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Carleton Place Heritage Project - Part 2

History

The site of the Boulton Brown Mill that was located on the settlement lands of the Morphy founding family was sold to a Mr. Coleman in 1820 [2]. It was later handed over to Hugh Boulton in 1823, who founded the Boulton Grist Mill [3]. This construction was made possible through financing from Robert Bell and James Rosamond, two prominent figures from founding families of Carleton Place. Boulton himself was an also early settler of the small town and was the first to establish a local mill in the town, in fact at the time of its construction, it was the only mill to exist between Perth and Bytown [4]. He later sold the mill to Henry Bredin in the 1860s who added a three-storey addition [5].

In 1878, the grist mill was sold to Horace Brown and his sons who had plans to operate turn it into an oat mill [6]. With business now operating in different hands, many changes were made to the site to improve its operation. The Brown family introduced the very first roller process flour mill in Carleton Place in 1885 to replace the traditional millstone. Their advancements in milling helped to project the milling industry in Carleton Place by introducing new technology that would aid in minimizing human labour and maximizing efficiency and profit. In addition to this, they added a 5-storey addition equipped with a grain elevator which expanded the space for more operations to take place [7]. Furthermore, James Morton Brown (1863-1891), son of Horace Brown, who had been left to operate the business took the opportunity to create hydroelectric power for his mill and homeowners around through the establishment of his Brown Electric Power Company [8].


After the Brown’s, the Boulton Brown Mill continued to operate in the milling industry. Between the 1920s and the 1960s, the property was managed by various owners with its very last owners being the Ritchie Feed and Seed Company.










Footnotes
2. Brown, Howard Morton, Carleton Place: Founded Upon a Rock. 2nd ed. (Renfrew, Ont: Juniper Books, 1984), p. 16.
3. Ibid.
4. Carleton Place, 200th Anniversary Celebrations Programme 1819-2019 (Carleton Place: 2019), p. 8.
5. "Renovation projects to revive the century-old mills," The Ottawa Citizen, May 9, 1986.
6. Brown, Carleton Place: Founded Upon a Rock. 2nd ed. p. 16.
7. Seccaspina, Linda. “The Condo Ephemera of Boulton Brown Mill.” Lindaseccaspina (blog), April 13, 2018, https://lindaseccaspina.wordpress.com/2018/04/13/the-condo-ephemera-of-boulton-brown-mill/.
8. “Boulton - Brown Flour Mill.” Carleton Place. https://carletonplace.ca/photos/custom/45%20Mill%20Street.pdf. 






 

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