Daniel Cragin Mill

The Daniel Cragin Mill, known in the twenty-first century as the Frye's Measure Mill, is a historic watermill established in 1858. The mill is about three miles (5 km) west of the town of Wilton in Hillsborough County, New Hampshire. For over 150 years it has produced woodenware and wooden dry measuring boxes. In 2021 it mainly made Shaker-style pantry boxes and furniture pieces for the various Shaker communities and their commercial retail shops. The mill was added to the U.S. National Register of Historic Places in 1982.
History.
Daniel Cragin era of 1858–1909.
Daniel Cragin was of Scottish descent. In 1856, aged 21, he was renting a room in the Putnam Bobbin Factory near the mill's location. There he built knife trays and wooden toys which he turned into a business. He started his business with ten dollars. He turned a profit from the beginning and by 1858 he accumulated enough money to purchased a nearby existing building where wool was carded and cloth was sized. He converted the building into making wood products and it eventually became known as the Daniel Cragin Mill. The building was originally built by Eliphalet Putman sometime between 1750 and 1800. It was at the site location of the Putnam Bobbin Factory. The building became a watermill factory when Cragin brought in veneer-cutting equipment and steam-bending machines to begin making wooden products. The factory was powered from two nearby water sources, Burton Pond and Nathan Barker's Pond. 
By 1878 Cragin had added production of sugar boxes and dry measure boxes and had hired six others for his normal mill operations. He soon mostly concentrated on dry measure boxes, since it was more profitable. His handmade round containers came in five sizes: one quart, two quart, four quart, single peck, and one-half bushel. By 1885 Cragin began selling these in full sets, or "nests", bound in iron bands. The containers were sold varnished, plain, or rough.
Storekeepers, farmers, and fishermen needed a standard unit of dry measure for their trade products for barter and sales. In the late nineteenth century Cragin's dry measure containers were popular among these entrepreneurs and became the mainstay of his business. He was able to sell many containers and full set "nests" in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Eventually the national standard of measurement switched over to weights and the market for his dry measure containers came to an end.
Cragin made a specialty type measure called a "piggin", a small wooden pail with a handle formed by continuing one of the staves above the rim. The wooden pail was used to feed the pigs in of the table scraps after a meal and from kitchen cooking. Before electricity was readily available, the mill supplemented its needs with an 1871 one-cylinder steam engine for additional heat, to operate the kilns, and for additional energy for the steam vats. The antique engine is still at the mill.
Whitney Frye era of 1909–1960.
In 1909 Whitney Morse Frye and his father, Dr. Edmund Bailey Frye, bought the mill from Cragin. The name of the mill then became E.B. Frye & Son. Frye was educated in engineering at Lowell Textile Institute and Dartmouth College and received a degree in the field. With this knowledge he redesigned and invented machinery and techniques to make the mill more productive. Frye continued the Cragin line of wooden trays, boxes, and pails in addition to his normal processing of grains. Later he added curry cards (combs for cattle), wool cards, ice cream freezers, and Shaker-style pantry boxes.
Frye later added hydroelectric power to the mill by improving the existing water-power system to include a series of pipes from Burton Pond and Nathan Barker's Pond to provide a controlled water force, or "head", to maintain a system to generate electricity. It furnished the mill's electrical needs as well as the electricity for Frye's nearby house.
Harland Savage Sr. era of 1961–1981.
Harland Savage Sr. was first employed at the mill as a part-time worker after World War II. He was soon promoted to a full-time employee and then in 1951 to the general manager of the mill. In 1961 he purchased the mill and operated it until his 1981 retirement. At that time his son Harley and his wife Pam Porter Savage took over operations. They have operated the mill to the present day.
In the late 1960s Shaker eldress Bertha Lindsay of the Canterbury Shaker Village asked Harland Savage Sr. if he would be interested in making Shaker-style oval boxes since the village's last skilled pantry box maker died in 1961. Frye's Measure Mill added these boxes to their line of Colonial boxes and distributed them to all the Shaker communities for gift shop sales. When Fry died in 1960 Savage had bought the business from the estate. In 1980 Harvey Jr with his wife purchased the mill from his father. Colonial Williamsburg authenticated the wooden measuring containers made of pine and oak at the mill as being from the 1700s. The mill is one of a few remaining operating water-powered measure mills in the United States after 150 years of operations.