Ford's Mill, Whitefield Me.

Ford's Mill, Whitefield Me.

Ford's Mill, Whitefield, Me. c.1920s Great Falls in Whitefield was an ideal location for mills. By 1774, Jeremiah Norris had built a sawmill. Abraham Choate and his sons added a gristmill to the site, which Benjamin King and his sons acquired in 1801. After Benjamin was killed in the mill later that year, his son, Peter, became sole owner and offered shares to investors. The site became known as Kings Mills. In 1834, a fire consumed the double sawmill, 3-story gristmill, cider mill, grain, lumber and John King's home. The mills were rebuilt, and Peter's descendants ran them until the late 19th century. When Clara King married William Ford in 1858, the complex became the Ford Mills, which operated into the 1920s. William H. Ford built the gristmill, here on the left, in the 1880s. The sawmill, on the right, generated electricity for the house next to the mill until electric power came to Whitefield in the 1930s. Hurricane Edna washed it away in 1954. The narrow gauge railroad tracks of the Wiscasset, Waterville, and Farmington Railway, visible in the lower center, carried lumber from the Whitefield mills.