Three Early Water-Powered Mills in Northwest Greene County, Ohio, and Their Impacts on the Landscape
After the Treaty of Greenville in 1795, settlers rapidly made new settlements in what is now Greene County, Ohio.1 One of the first priorities for the many new towns that began in this forest and prairie wilderness was the development of water-powered mills, small industries that utilized the constant and reliable energy source of falling water to provide vital services. This ancient technology was already heavily utilized in the eastern United States, and as new lands were settled, mills were quickly built to meet the needs of new communities.2 Millwrights, experts in the craft of constructing mills and conveying water to them, typically designed and built the mills, and millers operated them as a business. These early mills provided many services, but two of the most common and essential were sawmills and gristmills.
Sawmills facilitated the conversion of trees from the hardwood forests that covered much of the land into lumber for building materials. Early sawmills were typically small operations run by one or two people. A frame containing one or more vertically mounted saws was attached to a crank, which was turned by a waterwheel. These mills could cut about 3,000 feet of lumber in a working day, some 20 to 25 times more efficient than two men working in [End Page 51] a saw pit and using a whipsaw.3 The first sawmill appeared in Ohio in 1789, and by 1840, there were 2,883 of them operating in the state. A thorough examination of early Ohio sawmills was published in the Ohio History journal in 1975.4
Location of eighteenth-century mills and millraces on Hebble Creek, Bath Township, Greene County, plotted on USGS topographical map.
The first gristmill appeared in Ohio in 1790, and by 1840, there were 1,861 of them in Ohio, providing the vital service of grinding grain harvested from agricultural fields between two round millstones, converting it to flour for bread and other staples.5 In early mills, a vertical waterwheel powered one or more sets of millstones or “buhrs” that could grind 10 to 12 bushels of grain per hour.6 After 1860, many gristmills replaced their vertical waterwheels with more efficient turbines. By the 1880s, most millstone systems were being [End Page 52] replaced by a new innovation, the roller system, using steel or ceramic cylinders that ground the grain against a flat plate. Roller mills had the ability to separate the bran from the germ, allowing the collection and sale of white flour. By the 1900s, the availability of engines powered by inexpensive fossil fuels eliminated the need for water power and the upkeep of water-wheels, millponds, and millraces, and many water-powered mills that could not compete were abandoned. The number of water-powered gristmills in Ohio dropped from 1,181 in 1870 to 94 in 1922.7 A comprehensive study of Ohio gristmills, their technological evolution, their rapid increase on Ohio streams, and their subsequent decrease was thoroughly examined in Water-wheels and Millstones: A History of Ohio Gristmills and Milling.
The first step for an early millwright was to identify a location or “seat” where the proposed mill could be successful.8 A seat required that a steady flow of water be available that could be conducted to the mill. A millpond was usually established upstream of the mill where a valley contained a natural constriction that could be impounded by a dam made of wood and/or stone.9 The raised water level provided the stored energy to power the mill. Water was diverted from the millpond by a head race, a dug channel, or a wooden trough that conveyed the water to a waterwheel, which turned the mill machinery. After turning the waterwheel, the water was sped back to the source stream via a dug channel called a tailrace. On a relatively swift stream, the head races and tailraces could be quite short, and these streams were the most favorable for mills. For instance, between 1798 and 1875, 11 gristmills, five sawmills, and six mills that provided both services operated along the Little Miami River in Greene County, thanks to this stream’s strong flow.10 However, if a new community was on relatively flat terrain and had only a small stream nearby, the millwright would have to divert water from the source stream from far upstream and dig a long head race, sometimes over a mile long, to fill the millpond and gain enough fall, or “head,” to power the mill.11
This article traces the history of three water-powered mills on Hebble Creek, a small stream in Bath Township, Greene County, Ohio, and the impacts that [End Page 53] they had on landscape. Data on mill locations, courses of streams, millraces, property owners, and property boundaries were obtained by examination of deeds, legal descriptions, and surveys obtained from the Greene County Archives, Greene County Recorder’s Office, and the Ohio History Connection Archives and Library.12 Property boundaries and millrace courses were plotted with the assistance of ArcGIS software and data layers provided by Greene County GIS, including topography, parcel boundaries, digital orthophotos, roads, and streams. Additional aerial photographs were provided by the City of Fairborn, the Miami Conservancy District, and the Greene Soil and Water Conservation District.
Hebble Creek has its origins in springs flowing from glacial kames, moraines, and eskers in eastern Bath Township, which provide relief in a generally level landscape.13 The stream drains a watershed of 16.16 square miles with the main stem about 11 miles long. In 1802 and 1803, federal surveyor Israel Ludlow and his team surveyed the original townships that Hebble Creek flowed through—Township 3, Range 8 and Township 2, Range 8—in the “Between the Miami Rivers Survey.” These early surveys documented a diversity of natural habitats in the watershed including mesic prairies, wet prairies, alkaline fens, oak-hazel thickets, and mature oak-hickory forests.14 Ludlow described the stream as “beautiful” and wrote in his 1802 field notes that the stream “affords much water.” Ludlow’s notes and plat map for Township 3, Range 8 also showed three large springs entered the stream in close proximity to one another in the northwest corner of Section 15 and the southwest corner of section 16.15 Perhaps for this reason, the stream was known as Three Springs Run by local residents and on property deeds and legal descriptions until the 1950s.16 [End Page 54]
Efforts to construct water-powered mills on Hebble Creek to service Bath Township (established 1807) and the village of Fairfield (established 1816) were initiated in 1815 by Jacob Smith and George Drummond. Smith (1753–1819), a native of Frederick, Virginia, played an important role in the early history of Greene County. In 1799, Smith and his family moved to Beavercreek Township in Greene County, and in 1800, he purchased the only mill then in the county, the Owen Davis Mill on Little Beaver Creek.17 Smith soon became an important leader of his new community, serving on the first Greene County Commission. He also became the region’s first representative elected to the state legislature, in 1805, and served in this capacity nine times between 1805 and 1817.18 In 1815, Smith sold the Owen Davis Mill and turned his attention to establishing mills on Hebble Creek. George Drummond (1769–1828), a native of Scotland, was appointed as one of the first trustees of Bath Township in 1815.19
On May 23, 1815, Smith and Drummond entered into an agreement to construct several mills on Hebble Creek, east of Fairfield. Believing that their proposed mills could be enhanced by increasing the volume of water in the stream, they resolved to divert part of the flow of a larger stream to the north, Mud Run, southward to Hebble Creek by digging a diversion channel.20 The land between Hebble Creek and Mud Run was a large wet prairie on nearly flat terrain.21 This prairie lay in Section 16, a square mile of land that was set aside in each township for public schools. These sections were administered by the local townships but owned by the state.22 To dig this channel, Smith and Drummond had to have the blessing of the state legislature and the township. Fortunately for them, Smith was the region’s senator in the state legislature, and on December 16, 1815, the Ohio legislature passed an act that allowed for this diversion, authorizing Smith and Drummond to dig this channel for the stated purpose of draining the large wet prairie. This act also authorized the township to lease the southeast quarter of Section 16, 160 acres, to Smith and Drummond for 99 years, with the stipulation that the Greene County commissioners appoint three disinterested freeholders to appraise the value of the lease and for Smith and Drummond to pay 6 percent [End Page 55] of the valuation annually as rent. The lease would be reappraised every 33 years, the rent would be readjusted as necessary, and Smith and Dummond would continue to make the 6 percent rent payment to the township trustees. The act also committed Smith and Drummond to erecting a mill on the property within three years. If this mill, once built, was not operating for more than two years, the lease would become void.23
the smith-drummond sawmill
Smith and Drummond’s first project was a sawmill east of Fairfield in Section 15, here called the Smith-Drummond Sawmill. Sawmills were often the first type of mill constructed on the frontier because they supplied the building materials for other types of mills that required a significant amount of lumber for their construction.24 Fairfield was bordered on three sides by shrub thickets or prairie, with the nearest accessible timber supply being east of town. Here, Smith and Drummond identified a suitable mill seat, but this site was located on a small tributary of Hebble Creek, not the stream itself. Their solution was to divert a portion of the flow of Hebble Creek and route it to the mill seat via a dug diversion channel. This channel was at a strategic point on the land where Hebble Creek passed by a low rise of only a few feet that separated its watershed from that of the smaller tributary stream.25 For Smith and Drummond to divert these waters, they first had to have the right to do so from the landowner who would lose that water. Smith entered into a written agreement with the landowner giving him the right to divert a portion of the stream into the diversion channel for the sawmill, with the proviso that some of the water, enough for the downstream owner’s livestock, be retained in the original channel. The agreement contained a hefty penalty of $5,000 should Smith default on this promise.26
By the beginning of 1817, Smith and Drummond had all the permissions and materials they needed, and they began construction of the sawmill. Drummond provided most of the labor and expenses to dig the diversion and [End Page 56] build the mill, which was put into operation on September 1, 1817.27 Smith ran the sawmill exclusively for the first three months, keeping all the profits for himself. At that point, the partnership started to fray. On December 15, they agreed that Drummond would run the mill for one year and keep the profits in consideration of the large amount he had already invested in the mill. At the end of 1818, they ended their partnership and agreed that Smith would keep the mill but Drummond would get sole title to the lease of the southeast quarter of Section 16. They also agreed to forget their idea of bringing water from Mud Run and their other planned mill projects.28 On June 27, 1819, the Greene County Commission approved a new road connecting
Depiction of the Smith-Drummond Sawmill in 1819 in a wilderness landscape of prairie, hazel thicket, and hardwood forest. The road to the mill was approved by the Bath Township Trustees that year. (Original artwork by Ann Geise.)
[End Page 57]
Fairfield to Smith’s sawmill. The Smith-Drummond Sawmill was still present when Smith’s estate sold it in 183129 but no longer standing when the property was again sold in 1845.30
the fairfield mill
At the end of 1818, Jacob Smith, in sole possession of the sawmill and its new head race, began an independent effort to use the diverted water that powered the sawmill to also power a gristmill he would build on the outskirts of Fairfield. On October 26, 1818, he acquired the seat for this mill, and on November 24, 1819, he acquired the last of the 12 parcels needed for the head race channel between the sawmill and the proposed gristmill.31 Smith died on December 12, 1819, but his family was successful in completing the mill-race and the gristmill, called the Fairfield Mill.32
In 1826, Smith’s estate was taken to court by George Drummond, who had unresolved grievances about the sawmill project. The court sided with Drummond on all counts and ordered Smith’s administrators to pay $672 to Drummond and give up all claim to the lease of the southeast quarter of Section 16. This judgment, along with many other debts that Smith left behind, forced the sale of the Smith family holdings in 1831, including the Smith-Drummond Sawmill and the Fairfield Mill. This sale attracted the attention of an early pioneer and miller from Bethel Township in Miami County, Robert C. Crawford (1771–1842). Crawford purchased Smith’s millrace, gristmill, and sawmill from Smith’s estate for $743 that year.33 Crawford improved the mill over the course of the next four years, turning it into a profitable enterprise, with he or his estate paying taxes on it from 1835 to 1845.34 Crawford died in 1842, and his executor sold the Fairfield Mill and its millrace to Jacob Hershey (1791–1871), a miller in Clark County, for $1,500 in 1847.35 Hershey owned and operated the Fairfield Mill for 18 years.36 [End Page 58]
Depiction of the Drummond Gristmill, ca. 1840. Mills such as this one enabled local residents to grind grain that was grown on the rapidly expanding amount of land devoted to agriculture, but significant remnants of native plant communities remain. By the time of its demolition around 1900, this mill had also been known as Crawford’s Mill, Cedar Grove Mill, and Fogle’s Mill. (Original artwork by Ann Geise.)
[End Page 59]
Depiction of the Fairfield Mill, also known at Andy Dunn’s Flour Mill and Armstrong Mill, on the outskirts of Fairfield (now Fairborn), ca. 1885. By this time, nearly all of the natural landscape had been converted to agricultural or residential use. (Original artwork by Ann Geise.)
In 1864, the Fairfield Mill was cited by a downstream landowner as the source of water that was flooding his property. This farm was located on the Huffman Prairie, originally a 2,000-acre grassland and wetland on flat terrain that was partly saturated with flowing groundwater. A piece of this prairie would, in 1904 and 1905, be the site where Orville and Wilbur Wright perfected the first practical powered aircraft. Landowner Jacob Frick and his attorney, A. W. Dewey, claimed that “a large proportion of his said lands are overflowed and rendered useless and unavailable for agricultural purpose by the waters of the mill race of the Fairfield Mill in said township and county” and that this overflow was “rendering unavailable for agricultural purposes a large amount of excellent land which would be exceedingly valuable were there a ditch of proper dimensions made through these lands.” Frick’s petition [End Page 60] to the Greene County Commission was successful, and in 1865 they ordered the creation of the “Frick Ditch.” This project channelized most of Hebble Creek between the Fairfield Mill tailrace and the Mad River.37
The next owner and operator of the Fairfield Mill was Andrew Dunn, a recently returned Union soldier and veteran of many Civil War engagements.38 With the help of his family, he purchased the Fairfield Mill in 1866.39 The mill was in disrepair, but Dunn’s efforts soon put the water-powered mill back into productive use. Dunn and his mill, then known as the Andy Dunn Flour Mill, were important parts of the town of Fairfield for the next 42 years.40
In 1887, Dunn converted the mill to a roller mill. That year Dunn also added steam power to supplement traditional water power. An addition was added on the west side of the mill to house a boiler, and a smokestack was built to distribute the smoke. This improvement increased the capacity of the mill to more than 50 barrels of flour per day.41 Dunn and his wife at last sold the Fairfield Mill in 1908.42
G. H. Armstrong, the owner of the Clifton Mill on the Little Miami River, purchased the Fairfield Mill in 1908 and assigned its operation to his son Orville (O. B.) and his wife Inez. Between 1908 and 1918, the Armstrongs made considerable improvements to the mill, including concrete reinforcement of the mill dam. In 1918, Armstrong sold a .18-acre right-of-way to the Ohio Electric Railway.43 The company needed the land, which cut across the mill-pond, for a section of track that had to be relocated due to the construction of Huffman Dam by the Miami Conservancy District. Hebble Creek, which was also the head race for the mill, was subsequently rerouted to an alignment downslope of the mill, and water power was no longer possible. In 1920, the Armstrongs built an addition on the west side of the mill and installed gas-powered engines there to power the mill, and the basin of the millpond was filled in with soil. By the mid-1920s, all of the Armstrongs’ resources were [End Page 61] applied to a new nearby business, the O. B. Armstrong and Son Grain Elevator,44 and the Fairfield Mill was demolished in the late 1920s.45
The Fairfield Mill, ca. 1913. The shed on the left enclosed a boiler, which had been added by miller Andrew Dunn in 1887, as was the brick chimney. The wooden flume that fed the water wheel is in ruins on the right side.
the drummond gristmill
At the end of 1818, Jacob Smith and George Drummond ended their partnership, and Drummond was in sole possession of the lease of 160 acres of school land in Section 16. Drummond was still committed to building a gristmill on this land, and he began constructing one soon after. Greene County built a new road to his mill seat from Fairfield in March 1820 to provide access,46 and the mill was completed around 1822.47 A second road to the mill was approved by Greene County in 1842.48 This mill was located about 2.5 miles upstream of the Fairfield Mill, near what is now the intersection of Black [End Page 62] Lane and Armstrong Road in Bath Township. It required a long millrace to bring water to it with enough fall to effectively turn the wheel. Jacob Smith and George Drummond had envisioned the course for this race in 1815 or 1816, which was located partly on their lease area and partly on the land of a private landowner in Section 15. Together, they approached this owner, who reserved 1 acre of land where a millrace could be dug across this property wherever “Smith and George Drummond see fit.”49 The race diverted water from Hebble Creek about three-quarters of a mile upstream of the mill where the necessary elevation could be found. Because the creek made a sweeping turn around a hill just east of the mill, the head race had to be benched on the side of this hill. Near the mill, this race fed a small millpond benched on the hillside above the mill.
In 1827, George Drummond split the lease on the southeast quarter of Section 16, transferring the mill and all the land south of Hebble Creek, about 50 acres, to his son James, who sold the mill and the lease on that acreage to the new owner of the Fairfield Mill, Robert C. Crawford, in 1832.50 That year Crawford also recorded a clear legal description of the portion of the 1-acre head race that lay in Section 15.51 Crawford put considerable resources into improving and operating the mill, and by 1842, the Drummond Gristmill, then referred to as Crawford’s Mill, was appraised by Greene County at four times the value of the Fairfield Mill.52 After Crawford’s passing in 1842, the mill changed hands at least seven times over the course of its operational life. In 1884, Greene County surveyor Levi Riddell made a drawing that illustrated the hydrology of the mill’s tailrace at that time and recommended what excavation was needed to restore it. The drawing showed that at that time the tailrace flowed south-westwardly, becoming the head race of Dunn’s Mill (a.k.a., the Fairfield Mill). The drawing also showed that a portion of Hebble Creek was being diverted into this head race, but a portion of the stream’s flow continued along its original course.53 The Riddell’s Atlas of Greene County, Ohio from 1896 confirms that by then, all of Hebble Creek’s flow had been diverted into this race, completing the rerouting of the stream to a more southerly course that had been initiated by Smith and Drummond in 1818. The 1896 atlas also documents that the mill [End Page 63] was still standing, the last record found of the structure.54 The only visible remnant of the Drummond Gristmill is a portion of the perched head race that can still be seen in Cold Springs Reserve, a City of Fairborn park.55
The Fairfield Mill, ca. 1920. The Armstrong family discontinued water power after 1918. The addition on the left side housed gasoline-powered engines.
Both the Drummond Gristmill and the Fairfield Mill diverted a portion of the water of Hebble Creek far upstream from the mill site into a long, dug head race. The head race for the Fairfield Mill was just over 2 miles long, and that for the Drummond Gristmill was .73 miles long. Directly adjacent to both mills, the head race stored water in a reservoir that was perched at an elevation 8 to 10 feet above the base of the waterwheel.
The history of these three water-powered mills parallels the history of water-powered mills throughout Ohio. Small sawmills like the Smith-Drummond Sawmill, which lasted from 1817 to sometime between 1831 and 1845, were essential tools in the heavily forested frontier. The demand for this service declined as local forests were cleared and converted to agricultural fields. Water-powered gristmills remained an essential part of local economies through the 1800s, but the development of efficient turbines, the roller system, and the gas-powered engine, over time, required millers to invest in these new technologies [End Page 64] to compete. Millers who could afford to adapt and upgrade their small country mills persisted for a time, but even a modernized country mill could not long compete with the large and modern commercial mills being constructed.56
Remnant of the head race of the Drummond Gristmill, Cold Springs Reserve, City of Fairborn park.
Water-powered mills on small streams like Hebble Creek were vital tools for early settlers who were determined to convert a natural landscape of mature forest and tallgrass prairie to an agricultural landscape designed to service the needs of a growing human population. These small industries’ primary impact enabled the successful transformation of a natural landscape into a pastoral one, but it wasn’t the only one. Each of these country mills had an early and significant impact on the developing network of roads that became established through the 1800s. Several modern roads follow the course of early roads that were originally laid out to provide access the mills, at least in part.57 The mills also had a major impact on the course of the stream itself. Millwrights were [End Page 65] highly skilled at evaluating water courses and deducing ways in which to modify them to bring water power to a mill seat. The mills on Hebble Creek each required significant modification of natural stream courses to supply them with the energy they needed. These changes shunted the main stem of Hebble Creek into 2.6 miles of artificial channels and eliminated a similar mileage of natural stream channel. Because the Fairfield Mill was perceived to be the cause of downstream flooding, an additional 4.6 miles of the natural stream was channelized. In total, 6.2 miles, or 56 percent, of Hebble Creek’s main stem was significantly modified to accommodate these early water-powered mills. [End Page 66]
David Nolin retired from Five Rivers MetroParks in 2015, after 30 years of doing conservation and land acquisition for the agency. He received his BS and MS from Wright State University. He is now volunteering for several conservation entities and is currently the president of the Beaver Creek Wet-lands Association.
Footnotes
1. Michael A. Broadstone, History of Greene County, Ohio: Its People, Industries and Institutions (Indianapolis: B. F. Bowen, 1918), 169.
2. Philip L. Lord and Martha A. Costello, Mills on the Tsatsawassa: A Guide for Local Historians (Albany: Univ. of the State of New York, State Education Dept., Division of Historical and Anthropological Services, 1983), 8.
3. Michael Williams, Americans and Their Forests, a Historical Geography (New York: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1989), 96.
4. Donald A. Hutslar, “Ohio Waterpowered Sawmills,” Ohio History 84 (1975): 5–56.
5. D. W. Garber, Waterwheels and Millstones: A History of Ohio Gristmills and Milling (Columbus: Ohio Historical Society, 1979), 10, 20.
6. Garber, Waterwheels and Millstones, 86.
7. Garber, Waterwheels and Millstones, 22–23.
8. Oliver Evans, The Young Mill-wright and Miller’s Guide: In Five Parts (Philadelphia: M. Carey, 1821), 275.
9. Lord and Costello, Mills on the Tsatsawassa, 9.
10. W. A. Galloway, Plat of Pioneer Water Power Mills of Greene County, in History of Milling Along the Little Miami, Greene County Room Archives, Greene County Public Library, Xenia, OH.
11. Garber, Waterwheels and Millstones, 72.
12. The Greene County Archives are located at 535 Ledbetter Road, Xenia, Ohio, 45385. The Greene County Recorder’s Office is located at 69 Greene Sreet #3, Xenia, Ohio, 45385. The Ohio History Connection is located at 800 E. 17th Avenue, Columbus, Ohio, 43211.
13. William C. Walton and George D. Scudder, Ground Water Resources of the Valley Train Deposits in the Fairborn Area (Columbus: Ohio Dept. of Natural Resources Division of Water, Technical Report No. 3, 1960), 37–38.
14. David Nolin and James Runkle, “Prairies and Fens of Bath Township, Greene County, Ohio,” Ohio Journal of Science 85, no. 3 (1985): 125–30.
15. Ohio History Connection, public land survey notes for Township 3, Range 8 and Township 2, Range 8, “Between the Miamis Survey,” Ohio History Center Library/Archives/Library Research Room, microfiche reels GR8424 and GR8425.
16. Hebble Creek was called Three Springs Run as early as 1834 (Record of Bath Twp. from Apr. 16, 1834, to Dec. 15, 1848, Greene County Archives, Xenia, 29), and this continued until at least 1954 (Greene County Archives, deed records, 265:460). Maps of the United States Department of Geological Survey from 1904 and 1906 did not name the stream, but starting with their 1955, 7.5-minute series, Fairborn Quadrangle, the stream was labeled as its current name, Hebble Creek, https://ngmdb.usgs.gov/topoview/viewer/-12/39.8124/-84.0624.
17. Broadstone, History of Greene County, Ohio, 174.
18. George Chadwick, “Jacob Smith: Mason and Senator,” Xenia Daily Gazette, Dec. 22, 1984.
19. Mary Parker Poole, The Fairborn Story, presented to the Fairborn Public Library by Mary Parker Poole, 1957, 1.
20. Greene County Archives, Chancery Court Records, Book A, 197.
21. Nolin and Runkle, “Prairies and Fens of Bath Township, Greene County, Ohio.”
22. George W. Knepper, The Ohio Lands Book (Columbus: Ohio Auditor of State, 2002), 56–59.
23. Acts of a general nature, ordered to be reprinted at the first session of the 15th General Assembly of the State of Ohio, Dec. 1816, 14; St. Clairsville, 1816, 16–18.
24. Garber, Waterwheels and Millstones, 31.
25. This site now lies underneath I-675, but the diversion can be seen on the 1915 Topo-graphic Survey Map of Huffman Reservoir Site, Dwg #1761, Sheet 3a, the Miami Conservancy District, 38 E. Monument Ave., Dayton, Ohio, 45402.
26. Greene County, Ohio Archives, deed records, 9:203.
27. Greene County Archives, Chancery court records, Book A, 197.
28. Greene County Archives, Chancery court records.
29. Greene County Archives, deed records, 13:101.
30. Greene County Archives, deed records, 25:65.
31. Greene County Archives, deed records, 7:365–77.
32. Greene County Archives, deed records, 13:103.
33. Greene County Archives, deed records, 13:101.
34. Greene County Archives, auditor’s duplicate records for Robert C. Crawford in Bath Twp., Book 1835–1845.
35. Greene County Archives, deed records, 25:65–68.
36. Hershey sold the mill to James Brannum in 1865. Greene County Archives, deed records, 43:215.
37. Greene County Archives, Frick Ditch, Greene County Commission ditch records, 1:73–74.
38. Chapman Brothers, Portrait and Biographical Album of Greene and Clark Counties, Ohio (Chicago: Chapman Brothers, 1890), 624.
39. Greene County Archives, deed records, 44:540.
40. Chapman Brothers, Portrait and Biographical Album of Greene and Clark Counties, Ohio, 624–26.
41. Chapman Brothers, 624.
42. Greene County Archives, deed records, 10:321–22.
43. Wright State University Archives and Special Collections, MS 128, Miami Conservancy District Records, Series II, Box 25, File 12.
44. Wright State University Archives and Special Collections, MS 128.
45. Personal communication, Ann Armstrong Ingoldsby, granddaughter of O. B. and Inez Armstrong.
46. Greene County Archives, commissioners meeting minutes, Mar. 16, 1820, 179.
47. Greene County Archives, Chancery court records, Book A, 198.
48. Greene County Archives, road records, Book A, 239–41.
49. Greene County Archives, deed records, 11:233.
50. Greene County Archives, record of Bath Twp. from Apr. 16, 1834, to Dec. 15, 1848, 29.
51. Greene County Archives, deed records, 22:620–21.
52. Greene County Archives, tax lists/duplicates, 1842.
53. Greene County Archives, engineers surveyor record, 1879–1899, 144.
54. Levi Riddell and W. D. Riddell, Riddell’s Atlas of Greene County, Ohio (Xenia, OH: Levi and W. D. Riddell, 1896), 17.
55. Head race remnant located at 1551430°41'24.0307"E 671892°31'38.9639"N.
56. Garber, Waterwheels and Millstones, 131.
57. The 1819 road that led to the Smith-Drummond Sawmill is now Spangler Road. The eastern portion of the 1820 road that led to the Drummond Mill is now Armstrong Road, and the western section no longer exists. Sections of the 1842 road to the Drummond Mill, then called the Wilson Road, are now parts of Byron Road and Black Lane.
