Whatever Goes Around Comes Around

By Rhoda Amon | Staff Writer

Returning from the War of 1812, Samuel Cox applied to the Town of Southold for permission to construct a tidal mill on Mattituck Inlet. But it took years before the creek was dammed and the mill and mill gates were completed. The mill opened for business in 1821, according to the Rev. Charles E. Craven's 1906 "History of Mattituck, Long Island, N.Y."

One of the earliest tidal mills in the country, it was operated by the incoming and outgoing tides pushing underwater wheels, Audrey Wigley, CEO of the Southold Indian Museum, wrote in a brief history of the mill.

Barnabas Wines became the miller in the 1830s, according to his great-great granddaughter, Edna Dickerson Montgomery, now 85 and a volunteer with the Southold Historical Society. She has seen many North Fork landmarks disappear. But the old mill building remains.

No longer profitable after a steam mill was built in 1902, the mill was sold for $300 and became a popular tavern, giving rise to the joke that the grist mill had become a gin mill.

With an expanded dining room, it's now the Old Mill Inn, the Mill Road restaurant shown at right. Owner Jerry Daly continues to preserve a stone used for grinding and gears from the old millworks as well as a drop door in the kitchen reportedly used to secretly hand up bootlegged booze during Prohibition.