General, History, Historic House, Historical Society, Natural History, Park, Science, Specialized
The currently operating sash-type sawmill (up and down or reciprocating motion versus a spinning circular blade) with its horizontal iron water turbine and gears dates from about 1870, but there were sawmills on the site at Lee's Brook Pond in Ledyard, CT long before then. There were references to a mill pond here from as early as the 1740s. A sawmill belonging to Nathaniel Brown II and Increase B. Stoddard stood on this site in the late 1790s. The mill was never a large commercial venture supplying lumber to distant cities as found in the mill towns of northern New England. Rather it was a country mill, serving the farms and settlements within a convenient hauling distance by horse and wagon.