Niagara Historical Society & Museum
News Release- July 6, 2010
The Niagara Historical Museum’s 2010 lecture series continues this month with another exciting presentation on Village Life, the topic of their current exhibition, which celebrates the past, present and future of Niagara-on-the-Lake’s villages. They welcome Robert Miller for his candid talk on The Historic Mills of St. Davids.
Using personal photographs and images from Google Earth, the Museum collection, the Conservation Authority, and historical sources including diaries and letters, the presentation will explore the locations and functions of the original roads, dams, ponds, races or leats, used by the water-powered and steam mills of St. Davids. The talk will attempt to illuminate what is, for the most part, a significant component of the invisible history of Niagara's landscape.
Robert will also examine known facts about the original millers and related St. Davids industries such as breweries, distilleries, cooperages and tanneries.
“The scope of the talk will cover a 225 year period showing the origins of St. Davids at the end of the American Revolution to Butler's Rangers and the Loyalist refugees and with Fort Niagara and what is now the Village of Lewiston in New York State”, explains Miller.
His presentation will focus on several key issues: why the water power of Four Mile Creek was used and not the Niagara River; the number of water mills that were in St. Davids and exactly where were they located; where the dams, ponds and head races were located; the original influence of the King, evolution of private mill ownership and the holocaust of 1814; the superiority of the English mill gearing compared to certain American mills of the same era; the impact of the steam engine, electric power and the big merchant mills along the Welland Canal; the decline and conversion of mills to fruit processing and other uses; and the surviving relics and landscape features still visible today.
Robert Miller grew up in Hamilton Ontario and is a graduate of the University of Guelph in historical geography and biology. His undergraduate thesis focused on mapping the functions of Guelph's 800+ stone buildings and old mills. His graduate thesis analyzed and mapped the shipping patterns of Upper Canada's merchant grist mills during the 1860's with a focus on railway shipments, Toronto's waterfront docks and elevators, the Erie/Oswego Canals and New York City.
Mr. Miller has been a consulting land use planner since 1971 and a full member of the Canadian Institute of Planners since 1979. His land use planning career began with the Ontario Ministry of the Environment in Toronto then eight years as senior planner with Philips Planning + Engineering Ltd., of Burlington. In 1980 he went into private practise and soon became a founding partner of Miller, O’Dell & Paul a Niagara/Ancaster firm of consulting planners. He served on the Local Architectural Conservation Advisory Committees for Ancaster and for the City of Burlington where he was one of their founding members. In 1999 he helped found the Canadian Chapter of the Society for the Preservation of Old Mills (SPOOM) where today he still serves as their webmaster.
For many years Mr. Miller has worked as an independent consultant to the private sector and the Township of Armour, north of Huntsville, where he is their webmaster and remains as their planner of record, which he has been since 1975.
The Historic Mills of St. Davids will be presented at the Niagara Historical Museum on Thursday, July 15th at 7:30 pm. Sponsored by Niagara’s Finest Inns, the Museum’s lecture series is held on the third Thursday of each month, from March until September. The cost is $5 or free for Historical Society members.
For a complete list of lecture dates and topics or for more information on other Museum events, please visit www.niagarahistorical.museum or call 905-468-3912. The Museum is located at 43 Castlereagh Street in Niagara-on-the-Lake and is open daily 1pm–5 pm from November to April, and 10am-5pm from May through October.
For more information visit: Niagara Historical Society & Museum