Boyd's Old Windmill - Middletown, RI
Posted by: 
nomadwillie
N 41° 30.047 W 071° 16.174
19T E 310571 N 4596837
For 185 years the mill never moved from its original Portsmouth location until 1990 when the Boyd family donated the old mill to the Middletown Historical Society for its relocation and restoration that began in 1995.
Waymark Code: WM17CHM
Location: Rhode Island, United States
Date Posted: 01/26/2023
Views: 0
Boyd’s Eight-vane Wind Grist Mill is one of the last two survivors of more than twenty known wind mills which once worked to supply the daily needs of Aquidneck Island. It is the only eight-vane smock mill ever built and operated in New England and one of the very few survivors in the United States. In 1810, John Peterson built this mill and a house on fifty-six acres of land near the intersection of Mill Lane and West Main Road in Portsmouth, Rhode Island and where the mill remained for 185 years. William Boyd first leased the mill then bought it in 1815. It has been known as Boyd’s Wind Grist Mill ever since. Peterson and two millwrights constructed the mill in an octagonal "smock" style, so-called because of an alleged resemblance to a man in a smock – the loose garment our forefathers wore during weekdays.
For 135 years, the mill served Peterson and the Boyd family. For almost fifty years after the mill ceased operation, the mill languished in disuse. For 185 years the mill never moved from its original Portsmouth location until 1990 when the Boyd family donated the old mill to the Middletown Historical Society for its relocation and restoration that began in 1995.
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