This location was once a very busy place.
About 1813 a man named William Marsh had a mill on the west side
of the road and north of the creek at the head of the Pudding
Mill Gulf. It was a carding mill and clothing works. Apparently
this place didn't operate very long.
On the east side of the road and north of Puddin Mill Gulf,
Alexander Webster built a distillery before 1819. However, it
didn't last very long, "as its owner soon boiled himself to
death in his own mash tub."
There was a blacksmith shop and a shoe shop, but after a time
the settlement lost its industries to Borodino.
10 November 1776, Amos Miner was born in Norfolk, Litchfield
County, Conn. He came to this area about 1800. He was an
inventor and manufactured accelerating wheel-heads that farmers'
wives used on their spinning wheels for making woolen yarn. In
1805 he sold this business and moved to Spafford, where he built
a factory where he made wheel-heads, wooden pails, half-bushel
measures, wooden dowels, window sash, and wooden puaps and other
wooden articles.
Miner sold this business after a time and went to the head of a
gulf leading into Otisco Lake where he again built a factory and
a grist mill. It was called the "Puddin' Mill" because
Miner ground Indian meal, used with "pudding and
milk," part of the diet of the early settlers.
"The genius of Miner was particularly illustrated by the
manner in which he accumulated and applied the power to run his
factory at the mill situated at the head of the Pudding Mill
Gulf. The mill was so located on the edge of a precipitous rock
that the water coming to his mill passed over a series of three
overshot wheels, one above another giving him the accumulated
power of three wheels instead of one."
Miner was the type of person who seemed to get a challenge out
of inventing things. After everything was working well, he tired
of it, and so he sold the Pudding Mill, which was a successful
venture. He went on to Mottville, then between Elbridge and
Jordan. The last heard from was that with $10,000 he left New
York state for the far west leaving others to become really
wealthy while operating mills that he had built.
Puddin Mill was still operating in 1902. There was a sawmill
nearby.
Note: The Oak Hill Road of Otisco was once a stage coach
route from Hamilton to Skaneateles with taverns and business
places. Clintonville, Vesper and Tully Center were important
places, after 1806 until the railroads appeared.
Researched by Mrs. Stanley Patterson (Lois), 1961
Copied by Ceylon E. Russell, 1976.
Used here with permission from Barbara Shoemaker, Spafford Town
Historian, 2002.
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