The World Is A Stage

Town’s glorious past preserved

Posted 7 months ago

By Laurel A. Beechey

E.D. Tillson, Father of Tillsonburg and builder of Annandale House was the ultimate entrepreneur. Risk taking was second nature to him, which perhaps was from growing up as a pioneer, but what seemed more important to him when starting a new business venture was the need. If there was a need he would attempt to fill it.

His milling empire started from need. His father George Tillson and brother-in-law, Benjamin VanNorman satisfied the first needs of the pioneers with a saw and flour mill.

As time progressed and survival became easier business began expanding. Goods were eventually brought to the village to be sold and luxuries began to appear. E.D. entered business at the perfect moment. He bought his dad’s saw mill and Ben’s flour mill, renovating and expanding both.

The saw milling operation was expanded to include the planning mill, joiner shop [like a hardware store], woodworking shops, door, sash and window shop. After all why should you buy the lumber from him and take it to someone else to plane? For that matter why should someone else build the houses? Where E.D. saw the need he provided the solution.

His grain mills were no different. He was milling wheat into flour but people were taking their corn elsewhere. Well that wouldn’t do! So he built the corn mill. What about pea, barley and oats? You got it. Next came the pea and barley mill in 1876 and what would become the most famous, the oat mill, and home of Tillson’s Pan Dried Oats. These Pan Dried Oats were made into delicious oatmeal and were so favoured that Quaker Oats, [one of E.D.’s competitors] eventually purchased the patent and logo and for years after sold the public E.D.’s oats!

But this column is not about the famous oat mill, which spectacularly burnt down in 1920. Nor is it about the flour and corn mill, which is also gone. This is about the littlest mill, the pea and barley mill, which is the only evidence left of a milling empire, still standing today on John Pound Road.

Construction on the mill began in 1876 and was in operation by 1878. It was welcomed by the town, after all not only did help the farmers but it provided more employment and growth for the town.

The Canadian Grocer Magazine that toured the mill in 1895: Mr. Hogan kindly invited me to take a run through the pea mill, and with pleasure I accepted. It is nice to know how peas are prepared and split, but I am not anxious to make many more trips through a pea mill. A flour mill is dusty. An oat mill is dusty. But a pea mill is doubly-doubly dusty.

If the dust is not strong enough to bear one up, it is dense enough to cover one gloriously. This I learned, although my inspection at the mill was little more than cursory. The mill is five stories high with basement. The peas after being received into the bins, are elevated to the top flat, where they are run through a hexagon reel first, and then over a shaking sieve. From there they are run into a drying kiln on the next floor, constructed something after the fashion of the old kilns that were formerly used in oat mills. There are five of these kilns, one on each floor. Each has a bottom of steel slats, which are opened at will to allow the peas to drop through to the next kiln. For instance, the peas - some twenty bushels - after being run into the next kiln, are allowed to stay there 20 minutes; then, by manipulating a handle much in appearance like that seen in a railway switch house, the bottom of the kiln is opened and down drop the peas to the next kiln, and so on down to each successive kiln, as the peas in the one above are ready to be lowered a stage.

After passing through the five kilns the peas are elevated to the grading machine, where the small are separated from the large, as necessary proceeding, for the machinery that would split the small peas would crush the large. As a finishing touch the peas are passed through the elephant, not a live elephant, but a long pipe-like machine, whose duty is to polish them. Noticing a pile of pea hulls lying on the floor, I remarked, are these of any use? Indeed they are, came the reply. We ship the most of them to New York, where they cost about $23 per ton, laid down. What are they used for? I don’t know. I have been told that they are used for adulterating spices; but I can’t say how true it is. One thing is certain: no one could afford to pay $23 per ton for pea hulls for feed.

The machine for turning out pot barley is also situated in the pea mill. It is like a ponderous grindstone enclosed in a wire screen, which revolves very slowly while the stone revolves very rapidly. It is a slow process, to make pot barley, remarked Mr. Hogan. We can easily make twelve barrels of split peas while we are making one of pot barley. The making of pot barley is simply a scouring process.

This mill produce a high grade of split peas, pea meal and pot barley, pearl barley and barley dust and peas, for which a ready market is found in the West Indies, South America and London, England. It was sold to the Canadian Cereal Company then to R. Moulton and still being used into the 1960’s.

Charlie Laister then purchased all the mill properties. Charlie was a procurer of just about anything being demolished, sold or thrown out. Frankly he was a junk man. He lived in the mill office, [since been moved], demolished the flour and corn mill and had every inch of land and the old pea mill filled with something. It took years for the estate to clear out the property after Charlie’s death.

The mill and property were then purchased by Gordon and Laura-Lee Craig and for the last eight years has been lovingly renovated. Very soon, perhaps this month the delightful Mill Tales Inn, offering rooms and a restaurant, will be opened.

Of all the great mills built by E.D. the old pea and barley mill is the only survivor. The Otter Creek still flows gently past, giving a picturesque view which allows the imagination to conjure up visions of other days, in years gone by, when it stood tall and proud part of a hustling, bustling six-mill industrial empire belonging to Edwin Delevan Tillson. Now, with the vision of another entrepreneur this building’s glorious past will not be forgotten.