Every town in New England has a local gristmill where local farmers brought their grain to be crushed into powder under water powered millstones.
Think of the gristmill as the precursor to the modern day convince store. Rather than stopping in for milk, eggs and bread, all of these items were produced at home from the family cow, chickens and field of wheat or corn.
A gristmill grinds cereal grain into flour and middlings. The term can refer to both the grinding mechanism and the building that holds it.
Few examples of gristmills still exist as flour and bread production become centralized and transportation such as trains could bring the grain to a large production facility and packaged bread was distributed to local country stores.
No doubt families who in the past spent all year growing grain, taking it to the gristmill to get crushed, storing it, baking their own bread from scratch — enjoyed the convenience of purchasing packaged bread.
You can still see a few examples of gristmills around the country if you look hard enough. There are a few that still work, for example the Dexter Grist Mill in Sandwich, MA on Cape Cod that still produces historic types of flour.
Gristmills were the height of technology at time of their construction and owning one’s own or financing the town’s mill was a luxury only the most successful farmers could afford. Most gristmills were community owned. Farmers would pay to have grain milled or pay with a certain amount of flour to the mill owner.
Even today, modern mills are typically merchant mills in which various farmers bring grain to the mill to be sold outright or pay to be milled into various types of flour.
