Gunkle Mill History

About Michael Gunkle

The Evans Process

Gunkle Spring Mill is a nationally registered historical resource. Michael Gunkle built the mill in 1793. The structure represents post-Revolutionary development in the Great Valley. Great Valley was a primary breadbasket for the country conveniently located on the main route between Philadelphia and Lancaster. With water power gaining importance, the power generated by flowing water through a wooden flume on the top of the outer wheel the mill represented the most modern technology of the time. The mill employed the “Evans Process” for the automation of the mill functions. Evans received US patent number 3, signed by president George Washington.

Grain was delivered by local farmers wagons and weighed as it arrived. The business model at the time was based on a barter system with the miller getting a percentage of the finished flour. The finished products were packed in wooden barrels and cloth bags for market.

Over the door, as you come into the mill, is a date stone: "Spring Mill Michael & Chatharina Gunkle July 20th 1793". (The spelling of "Chatharina' shows that they were Germans; that is the German spelling.)

Michael Gunkle first came to Philadelphia. He had two brothers who went out to Ohio, but he stayed in Philadelphia and married Chatharina Miller of Millbaugh. Her father owned one of the oldest mills in the state, and was often called "the old miller of Millbaugh". A painting of the interior of his home is on exhibit in the Philadelphia Art Museum.

In the 1790 Census, Michael is listed as a buhr maker, living at 8th and Filbert streets with his wife, two sons, and a daughter. (The daughter died in infancy.)
In 1792 they came to East Whiteland. He bought almost 1000 acres from an original Penn grant, on which he built a home, a barn, and this mill.

After Michael Gunkle died in 1816, the property was divided among three of his sons. The Mill property went to his son John. John Gunkle operated the mill until 1862, In 1863 he sold it to a Jonathan Miller, and he left it to his daughter, Julia, when he died five years later. In 1870 she sold it to Samuel Fetters. In 1897 the property was sold by the sheriff to a Joseph B, Townsend; his estate, in 1913, sold it to a Harry J. Reilly.

In that same year Reilly sold it to William W. Atterbury, the president of the Pennsylvania Railroad, He had a big dairy farm here. When he died in 1937 the property was sold to a man by the name of Wilson Yeager, who continued the dairy farm operation. It was one of the largest dairy farms in East Whiteland Township.

Oliver Evans (September 13, 1755 – April 15, 1819) was an American inventor, engineer, and businessman born in rural Delaware and later rooted commercially in Philadelphia. He was one of the first Americans to build steam engines. Evans was one of the most prolific and influential inventors in the early years of the United States. Evans's attention turned to flour milling in the early 1780s, an industry that was booming in rapidly industrializing northern Delaware. In this era, the operation of grist mills was labor-intensive. Moving wheat from the bottom to the top of the mill to begin the process was the most onerous task of all in contemporary mills. Evans's first innovation was a bucket elevator to facilitate this process. Chains of buckets to raise water was a Roman technology that had been used in various guises since antiquity. Evans had seen diagrams of their use for marine applications and realized with some modification and careful engineering they could be used to raise grain, so a series of bucket elevators around a mill could move grain and flour from one process to the next. Another labor-intensive task was that of spreading meal. This came out of the grinding process warm and moist, needing cooling and drying before it could be sifted and packed. Traditionally the task was done by manually shoveling meal across large floors. In response, Evans developed the "hopper boy", a device that gathered meal from a bucket elevator and spread it evenly over the drying floor—a mechanical rake would revolve around the floorspace. This would even out newly deposited meals for cooling and drying, while a gentle incline in the design of the rake blades would slowly move the flour towards central chutes, from which the material would be sifted.

In 1795, Evans published The Young Mill-wright and Miller's Guide. The guide's list of subscribers was topped by George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Edmund Randolph when the first edition appeared in print. The book proved very popular and remained a staple manual for millers for over half a century, undergoing several revisions and fifteen printed editions between 1795 and 1860. The book's popularity rested on its detailed practical explanations of mill design and construction, and as the principal guidebook for American milling it would not be superseded until after the Civil War.

”in early mill designs, from repeated handling, the flour was mixed with a great quantity of dirt from the dirty feet of every one who trampled in it, trailing it over the whole Mill and wasting much for people did not even then like to eat dirt, if they could see it.”