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On 19 October 1833 John Langton, a gentleman farmer from Fenelon Falls, set out to buy potatoes and lumber in neighbouring Ops Township. After an arduous trek through swamp and thick forest, he reached the township centre and 'the largest mill-dam in the world,' at Purdy's Mills. Langton had not stumbled upon an oasis but, rather, a structure that divided the young community. In constructing a 14-foot-high dam, William Purdy had altered the relations between the Ops Township inhabitants and their surroundings. The mill-dam raised the water level of the Scugog River 7 feet and made navigation possible for 37 miles south from Purdy's Mills to its point of origin at Lake Scugog. Though this development pleased some area merchants whose craft now plied these waters, the price of its success was high for Purdy's agrarian neighbours, since 11,000 acres had become flooded as the water rose. Seven area mill sites, one 40 miles away, were also inundated, effectively halting Purdy's competitors.(f.1)
By the time of Langton's visit, the community was in a state of turmoil, its citizens divided between those affected by the flooding and those who benefited from it. While the mills met settlers' demands for lumber and flour, they were also viewed by the people of Ops as an example of the injurious excesses of a local capitalist. Later still, when contending with malaria originating from the swamps and mill-pond, the inhabitants would regard Purdy's Mills as the cause of their illness.
Pre-industrial mills occupy a paradoxical place in North American history. American historians have rigorously engaged the intersecting themes of property, public rights, and environmental change in which mills prove problematic. In the early republic the clash between the English common law tradition, republicanism, and capitalism gave form and substance to debates about water and property law. Public concerns for farming, fishing, or access to water flow were pitted against the economic interests of millers. The law gradually came to accommodate such entrepreneurs at the expense of other riparian users, and the resource itself became an extension of human property and status.(f.2) Yet mills themselves also assumed a public character and, given the proper circumstances, farmers and millers formed a symbiotic relationship on which settlement prospered. Such facilities were among the...