Wayland A to Z:  Cakebread’s Mill

Early New England towns needed gristmills since survival depended on eating Indian corn which was so hard and coarse it had to be ground into meal before it could be digested. Wheat, the grain preferred by Englishmen, failed as a crop in the New World, so settlers collected corn seed from vacant Indian lands and planted new crops of their own. In a very short period of time, corn became the staple crop for settlers.

The most important task for Sudbury Plantation founders was to find a competent miller. They persuaded Thomas Cakebread (aptly named), to become Sudbury’s first miller. Cakebread, a resident of Watertown, had just agreed to move to Dedham when he was approached by Sudbury’s leaders to join Sudbury Plantation. In exchange for his services as a miller, he was granted 100 acres of land in the vicinity of Mill Brook–upland for house and mill, and meadow land above and below the mill.

By 1639 townspeople were hard at work cutting trees on his property for lumber to build the new gristmill. Cakebread’s property had an ample supply of wood and nearby Goodman’s, Nobscot, and Reeves hills had granite for millstones. There is no record of the type of wheel used at the mill–whether it was an overshot, high-breast or undershot–meaning water came over the top, entered at the middle, or at the bottom. Overshot mills provided the best power but required at least a ten foot dam. Records indicate there was a dam and, most likely, a ten foot drop at the southern end of the pond. Howard S. Russell, a long-time resident of Wayland, who lived near the old mill, believed that Cakebread’s mill would have been an overshot type with the water flowing onto it from above. The weight of the water would have caused the wheel to turn a horizontal shaft. By means of an interlocking gear, this turned a vertical shaft nearby and rotated a horizontal millstone, in the mill overhead, against another fixed millstone. When grain was poured into an opening for it, the kernels were ground into meal. A set of millstones that had the top stone turning at 120 revolutions per minute could grind 500 pounds of grain per hour. Millstones had a variety of different patterns cut into them, called the dress. Tradition and preference determined the shape and dress of a millstone. Often stones wore down within two weeks and had to be re-dressed, or re-sharpened, which took up to fourteen man-hours per stone to accomplish. Grinding stones lasted from ten years to a century, depending on their use.

Cakebread’s mill was built almost entirely out of wood–oak, elm, hornbeam, maple, and birch. Mill parts were fastened together with leather or iron straps and kept lubricated with generous applications of tallow obtained from butchered animals. In winter, water often froze in the mill’s sluiceway and Cakebread probably roofed over portions of the mill to keep it in operation. During seasons of low water the mill could not run.

Kernels of corn that escaped the grinding process, or ones that had been put through an iron corn cracker, were brought home and fed to the cattle. Dry cobs were salvaged and taken home to stoke the fire. Settlers undoubtedly learned from the Indians who dried freshly harvested corn and stored it in large baskets set into holes dug below the frost line, to store corn in their cellars–the original New England cold cellar. The Indians also taught settlers how to make “Nokehick,” (pronounced No-cake) by parching corn kernels. No-Cake could be eaten out of hand like peanuts, or ground up and eaten like cereal with sugar and milk. (Similar products can be purchased today in food specialty shops.)

Unfortunately, Thomas Cakebread died early in 1643 only four years after coming to Sudbury. His son-in-law, John Grout came from Watertown to operate the mill which stayed in the Grout family for several generations. The mill remained in use until 1882. A fire destroyed the building in 1890. More than three hundred and sixty years later, winter skaters can glide past the site of the original dam which the town maintains to keep sufficient water in the pond.