Boy’s Diary Tells of Water Wheels in the Early 1800s

By Sam Moore
Published on September 24, 2012
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Eric Sloane’s book about Noah Blake.
Eric Sloane’s book about Noah Blake.
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Gaston’s Mill (built in 1830), now part of Beaver Creek State Park in Columbiana County, Ohio.
Gaston’s Mill (built in 1830), now part of Beaver Creek State Park in Columbiana County, Ohio.
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Although found driving an old cotton gin, this wooden gear (right) and pinion (left) are the type Isaak Blake might have built to drive his sawmill.
Although found driving an old cotton gin, this wooden gear (right) and pinion (left) are the type Isaak Blake might have built to drive his sawmill.
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A wide overshot water wheel at Gaston’s Mill, showing the three gates above and behind the wheel used to control water flow to the wheel.
A wide overshot water wheel at Gaston’s Mill, showing the three gates above and behind the wheel used to control water flow to the wheel.
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The gate into the sluice from the mill pond at Gaston’s mill.
The gate into the sluice from the mill pond at Gaston’s mill.
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The stone-and-concrete sluice, or millrace, to the Gaston Mill wheel.
The stone-and-concrete sluice, or millrace, to the Gaston Mill wheel.
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Illustration of an overshot water wheel, circa 1885.
Illustration of an overshot water wheel, circa 1885.

I recently found a book titled Diary of an Early American Boy by Eric Sloane. Published in 1962, it’s based on an old diary with leather-covered wooden covers that, along with a hand-fashioned stone inkwell bearing the carved initials N.B., was found by Sloane in an old, old house in Connecticut.

The original owner of the diary, a 15-year-old boy named Noah Blake, was given the diary by his parents on his 15th birthday, and he began to make entries in the little book immediately, with his first being: “Noah Blake, my book. March the twenty-fifth, Year of Our Lord 1805. Given to me by my Father Isaak Blake and my Mother Rachel upon the fifteenth year of my Life.”

Noah’s parents settled on a stream called Red Man Brook somewhere in New England in 1789 and Noah was born the following year. A crude log cabin with pounded dirt floor and bark roof, along with a temporary barn and a shed to house the forge, were constructed first.

Over the years, as Noah grew more able to help, buildings were improved and a proper barn was built. The house received a wooden shingle roof and two expensive glass windows imported from England. At last, during 1805, the year of the diary, Isaak realized his twin dreams of building a proper bridge across the creek on the road to the nearby village, for the use of which the Blakes charged a toll, and diverting part of the creek into a mill pond, with a sluice or millrace leading to an overshot water wheel powering a new mill. Water power would run a sawmill, a small gristmill, the forge bellows, a trip hammer for the anvil and a lifting winch.

Sloane fleshes out Noah’s brief diary entries with an imagined narrative based on his vast knowledge of early American tools and machinery, and illustrates it with exquisite pen and ink drawings. The book particularly piqued my interest in early water wheels. I found that water wheels have been around since the ancient Greeks.

Overshot water wheels

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