Windmills of the Outer Banks
By Elizabeth H. Smith
During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, windmills on the Outer Banks of North Carolina were used mostly to grind grain, which was acquired by trading yaupon and fish. “An Act to Encourage the Building of Mills” was passed by the General Assembly in 1715, which granted half an acre of land to anyone who desired to build a windmill. The owners of these mills were granted one-eighth part of wheat and one-sixth part of Indian corn they ground for others. Historians, however, do not agree on the site of the first Outer Banks windmill.
Most of the historic windmills were of the German post type, which had a ladder to enter the mill and a “tail pole” that could be used to turn the mill housing when the wind direction changed. Sails on the arms of the windmills were adjusted according to the velocity of the wind because strong winds could turn the grinding stone so fast that it scorched the meal. The post mill was preferred along the coast because it was less expensive to construct and could be built from any kind of wood, including shipwreck materials. If the mill was not profitable, it could easily be disassembled and moved to another location.
These windmills, which were most prevalent during the middle of the nineteenth century, were almost extinguished by the Great Hurricane of 1899. Many of the mills were not rebuilt after the storm because internal combustion and steam engines provided a more reliable source of power, and flour and meal could then be obtained more easily from larger mills on the mainland.
Two books with information about Outer Banks windmills are Gary S. Dunbar’s Historical Geography of the North Carolina Outer Banks, which has chapter notes with additional resources about windmills, and Rodney Barfield’s Seasoned by Salt: a Historical Album of the Outer Banks, which has pictures of historic windmills. Both of these books have a similar map showing locations of nineteenth-century windmills. Union soldiers, writing about their experiences on the Outer Banks during the Civil War, expressed surprise at the number of windmills, and Edwin Champney, the Union volunteer/artist from Massachusetts, sketched the mill at Hatteras.
Tucker Littleton spent a year researching windmills of North Carolina’s coast and documented 155 of them for the outer Coastal Plain of North Carolina. His article was published in The State in October 1980 and again in 1984 after it received the annual Smithwick Award for the best newspaper or magazine article on North Carolina history.
A replica of the historic windmills, which has been constructed at Nags Head, is mentioned in Lorraine Robinson’s North Carolina Literary Review (2003) article on Windmill Point Restaurant. According to Robinson, this replica is located on the site of one of the Outer Banks windmills.
All of these resources related to windmills are available in the North Carolina Collection on the third floor of Joyner Library. Area residents, as well as members of the ECU community, are encouraged to use the resources in the NCC. For hours, call 328-6601 or visit the Web site at (http://www.lib.ecu.edu/NCCollPCC/ncchome.htm).
Elizabeth H. Smith is a librarian in the Verona Joyner Langford North Carolina Collection at Joyner Library.
