Site of Claremont's first dam and mill

Site: N07-163
Municipality: Claremont, NH
Location: The Plains Road, West Claremont
Site Type: Mill Building.

Site of the first dam and mill built in 1767-68 by Benjamin Tyler. In addition to the saw, grist and flax mills, Mr. Tyler produced granite fence posts, cobblestones, and millstones, and slate tombstones, all cut in a stone-shed. The biotite granite was quarried on the east side of Ascutney Mountain and millstones were shipped as far as Canada by ox teams. Benjamin Tyler's patents are preserved in the Baker Memorial Library at Dartmouth College, and his famous "rye-fly" tub waterwheel, named for the similar whine of the fly, was a later product which revolutionized the power source for mills.

Mr. Tyler's sons John, Henry, and Noah, operated the mills for a few years and later traveled widely in the west and southwest, selling agricultural machinery of their own invention.

Leonard and Hiram Gilmore purchased the Tyler mills in 1819 and expanded by manufacturing edge tools. Their buildings were later owned by Daniel F. Maynard and John S. Farrington, who manufactured paper. Dr. Leonard Jarvis produced broadcloth near the dam for several years prior to his death in 1848, and his son, Col. Russell Jarvis, Sr., inherited the mill, which he converted for the manufacturing of paper about 1853. Russell Jarvis, Jr. inherited the mill in 1888, and after an 1890 fire, it was rebuilt.

The S. T. Coy Paper Company, established here in the 1880's, and all of the mill buildings are now owned by the Coy Paper Company. The frame Tyler mill buildings are gone.
(Source 108)