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John Oncken: Hyde's Mill as genuine as the 102-year-old who owns it

John Oncken  —  11/01/2007 12:35 pm

Hyde's Mill is a photographer's delight.

The weathered grist mill with its wooden waterwheel, glistening water falling from the 1850 dam and park-like setting draws tourists from afar and Sunday drivers from nearby.

It conjures images of farmers on horse-drawn wagons filled with bags of corn for grinding.

The mill is just down the road from the Hyde store, which serves as a rest stop during an annual 100-mile bicycle ride. The route is also favored by members of the Madison-based Bombay Bicycle Club and is featured on many bicycle tour maps. Many people have taken pictures of the gentle scene.

No one knows Hyde's Mill better than Ted Sawle, who owns the site and has lived within a stone's throw of the old mill for nearly 75 years. He and his wife Roma raised nine children in the "mill house" (dating to 1876) just up the hill from the mill.

Ted Sawle, now a feisty 102 years old, well remembers the original Hyde's Mill, the sawmill that replaced it and the "new" Hyde's Mill that sits by the dam today.

William Hyde constructed the first mill in 1856 on Mill Creek in Ridgeway township near the junction of county roads HH and T in Iowa County. The mill ground wheat and corn for farmers in the area and like all grist mills was a gathering place for farmers who came to get their livestock feed.

The original mill burned down in 1887 but Hyde quickly rebuilt.

The Sawle family, who had emigrated from Cornwall, England, bought Hyde's Mill in 1931.

Their son son Ted, then 26, left the home Rosevale farm near Arena to get married to Chicago-born Roma Rockcastle.

The newlyweds moved to the house at the mill that Ted was to manage although Roma had some doubts about leaving cosmopolitan Chicago for very rural Wisconsin.

Ted made the move a bit easier for his new bride by wiring the house for electricity using a generator attached to the mill turbine.

"I built a barn cleaner in 1925 for the barn on the home farm long before they became a popular piece of equipment on farms,'' says Ted, an electrical and mechanical expert who was fascinated by emerging technologies. "It really worked, but I never got it patented. I guess I should have."

Sawle said he put some money into the grist mill over the years but saw business decrease as farmers found new places to grind their grain.

Sawle abandoned the grist mill in the early 1940s and built a sawmill and box plant just up the hill from the dam. During World War II he made boxes for the Army. Not just boxes, but special boxes in which to ship meat overseas.

"They were strong boxes," he says. "At one time I had over 20 men working for me."

After the war Sawle switched to making oak railroad ties.

"We made many thousands of ties,'' he says. "And they were the foundation for many miles of track across the country."

Meanwhile, the old but empty grist mill had pretty much fallen down. But Sawle says he liked the pretty dam, so he built a new mill.

"This was 40 or 50 years ago," Sawle recalls.

But unlike the previous mill, which used a turbine to power the millstones, this one had a waterwheel.

"It's a 14-foot wooden wheel,'' Sawle says, adding that he's built several like it including one in California.

The mill has some of the features of the previous mill. And while it's never been used as a commercial facility for farmers, it has been used to grind buckwheat for neighbors.

Today the water still flows over the dam at Hyde's Mill, the waterwheel and the grist mill stand strong, and the water still rushes through a water-turbine generator that makes electricity that's sold to Alliant Energy.

Ted Sawle retains his love for things mechanical. He doesn't have far to go when looking for memories of things built and the tools used to build them.

The results of a lifetime of accumulating tools are contained in a building Ted visits often. The walls are covered with tools of most every kind. Arranged in neat order are wrenches, axes, hand augers, all kinds of machines, and even an ancient Rumley Oil Pull tractor dating to the early 20th century. A proud possession is the sextant used by his seafaring grandfather, Capt. Stephan Sawle.

Ted and his daughter Jannette Reeson, who lives in the old mill house, call it a museum. It is. But it's not a public building; it's a place where Ted can sit, look and reminisce.

"I was always a collector," he says. "I went to auctions on a regular basis. Sometimes too often I thought."

Luckily, his wife Roma was also a collector of antiques.

"She was worse than I was,'' he says. "So we collected things."

The 1850s sawmill is gone; only some bits and pieces remain (only Ted knows where to look). But the newer mill and the waterwheel stand strong and tall, and the water still flows over the dam at Hyde's Mill in rural Iowa County.

Sometimes we think technology is a new thing -- maybe only as old as our lifetime. Of course, we're wrong.

Ships that brought the Sawles and the many thousands of Europeans so far, over rough seas, were small and built without computers, plastic, refrigeration, luxury cabins, swimming pools or fine food.

Grist mills that ground feed for farmers worked without electricity, hoists or modern mechanical equipment. And the corn oats and wheat got to the mill in wagons pulled by horses.

Boxes containing meat that was shipped to Europe to feed our armed forces were made in a country sawmill at Hyde's Mill by a man who never went to college and was a self-made engineer.

Perhaps that's why so many people like to visit old mills and take photos that will remind them of the past.

Best of all, it's not a scene from a movie made on a sound stage. It's a bit of history that was created by people like Ted Sawle, who even today at 102 years young remembers all the details. It's because he was there.

And he did it.

John Oncken is owner of Oncken Communications, a Madison-based agricultural information and consulting company. He can be reached at 222-0624 or e-mail jfodairy@chorus.net

John Oncken  —  11/01/2007 12:35 pm