Note 68 — GENERAL INTRODUCTION.

The Old Mill at Newport stands on an eminence in the centre of the town, being about twenty-four feet high, and twenty-three feet in diameter. It rests upon eight piers and arches. It has four small windows, and, high up the wall, above the arches, was a small fire place. It is first distinctly mentioned in the will of Governor Benedict Arnold, of Newport, where it is called, "my stone-built wind mill." It is known that during the eighteenth century it served both as a mill and powder house. Edward Pelham, who married Governor Arnold's granddaughter, in 1740 also called it "an old stone mill." Peter Easton, who early went to live in Newport, wrote in 1663, that "this year we built the first windmill;" and August 28, 1675, he says, "A storm blew down our windmill." What Easton relates occurred before Governor Arnold writes about his stone windmill, and it is not unreasonable to suppose that when the one spoken of by Easton was destroyed he built something more substantial. Yet we cannot say that this was actually the case. The old tower existing at the beginning of the settlement may have been adapted by him for the purposes of a mill, when the one mentioned by Easton was destroyed.

The family of the Governor is said to have come from Warwickshire, England, and one of his farms was called the Leamington farm, as is supposed, from the place by that name near Warwick. In addition to this, in the Chesterton Parish, three miles from Leamington, there is an old windmill similar in construction to that at Newport. It is supposed that it was erected on pillars for pneumatic reasons, and also that carts might thus go underneath and be loaded and unloaded with greater ease. And it has been suggested, that if Gov. Arnold came from Warwickshire, of which the proof is not given, and if the Chesterton Mill was standing at the time of his departure for New England, he might have built a mill at Newport after the same model. Yet this is something we know little about. And whence came the Chesterton Mill itself? There was a tradition that it was built after a design by Inigo Jones, but this is only a tradition. That structure also might have belonged to the class of Round Towers in Ireland, of which one at least was built by Northmen. All is therefore, in a measure, doubtful. It will hardly help the Northmen to class this Newport relic with their works. See Palfrey's New England, vol. i, pp. 57-9.