Perkins Wind Mill — the windmill that watered the plains

1869 – about 1925

Axes first: Palmer C. Perkins was a New Yorker who had learned blacksmithing and ax making, and in Mishawaka he bought the idle Bement axe factory and its remaining assets — the edge-tool works Harrison Bement's family had run since the 1840s, on the axe-history record assembled from the trade and patent sources. On 10 August 1869 Perkins was awarded patent No. 93,472 for an "Improvement in Windmills" — the solid wooden-wheel mill that carried his name — and he turned the axe works over to his nephew Newman Perkins and built the windmill business on the patent. His twin brother Pardon Joshua Perkins moved to Mishawaka in 1871 as the company expanded, and on 14 July 1873 the brothers and four other partners formed a joint-stock company with capital of $4,000, fusing the axe and windmill businesses as the Perkins Wind Mill and Ax Company.

The growth: The works grew along Bridge Street beside the woolen-mill ground — the 1886 Sanborn fire-insurance maps show Perkins buildings on both sides of the street — and the sales line in Gas Engine Magazine's company history runs from 1,500 windmills in 1883 to 5,000 a year in 1899, a figure the magazine pairs with the judgment that Perkins had become the world's largest manufacturer of windmills; the superlative is the magazine's and is printed as its claim. The ornamental solid-wheel mills, patented in 1869 and "manufactured until after World War I" in the St. Joseph County Public Library's account carried on the city's 2014 marker, pumped water across the Great Plains farm country the railroads were then settling. After the turn of the century the company followed its market into power: advertisements of 1902 and 1904 offered a Perkins vertical air-cooled gas engine and feed grinder, a ten-model engine catalogue stood in 1910, and in September 1915 the company took the name Perkins Wind Mill & Engine Company, selling pumps, tanks, shingle mills, binders, burr mills, and portable saw rigs alongside the mills.

Receivership and the end: The company went into receivership in 1917 — its receiver was William Holland of the Sibley Machine Company of South Bend, on the axe-history record — and the remnant left Mishawaka. The removal is carried two ways: the engine-trade history has it move to South Bend in 1920 as the Perkins Corporation, while the local account dates the complete move to South Bend to 1925; both are printed. Manuel M. Fisher, who had worked his way up in the company from its founding era, became its president and led the turn into gas engines and farm equipment before the fall, on the trade history's account. Production ended about 1925 in both tellings, killed, on the trade history's plain statement, by the decline of windmill and engine sales as rural electrification reached the farms the windmills had served. The Mishawaka works itself stood a few hundred feet from where the city's restored Perkins windmill stands today, in a building later occupied by Ball Band and demolished with the Uniroyal complex in 2000, on the city's marker of 2014; a second restored Perkins mill turns in the atrium of the Mishawaka-Penn-Harris Public Library. The Perkins brothers' money went further than windmills — the axe-history record notes the brothers invested in other companies, "including banks and a furniture business" — and that side of the family is carried in the families entry below.

Sources:

1. Gas Engine Magazine, "Perkins Windmill and Engine Co." (Ogden Publications, 2025) — the enterprise begun in 1869 in Mishawaka by Palmer C. Perkins; the joint-stock company of 14 July 1873 with capital of $4,000; Manuel M. Fisher's rise to the presidency; sales of 1,500 windmills in 1883 and 5,000 a year in 1899 with the magazine's "world's largest manufacturer of windmills" judgment; the engine lines of 1902–1912; the September 1915 renaming; the 1917 receivership; the 1920 removal to South Bend as Perkins Corp.; operations ceasing in 1925.
2. Exploring Axe History, "The Mishawaka Axe and Windmills" (2023) — Perkins's purchase of the Bement axe factory; patent No. 93,472 of 10 August 1869 and the 1872 reissue; Pardon Perkins's arrival in 1871 and the 1873 joint-stock fusion; the 1886 Sanborn maps' Bridge Street buildings; receiver William Holland of Sibley Machine in 1917; the complete move to South Bend in 1925; and the brothers' investments in banks and a furniture business.
3. City of Mishawaka, Perkins Windmill marker (erected 2014), and the St. Joseph County Public Library account it carries — the windmill patented in 1869 and manufactured until after the First World War; the original works a few hundred feet from the display site, in a building later occupied by Ball Band and demolished in 2000; the second restored mill in the library atrium.