Milling

This house is on the Western side of the Welland Canal in Port Colborne.  It is on the South end of King Street before the road becomes commercial.  It is a short distance from the ADM mill.  I find more of these old brick houses near at the ends of the canals.  As is usually the case, I find one -- but rarely more.

Milling likely played a key role in the construction of these types of brick houses.  Mill and factory owners would have been the ones to build grand homes, while the other lots were used to house workers.

The ADM mill in Port Colborne is part of a large conglomerate (Archer Daniel Midland) that also owns a mill in Buffalo.  At one time, Buffalo was the grain center of America (c. 1925).  Mills in Black Rock were productive and important in the early part of the 19^th century but ultimately failed to succeed because they could not compete with the facilities that were built on the harbor in Buffalo.  The mills in Black Rock never fully harnessed water power – rather than relying on the current of the Niagara River and instead used a small water fall that was created between the canal and the river.

The mills in Black Rock burned down and that form of industry died out.  The earliest mills were the Globe and North Buffalo Mills.  Managers from the Globe mill ended up opening the Thornton and Chester Milling Company.  From tracing the title of the Dayton House while researching for the registry application, we found that one occupant was the manager/CEO of the Chester Milling Company.

People always think of the mills downtown as the only evidence of the predominance of Buffalo in the grain industry.    There are really no vestiges of the industry as it once existed in Black Rock, other than the few remaining homes that housed the residents connected to the mills.