William operated it until 1703. By 1706 the site also included a saw mill that continued into the late 1800's. Ownership passed through a succession of notable Maryland figures, including Richard Bennett III, who acquired it in 1706 and was considered one of the richest men in Maryland, and later Edward Lloyd III and Edward Lloyd IV of the Lloyd family. In 1778 William Hemsley acquired the mill, and in 1779 he contracted with Congress to supply wheat, flour, and bread to George Washington's American Army; during the American Revolution, this mill and others on the Eastern Shore shipped barrels of flour through the Chesapeake Bay to the Continental Army, leading historians to call the Eastern Shore the Breadbasket of the American Revolution. In 1790 the local inventor Oliver Evans used the Wye Grist Mill to develop his revolutionary ideas for automation, greatly improving the milling process. The mill remained a commercial enterprise until 1953, when the State of Maryland purchased it, and it is now owned and operated by the Friends of Wye Mill, a nonprofit volunteer organization.

Photo: Nate Davidson

Photo: Nate Davidson

Queenstown, Maryland · USA