Fire, Smut and Disease in Manchester, Part Two of Four

By Ray Berg and Alan Dyer

Manchester Mill Ownership in 1853-1868

Between 1820 and 1845, Michigan’s small, local water-powered mills were referred to as “custom mills”, designed to service the specific needs and output quantities of local farmers and purchasers of flour and other products. These mills earned considerable profits due to their high capacity usage and their monopoly as the sole source of processing locally grown grains. By 1845, however, railroads began developing across a good portion of Michigan’s Lower Peninsula, and the economic benefits of milling began shifting from the small custom mills located on rivers within villages to the larger and more efficient “merchant mills”, which were located adjacent to railroads. Consequently, it became more difficult for these small custom mill owners to remain profitable and invest in capital improvements. Stephen Fargo may have realized this shift was occurring when, in the 1837 second plat of Manchester Village, he envisioned the future railroad coming directly to the Manchester Mill along what is now Adrian Street. The eventual routing of the railroad took it south of the downtown area, and the railroad did not arrive in Manchester until 1855.

Karl and Pat Racenis, current owners of the Manchester Mill, completed a title survey of the property from 1826 to the present. This survey is helpful in understanding the mill’s ownership at the time of the fire, and how prevailing economic conditions may have contributed to, or at least aggravated, the cause of its destruction in 1853.

Two observations are immediately apparent when one consults the many deeds associated with Manchester’s downtown mill during its first 35 years of existence. The first concerns the number of changes, in both name and ownership, that the mill experienced. The second, an often frustrating fact, is the necessity to consult these deeds in an orderly manner and with a complete reading of each one. Hardly a year or two passed during this period without a new, or former, owner arriving upon the scene.  What soon becomes evident, however, is that the several owner/operators did not change as often as it first appears.  Rather, these men were continuously in search of capital which was readily supplied by investors, often speculating outright.  In exchange, the investor became the owner of a percentage of the mill, but had little or no say in its operation.  If the mortgagor defaulted on his loan, the investor then had the right to sell his interest in the business to recoup his losses.

The existence of this condition over several decades indicates that either Manchester’s millers were poor businessmen, or the custom mill’s ability to return a reasonable profit became limited during this period.  In either case, investors with money to lend became essential to the business survival of many of the owner/operators.  It must also be said, however, that survival under these conditions was generally only temporary.

The Manchester Mill’s situation at mid-century serves as a good example of this phenomenon.  William Vreeland, its majority owner in 1853, purchased his interest in the mill from William McClelland shortly before the disastrous fire of May 1^st of that year.  He soon found it necessary to mortgage the property to George Sedgwick for $8,000, using some of the money to retire his debts and the remainder to pay John D. Kief for mill repairs.  Vreeland evidently was unable to repay the loan and Sedgwick became the owner of the Manchester Flouring Mill. Sedgwick was an Ann Arbor resident and attorney, originally from Great Barrington, Massachusetts, who arrived in Michigan about 1835. He moved to Chicago at some point after 1855 where he continued to practice law until his death.  As merely an investor, with no interest in becoming the owner/operator of a flouring mill, he put the business up for sale. Jabez Fountain, who owned the Premium Mills in East Manchester, a complex that also included a plaster mill, saw mill and cooper’s shop, purchased the Manchester Flouring Mill on July 17, 1855 for $10,000.  He signed a mortgage to Sedgwick for the total purchase price, plus an additional $1,000 for which he offered land in Sections 1 and 12 in Manchester Township as collateral.  Other loans of $600 and $500 were obtained from Fernando Beaman, an Adrian lawyer and former Manchester resident, and Newman Granger, a Manchester brewer.

Like many of those owner/operators who had preceded him, the mill remained heavily mortgaged during Fountain’s tenure and he found it necessary to find additional investors.  Unlike the previous owners, he was able to keep his investors within the family—his brother Cyrus, his father James, and his wife Harriet.  Still, he was unable to meet all of his original mortgage and loan obligations.  The Beaman loan of $600 went into default in 1866 and was sold at a sheriff’s sale for $500.  Neither were the terms of the $10,000 mortgage to Sedgwick met, and he became the mill’s owner by default for a second time on December 11, 1867.  The only money repaid was the Newman Granger loan. It was discharged in January 1868 following Fountain’s move to Elmira, New York where he soon entered the milling business once again.

This example of the 15-year history of mill ownership illustrates the difficulty in making capital improvements to efficiency or safety in small, older custom mills like Manchester’s. Mill finances were also affected by periodic panics and depressions in the national financial markets. These factors directly influenced a key component of the milling process, the custom smut machine, which led to the 1853 Manchester fire.

Figure 3 – The Rebuilt Manchester Mill in the 1880s

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by Ray Berg