Although most of its kind have disappeared and in spite of its own disrepair, the grist mill at Morley, which functioned for almost one hundred years, still stands and is an eloquent reminder of the remarkable determination and industry of our predecessors in St. Lawrence County. It is an emblem of the just pride of the early settlers of our village in their successful conquest of the wilderness and establishment of lasting communities in this rugged corner of the New World. Sawmills and grist mills were the indispensable tools of their survival, as vital as were the waterways of the country for their invasion of the unbroken forests.

The settlement at Morley followed that of Canton by only a few years. According to Hough’s History of St. Lawrence and Franklin Counties (1853), the first resident of what became Canton was Daniel Harrington who bought some land where the old fair grounds had been until about 35 years ago, cultivated it for a season, and then sold out in the same year to the first permanent settler of the area in 1800. That is when Stillman Foote arrived from Middlebury, Vermont, and purchased the square mile on the east side of the Grasse River that was for many years the limits of the village. Foote returned to his new purchase in the early spring of 1801 with mill irons and a millwright, Daniel W. Church. They immediately set about building a mill on the west side of the river at the water’s edge and made fair progress considering the overwhelming difficulties of moving supplies and equipment from the St. Lawrence River at Lisbon through the virtually pathless wilderness, and the visitiation of smallpox as early as April. Stillman Foote’s aged father was the only casualty of the fever although many of the eighteen people in the party came down with it. After retreating once more to Vermont for the winter, Foote returned to the new settlement in the spring of 1802 with his family whom he housed temporarily in a corner of the sawmill. (Hough, 275-278).

“During this summer (1802) a single run of rock stones driven by a tub wheel, was got in operation in a part of the mill, and this was the first and only grist mill in town, until after the war.” (p. 278). Hough also dates the first forge in the town of Canton roughly “before the war” of 1812. Foote established it on the east bank of the Grasse River and used the inferior iron ore from nearby from Pyrites, because of the prohibitively high cost of iron from elsewhere.

In 1810 Stillman Foote built a dam and another sawmill six miles down river from Canton at what was first called Long Rapids. A second sawmill was at least started there the following year, no doubt by a different person, since in 1812 Stillman Foote sold his interest in that community. The settlement would later become known as Morley.

In 1815, Christopher Wilson and Pitts Bailey, recently of Vermont, bought the land that would be the site of the village and the second sawmill they put into operation. Soon thereafter, Wilson and Bailey installed in the sawmill, as Foote had done in his mill at Canton, “runs of rock stones” so that the mill could function as a grist mill as well. (Hough, pp. 280-81 and Everts, p. 212) Everts’ History of St. Lawrence County adds that Wilson and Bailey built a new wooden grist mill in 1817, apparently adjacent to their sawmill Both of their mills were about 65 feet east of the stone mill that we know today. It is interesting to note that a Thomas Fenton had a room in that grist mill where he carded wool and dressed cloth until 1825, at which time he built his own factory a short distance downstream.

Long Rapids grew up, of course, in the pleasant natural setting that morley enjoys time, and, like Canton, on both sides of the Grasse and on an island in the river. Since the Wilson and Bailey mill was on the east side of the island, farmers from west of the river had to drive their wagons to the river bank where a scow was loaded with the grain to be milled. They picked up their flour or meal from the scow on its return from the grist mill. The first plank bridge was built across the Grasse River at Long Rapids in 1817, (Hough, p. 281, Everts, p. 212, says it was about 1820). Christopher Wilson built his frame house on the east side and Pitts Bailey his on the west side of the river. Later, Bailey seems to have enlarged his house into a hotel that operated there for many years. As more families joined the settlement, a tavern was built, and a storekeeper, J.P. Cunningham, moved his business into another of the stone structures that have graced the village of Morley, (Everts). R.M. Witherbee owned and operated a tannery on the river.

What happened to that original wooden grist mill in Morley is not clear, but it very likely remained in operation for a quarter of a century. We do know that the splendid stone mill that replaced it and still stands was not built until 1840. That Thomas Ludlow Harison (or Harrison), a substantial landowner in the area, had such a facility built in Morley (not to mention the episcopal Chapel which he also made possible), seems proof enough that by 1840 Morley was a thriving and indeed promising community. We know that the roughly beautiful stone of which the mill was built came from Morley itself, T.L. Harison’s quarry between the bridge and the cemetery. Unfortunately, we do not know who was responsible for the mill’s design; it might have been Daniel W. Church, who emigrated here from Vermont with Stillman Foote. The best opinion is that J.P. Cummings did the construction. (Floyd Beswick)

Daniel McKensie, a Scot, came down from Canada to do the iron work in the Harison mill and afterwards settled in the village and, for a time, became operator of the mill. However, the original operator, on behalf of T.L. Harison, was Rufus K. Jackson. at the start, there were four runs of millstones that ground grain into various flours and meals both day and night, at least from harvest time in the late summer through the winter. The grinding stones were eight feet in diameter and one foot thick. The facing surfaces of both the top and bottom stones had to have identical grooves chiseled in them so that the grain would be moved around during the grinding process to the best advantage. Making those grooves, or dressing the stones, a most important job, was done for many years at the Morley stone mill by Frank Burdick (unpublished report of floyd Beswick).

Carl Witherbee in his Reminiscences gave a detailed account of how much grist mills operated. His parents moved from Morely village in the spring of 1900 to a farm less than three miles from town. Of course, he went along when his father took “grists of oats and barley, wheat and shelled c corn” to the mill. His lucid and precise description of how water supplied the power to mill the grain and how the milling itself was achieved must be one of the best available to us. And how he appreciated the results! “I so well remember the wonderful tasting bread my mother would make from this truly whole wheat flour. No bread has ever tasted so good as that fresh ground and fresh baked bread. It was truly the staff of life.” (Carl M. Witherbee, Reminiscences of the Village of Canton, Canton, NY, 1980).

Earl McFadden purchased the mill at Morley in 1922 and continued to keep it functioning with water power until the dam broke some time later, at which point he installed electricity. The mill continued operating until 1935 (Beswick’s report).

In 1842 Stephen van Rennselaer had an equally handsome and industrious stone mill built in Canton n the site of Stillman Foote’s first sawmill, that is, where the Cascade Restaurant and Motel are situated today. Known first as the Eagle Mill, it had a twin, Sherwin’s, on the eastern bank of the Grasse River, which succumbed to time and change much earlier in the twentieth century. The Eagle Mill, known later as the Bullis or Lassell Mill, was condemned as hazardous in the 1950’s and torn down in 1957. Luckily, the Harison stone grist mill at Morley has survived and is now listed on the National Register of Historic Places owing to the efforts of the late Harriet Armstrong. It has been observed that its builders must have meant it ti last forever.

Haarry F. Landon in his History of the North Country, 1932, wrote about the Harison family as leading figures in the “Tory-Federalist party,” that is, in his opinion, wealthy Englishmen who chose to become gentlement colonists in North America and remain as English here as was humanly possible. The Morley stone mill, the Morley stone schoolhouse, and the Morley Episcopal Chapel, actually a copy of a church in England, are strong evidence that the Harison family did indeed want to emulate old England in their northern New York villages. Nevertheless, the most prominent member of the family in our history, Richard Harison, seems to have lived a very American life. Born in New York City, in 1747, he was a classmate of John Jay’s at King’s College (later Columbia University), entered a law practice with Alexander Hamilton, and served as a member of the convention that adopted the Constitution of the United States. In addition to their influence in Morley, the Harison family owned farmlands in Canton and built grand homes here. The extend of their holdings in the st. Lawrence River valley is suggested by the fact that Malone, in Franklin County, was first called Harison (vol. I, p. 248-49).

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