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1842 – mill quit business 1897
Founded: When the Wabash and Erie Canal was cut through Fort Wayne, William Rockhill, who owned much of the land in the western part of town, deeded the canal company a right-of-way and received in return a lease of water rights. In 1842 and 1843 Rockhill and his partner Samuel Edsall erected two sawmills on those rights. Rockhill withdrew in July 1843 and Edsall began a large grist mill, completed two years later, on the right bank of the St. Marys River immediately north of the present West Main Street bridge, a few rods south of the canal's covered aqueduct over the river. All the water-powered mills on the canal in Fort Wayne were erected in the period 1841 to 1845.
Founders: William Rockhill and Samuel Edsall; the mill's long proprietor was John Orff.
What it did: A stone flour mill, four and a half stories, 50 by 60 feet, turning out 175 barrels of flour in twenty-four hours under both the old and the new process, with five runs of stone, twelve hands, and a grain warehouse of six bins at 5,000 bushels each (30,000 bushels storage) built in 1862–63; capital invested stood at $40,000 in 1880. Power was an overshot wheel rated at 110 horsepower, with a 100-horsepower steam engine added in 1872 so the mill could run on steam or water as circumstances required.
Course: Shortly after the grist mill was erected Edsall admitted Millford Smith as partner (Smith and Edsall). In 1856 the property was sold to a group under the name Orff, Armstrong & Lacy; Lacy died soon after, the firm continued as Orff & Armstrong, and in 1858 John Orff acquired Armstrong's interest and became sole owner. The business later passed to Orff's sons John Jr., C. E. and Montgomery Orff. The mill was badly damaged by fire in 1888, and on 11 September that year John Orff bought the property back at sheriff's sale. The aqueduct beside the mill was a famous swimming rendezvous; the Old Aqueduct Club, formed in 1912 by the men who had swum there as boys, raised a memorial in nearby Orff Park in 1927.
Fate: The abandonment of the canal cut off the mill's water supply and its water lease expired in the 1880s. John Orff Sr. died in 1896, and the mill quit business in 1897. The Orff homestead, at the end of West Main Street adjacent to Lindenwood Cemetery, was occupied in Bates's time by the Jim Eby Post of the Veterans of Foreign Wars.
Sources:
- Roy M. Bates, The Water-Powered Mills of Allen County, Indiana (1942), No. XXXII, quoting Kingman Brothers' History of Allen County, Indiana (1880) for the equipment exhibit — site, course, capacity, fate.
- Pioneers Resting in Historic Lindenwood (1989), Samuel Edsall sketch — the two canal sawmills of 1842 and the stone mill opened a year later.