Cooper, Nathan, Gristmill

About this property

The Nathan Cooper Gristmill is a historic gristmill on the Black River located at 66 NJ Route 24 in Chester Township, Morris County, New Jersey. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places on November 21, 1976 for its significance in industry. Since 1973, the Morris County Park Commission has owned and operated the mill and its 14 surrounding acres as a historic site. Circa the 1760s, county judge Isaiah Younglove constructed a no-longer-extant mill on the Black River. Younglove's mill began flour milling production on the site. Images of America: Chester claims Younglove's mill burned down in an unspecified year, while the Morris County Park Commission describes his endeavor as having shut down in 1788. The mill then went through several owners before 1825. The last owner prior to the Coopers was Elias Howell. In 1825, retired general Nathan Cooper (1751–1834) purchased the 4.5 acres of land for $750. This included "a milldam, sawmill, an old gristmill, and [a wooden] water wheel." This was an addition to his wealth, as he too had the ownership of over 1600 acres of land including multiple mines under Cooper, Hewitt, & Co. The following year, Cooper rebuilt the mill, constructing a four-story random fieldstone gristmill to replace the 1760s structure. The new building employed the use of "four sets of millstones connected by elevators to grain cleaners and flour sifters." These incorporated the designs of American inventor Oliver Evans. The mill could grind up to 10 tons per day of wheat, corn, and other grains. Also in 1826, Nathan Cooper gave the property to his adult nephew, Nathan A. Cooper, who had become a NJ cavalry general 2 years before. In 1827 and 1829, Nathan Cooper "raised the height of the dam as it stood." Nathan A. Cooper commissioned a house to be constructed nearby for his son, Abram W. Cooper (1848–1933) as a wedding present. In the 1870s, the Coopers installed modern turbines to replace the original wooden waterwheels. Upon Nathan A. Cooper's 1879 death, Abram W. Cooper (one of his nine children) inherited ownership of the mill. Abram W. Cooper was described contemporaneously as a man whose "life had been quiet and uneventful, but upright and honorable...devoted to his business interests and the requirements of citizenship." Later, Nathan A. Cooper (1802–1879) inherited this mill when his uncle Nathan died. In the 1880s, Milltown experienced bustling economic success, and the Cooper mill "played a key role in the community and the region's industrial development." The mill shared Main Street with "a blacksmith shop, a general store, a tavern...and the Mountain Spring Distillery, a cider mill." The Coopers used their growing wealth to build family mansions in nearby Chester.

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Property data from the National Register of Historic Places, National Park Service (public domain).

Description adapted from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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