Rebirth of the New Mill in Smithtown

When it was built more than 200 years ago, its owners dubbed it "the New Mill."

Now the grist mill in Blydenburgh County Park in Hauppauge is undergoing a $500,000 face-lift to repair piers, shingles and floors decayed by decades of wear and tear at the headwaters of the Nissequogue River.

Tours and programs have been held outside the mill for years, but visitors have not been allowed inside for at least a decade because the rickety building was unsafe, officials said. The restoration is expected to allow visitors back inside when it reopens in the spring.

They will be able to explore the lost art of milling -- once a staple of Long Island life.

"It is one of the few [mills] left on Long Island," said Rich Martin, director of historic services for the Suffolk County Parks Department, which owns the mill and is leading its restoration using county capital projects funding.

The three-story mill, constructed in 1801 along with a dam, was the last one built in Smithtown, Martin said. Its original owners included descendants of Smithtown's founder, Richard Smythe, and members of the Blydenburgh family, for whom the park is named.

The mill, which closed in the 1920s, is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and is part of a county historic district that includes an adjacent miller's house and farm buildings dating to the 1800s.

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Grain grown by the Blydenburghs and their neighbors and customers provided the grist that the mill turned into flour and meal.

"While the mill itself is significant, the most significant aspect is the district itself," Martin said. "Very rarely do you have a complex like this that reflects the early 19th-century look and design."

Restoration began in April and is expected to be completed by the end of 2011, Martin said.

Workers are restoring stone piers. All the mill's exterior white cedar shingles and interior frames and flooring will be replaced, Martin said, noting that railings will be added to staircases to make the mill safe for visitors.

Hopes for a working mill

The mill hasn't produced an ounce of flour since it was closed. But the county hopes to make it a working mill again someday -- when there's enough money, Martin said.

When the mill reopens, visitors will be able to learn about Long Island's milling industry through displays at the park and weekly Saturday tours led by guides from the Long Island Greenbelt Trail Conference. The mill also will be open on weekdays to school groups.

Allen Drost, a tour guide who lives at the park's farmhouse, said the Blydenburgh family operated the mill until technology made it obsolete.

"The steam engine put these kind of mills out of business," Drost said. With the advent of steam, "you could build mills anywhere you wanted. . . . You weren't limited to where the water was."

River mills couldn't keep up, he added. A sawmill founded by the Blydenburgh and Smith families was discontinued in the 1930s and dismantled in the 1950s, Drost said.

The property was purchased about 1938 by the Weld family, whose members included future Massachusetts Gov. William Weld, Drost said. The Welds sold the land in 1965 to the county, which turned it into a 627-acre park with horse trails, fishing holes, campgrounds and picnic areas.

Mill's beginnings

The mill's history dates to the 1798 marriage of Isaac Blydenburgh and Susannah Smith, who was part of the family descended from Smithtown's founder, said town historian Bradley Harris.

Blydenburgh forged a business venture with his wife's cousins, Caleb Smith II and Joshua Smith II, to build a dam that would raise part of the Nissequogue River by 10 feet -- high enough to push the paddles of the waterwheel that would run mechanisms that turned the grist mill and sawmill.

They would call the complex the New Mill.

Blydenburgh paid $1,575 to buy 190 acres on the Nissequogue from his brother, Benjamin, and his wife, Elizabeth, Susannah Blydenburgh's sister.

"It doesn't sound like a lot of money, but I suppose $1,575 was a windfall for property in Suffolk County with nothing on it," Harris said. "So Benjamin and Elizabeth went away happy."

Several hundred acres of trees were chopped down, likely to construct the buildings, Harris said. To this day, fishermen on Stump Pond grumble when their hooks catch the underwater stumps left from the felled trees, Harris said.

Another business partner, Isaac Smith, no relation to the other Smiths, built the mill and dam. He planned to operate the mill, but he died in 1802. The mill returned to the Blydenburgh family, and records indicate Isaac Blydenburgh ran it for many years, Harris said.

When the mill reopens, visitors will literally walk in the Blydenburgh family's footsteps: the dirt road to the mill has remained little changed for more than two centuries.

"You really have an historic early village, in a sense," Martin said. "It still looks like the way it was."