Millstones from the old Kinney Mill were turned into a monument by the local chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution.
News-Register file photo

Newcomers to our city, as they walk our historic busy main street, may think it all started here on Third Street.

But a dozing pocket of McMinnville history, along Cozine Creek and its banks, holds the secret to what is usually considered the beginning of our town: the building of William T. Newby’s grist mill in 1853.

Information collected by McMinnvillan Lila Jackson — for 30 years a genealogy buff — clarifies some of the haziness of this beginning. Lila’s great-great-granduncle once owned that grist mill.

Historians know well that Newby founded our town. He came in the Great Migration of 1843, and, in 1844, laid out his claim on the present site of McMinnville when only six settlers lived here.

There on his claim, Newby envisioned a town — that he would name for his Tennessee home. But, Newby reasoned, if such a town were to materialize, it needed a grist mill so settlers would not have to travel great distances to have grain ground.

One day, as Newby pondered this problem, he had a barn-burner of an idea. Cozine Creek could be the answer — if only it provided enough water. And if water could be channeled from Baker Creek to Cozine, sufficient water would be available.

But for this, a special act of the Oregon Territorial Legislature would be required. That act was passed in 1853. Additionally, Newby would need consent from all claim holders whose interests would be affected by that four-mile ditch. In Lila Jackson’s file is a memo of these consents as listed on page 45, Records of Mortgages and Contracts, in the Yamhill County Courthouse.

Newby’s next challenge — a costly one — was getting millstones for his mill. He hired millwright Jacob Hawn of Oregon City, who later moved to Yamhill County. The stones were brought by boat, then sled, pulled by an ox team and deposited on the east side of Cozine. Two years after starting his grist mill, Newby founded McMinnville.

Wrote historian Ruth Stoller, “Newby’s grist mill is usually considered the beginning ... of McMinnville.”

In 1860, Newby sold the mill to Lila Jackson’s forebear: Robert Crouch Kinney, whose son, Albert, married Newby’s daughter. Although no McMinnville street is named for Robert Kinney, he was a mountain of a man. Born in Illinois in 1813, he was in the sawmill and flouring business for 15 years, read law, built a hotel and wharf, laid out the town of Muscatine, Iowa, and came to Oregon with the 1847 Joel Palmer wagon train.

He first settled in Lafayette, took out a donation land claim, set out 1600 fruit trees, helped establish Oregon’s livestock industry with sheep from Hudson’s Bay Co. when HBC cornered the market, served in Oregon’s Territorial Legislature and gave $25,000 to McMinnville Academy, the forerunner of Linfield College.

After moving to McMinnville, he bought the historic Newby grist mill in 1860. In 1868, he sold the mill and moved to Salem. The mill changed hands a few more times. John Sax Sr. became sole owner. In 1881, he closed down the mill and in 1882 built a new mill of brick on the west side of Cozine, using much machinery from the original site.

The structural frame of the old mill was left standing until 1889 when it was purposely burned. At first, the new mill was known as the Brick Mill — later as Star Mill -— the brand name registered with the state for its flour. Thus the name of the stub street — Star Mill Way — that now connects Second Street and Wallace Road.

This second mill — a three-story building with stone basement — had various owners. In 1894, Henry M. Daniel acquired an interest in the mill, becoming sole owner in 1902 and selling a half interest to his son, Ivan, a year later. The father-son operation ended with Henry Daniel’s death in 1908; subsequently, the business became a stockholders company, with the Daniel family retaining an interest in the mill, which continued operating until 1921.

For six years the mill was idle, during which time a group of local citizens bought out the stock. In 1927, the building burned while it was being used for apple storage. That same year, the city of McMinnville bought the Star Mill property, including the hillside, upper grounds and mill site, as an addition to City Park.

Two years later, the Yamhill Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution, realizing the historic importance of the mills, presented to the city a marker made of the two original millstones. The inscription on that marker, according to newspaper stories in Lila Jackson’s files, reads in part: “Mill Stones from Old Kinney Mill, which stood on this site, built 1853 by W. T. Newby. Owned by Robert Crouch Kinney 1860-1868.”

The story continued, “Standing beneath tall trees through which streamed bright rays of sunshine, early pioneers paid their last tribute to Robert Crouch Kinney ... .” Lila Jackson also has a copy of that July 20, 1929, unveiling program, with familiar McMinnville names thereon: Mrs. E. C. Apperson, Mayor W. T. Gray, Mrs. William Dielschneider, Mrs. W. D. Wisecarver.

Lila Jackson recalls a conversation at a Kinney family reunion with Robert Crouch Kinney’s son, Alfred, one of eight Kinney children who lived to maturity, and one of two Kinney sons who became well-known doctors. Alfred helped establish the Oregon State Board of Health, was the first and the 50th president of the State Medical Society and performed the first surgical operation at St. Vincent’s Hospital in Portland in 1875.

At that family reunion, Alfred told Lila how much he disliked the long trips that he, as a kid, had to make to Oregon City taking grain to the grist mill. Said Alfred, “I dreaded those trips. I always hoped that I wasn’t the one who had to make the trip.”

Since that 1929 dedication, one mill stone has been lost to vandals, the other has been reset and relocated at the Cozine Creek overlook in Upper City Park.

If you have never done so, one day when Oregon rain is not a deterrent and “sun streams brightly through the trees” as it did on that 1929 millstone dedicatory event, take the path through Upper City Park, to the Cozine overlook. And there you will see the relocated millstone, read the history of City Park mills and see the diagrams of how water power from Cozine and Baker creeks made those millstones turn. And you will be reminded that this is how McMinnville began.

Elaine Rohse is a longtime McMinnville resident who shares a love of traveling and golf with her husband, Homer.