Harford Legacy Farm Commemorative Book

15

The Natural Water Power That Built Harford County

Frank Marsden

Historically, Harford County was an ideal place to settle due to its proximity to the Chesapeake Bay and the Susquehanna River for transporting goods by water to larger markets. It also was a favorable trade location due to several large bodies of water: Deer Creek, Winters Run, Broad Creek, Bush River, Gunpowder River, and all their tributaries. Bodies of water provide a steady and reliable source of power: water. It would, for almost two centuries, be used to power what has been estimated to be 100 to 400 mills located on the waterways of Harford County.

Eden Mill, 1933 - Eden Mill has stood since approximately 1798

Generally, we think of Grist Mills, a mill for grinding various grains into food, when the term “mill” appears. However, there were many other types of mills in Harford County, including but not limited to sawmills to turn logs into lumber; mills to press seeds into oil; mills to grind bones into fertilizer; mills that would drive the bellows to pump air into the iron furnaces; flint mills that would crush stone to extract the flint; woolen mills to process wool; and bark mills to extract the tannin for tanning raw hides. Water-powered mills were the backbone of industry in Harford County; instrumental in the development and growth of Harford County farms and businesses. At the turn of the century, some of the old mills had an opportunity to support Harford County farmers. Some were adapted to use their water power to produce electricity that could support local canning houses with electricity for operating their equipment and machinery. This afforded local farmers additional resources, enabling them to increase their farm production. Eden Mill is one of the few mills that are still fully intact and where you can see all the original milling equipment as well as the hydroelectric turbines and generating equipment. It was financially supported in converting to electric generation by selling stocks in the Fawn Grove Power and Electric Company. It supplied all the electricity to the canning operations in Fawn Grove and New Park, Pennsylvania in addition to numerous Harford County Farms. To learn more about the Mills of Harford County, check out “Mills: Grist, Saw, Bone, Flint, Full-ing...and More” by Jack Shagena, Henry Peden, and John McGrain. We thank them for their work.