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New Jersey is known for its turnpikes and commuter rail systems. For things like the Sopranos and the Jersey Shore. But farms and parks and woodsy hiking trails? Not so much.
Hence why New Jersey’s state slogan “The Garden State” has become…a bit of a popular punchline.
CLIP - MISS CONGENIALITY
VICTOR MELLING: “Why is New Jersey called The Garden State?
GRACIE HART: “Because it's too hard to fit 'Oil and Petrochemical Refinery State' on a license plate."
RYAN: I always loved that movie ( it was the first DVD I owned). Ok, so maybe the New Jersey we think of today isn’t exactly a picture of environmental bliss. But New Jersey’s Garden State identity is alive and well in some parts of the state…you just have to know where to look.
SFX TRANSITION TRAFFIC TO RIVER SOUNDS
RYAN: Hunterdon County is located along New Jersey’s western border. In this sleepier half of the state you can find much of what you’d expect The Garden State to be known for - large open spaces, forest, farmland. Over the years newspaper articles have described Hunterdon as picturesque, bucolic, quaint, pastoral.
RYAN: And if Hunterdon County represents what’s remaining of New Jersey’s Garden State identity, then the town of Clinton NJ, located IN Hunterdon County, is it’s platonic ideal. Clinton has the honor of being called the county’s “cultural heart” and Hunterdon’s “best kept secret.”
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RYAN: But just like they say “don’t judge a book by its cover,” you shouldn’t judge a small New Jersey town by its, well, picturesque postcard views.
CLIP
VOICE 1: “Wow this is intricate”
VOICE 2: “The sons of Archibald Taylor track him down beat him really badly and cut his ear off”
VOICE 3: “It was very secretive that I would haul all these mannequins to Clinton. And maybe there’d be an arm hanging out the window.”
RYAN: Because we spent the last six months visiting Clinton. And I can tell you it’s a town that has a LOT of stories to share. It’s played a role in the American Revolution, the rise of industry, and suburban growth in the state. It’s witnessed the rise and fall of financial institutions, and has been the center of controversy and family drama. It's a town that, over the years, has had to reinvent itself…and I mean that quite literally.
INTRO THEME
RYAN: Welcome to Hometown History. A series about the iconic places and events that make a town someplace people call home - stories that people can tell to their friends old and new about the place they live, did live, or will live. And we’re back baby! This season we’re bringing you stories about a NEW small New Jersey town: Clinton, NJ.
RYAN: Stories of how Clinton militiamen were instrumental to George Washington’s crossing of the Delaware; about how Clinton was named after a very unusual political figure (not the one you’re thinking of); and how it survived New Jersey’s highway and transportation boom years. Plus stories of professional rivalries, family betrayals and even a little bit of arson. So actually, not so unlike a season of The Sopranos after all.
THEME END
RYAN: The Red Mill is not just AN icon of Clinton, it’s THE icon. Before I knew anything about Clinton, New Jersey, I knew the Red Mill. And before I knew the mill’s name, I had seen its picture—a three-story, barn-red building on the banks of a scenic river. Its image can be seen all over the state in tourism advertisements for New Jersey. In 2019, it was even painted on the side of a United Airlines Boeing 757 operating out of Newark Airport. I’ve spent a lot of time in Clinton these past few months, researching it’s history and getting to know its residents.
RYAN: And whenever I ask someone “What’s in Clinton, New Jersey?” or “What is Clinton known for?” they inevitably say “the Red Mill.” The Red Mill IS Clinton, and Clinton IS the Red Mill. There’s no tighter bond between a town and its landmark. Well, except maybe the Eiffel Tower and Paris, but you get what I mean. But unlike the Eiffel Tower, there’s quite a few more ghosts associated with this landmark.
SXF from HAUNTED RED MILL
RYAN: I’m speaking, specifically, of the haunted house that the Red Mill houses every October.
GINA SAMPAIO: It's all these different rooms and each room kind of has a different theme and there's like things that touch you or things that are uneven or like there's people that you don't know if they're real or not.
RYAN: That’s Gina Sampaio, she is the Executive Director of the nonprofit group that runs the Red Mill.
GINA: There's animatronics, there's, um, then you walk through this spinning vortex of like lights and colors…
RYAN: Gina is exactly the kind of person you’d imagine running this event. She even calls herself a “grave weirdo” when she explains that one of her hobbies is taking care of and researching old gravestones. All that being said, Gina would much rather run a haunted attraction than be in one.
GINA: I took my daughter to the one at Dorney Park just because she was dying to and I was just like, I hope nobody tries to scare me. I'm gonna be like, no, just, don't waste your energy on me.
RYAN: Gina earnestly tells us that being Executive Director of the Red Mill is her dream job. But she also has to occasionally remind people that the mill is not actually haunted.
GINA: I have other people that told me they're like, well, when you walk through the mill and you feel like that you walked through cobwebs, like that's a ghost. And I'm like, we are an 1810 building on a river. There are so many cobwebs here that I am cleaning all the time. Like, a lot of it's actually just cobwebs.
RYAN: Built in 1810, the Red Mill has been the setting for much of Clinton’s actual history - and that’s not especially surprising. Mills were incredibly important to industrialization all over the United States, so a lot of their stories are similar: A location is chosen with good water flow and access to roads. A mill opens and starts milling all kinds of stuff: Grain, wool, flour, apples, wood. Local farmers benefit and a town grows around it. That's it, the end. The story of a mill.
MUSIC
RYAN: So what made Clinton’s Red Mill special? So special that it warranted putting its picture on the side of an airplane? That’s what we wanted to find out. And to get to the answer we’ll need to go on a little Red Mill “eras tour.” The first of its kind (for a Mill, that is). Nice Taylor Swift thing there…
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SFX MILL INTERIOR
ELIZABETH COLE: Yeah so this is the earliest section down here…
RYAN: Back in January Red Mill Historian Elizabeth Cole gave my producer Katie and I a tour of the inside of the mill. It’s a nearly 200 year old structure and, yes, there were a few cobwebs. Also no heating, so it was pretty cold.
ELIZABETH: And there's been so many, like, changes in this mill from what products they were producing to you know, different owners that it has a long and complicated history actually and theres a lot of unknowns.
RYAN: What we do know is that the story of the Red Mill begins in the early 1800s with two brothers: Ralph and Benjamin Hunt. The Hunt brothers were a couple of aspiring businessmen from a respectable family in Hunterdon County. At the turn of the century Ralph and Benjamin acquired some land from their father along the south branch of the Raritan River. What is today the center of downtown Clinton.
MUSIC
RYAN: The Hunt brothers were your typical early American entrepreneurs. But they were also kinda visionaries. Especially Ralph, who dreamed of building a state of the art wool mill along the west side of the river. In the early 1800s, commercial clothing manufacturing was just getting off the ground and Ralph saw an opportunity.
ELIZABETH: The fact that he wanted to build this woolen mill to me is like that fascinates me because it's like he had really big dreams.
RYAN: But his small mill couldn’t compete with a much larger manufacturer—Great Britain.
ELIZABETH: I think he kind of started off on a bad foot. I think because of the debts he inherited after his father, and then the war…
RYAN: By 1812, Ralph’s profits crashed, and his debts piled up. So the Hunt brothers pivoted in the face of defeat to a more traditional industry for the time - grain milling. But they still had the “go big or go home” mindset.
ELIZABETH: Ralph Hunt wasn't just trying to be a miller where you come here and you bring your bag of grain and you're like bartering. He was like more like a merchant miller. So this is like bigger than like your average mill.
MUSIC END - SFX MILL INTERIOR
ELIZABETH: When you’re processing grain, they have this grain bin…
RYAN: Up on the third floor Elizabeth shows us the shoot that would funnel the product of grain milling back down to the lower levels of the mill for packaging.
KATIE in mill: Oh my God! Holy cow, it’s so big…
ELIZABETH: There were millstones on the second floor. And they're like 2, 000 pounds and there were four sets of those at one point. And so things would be clanking and turning and dust would be flying everywhere…
MUSIC
RYAN: The little manufacturing district that had sprung up along the South Branch of the Raritan was now known as Hunts Mills. You can probably guess how they came up with that name!
MUSIC END
RYAN: In 1818 Benjamin Hunt sold his shares in the mill back to his brother Ralph. Ralph kept the grist mill in business for another decade, but just barely.
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RYAN: By the 1820s, Ralph faced multiple lawsuits for unpaid debts. Even members of his own family indicate that Ralph had lost the respect and influence he once had with them. By 1828, according to one source, Ralph Hunt “ended his career, and the fortunes of his family, in a blaze of financial embarrassment.” Wow, tell me how you really feel.
MUSIC END
ELIZABETH: Then the next person that comes in is Bray, and there's a lot of family drama there, too.
RYAN: John W. Bray took over management of the mill in 1828 - but in this era too, the mill was a family business. Bray dreamed of being an entrepreneur and convinced his father in law, a wealthy businessman named Archibald Taylor, to invest in the mill with him.
ELIZABETH: And so, Bray was the one that really kind of first develops like this kind of main street at all. Because this was not residential, no one lived here really, except for a miller maybe, you know. There was nothing here but like a store and he takes over the store and he makes it something bigger and he has big dreams too.
RYAN: With John Bray at the helm, Hunts Mills goes from being a cluster of manufacturing businesses along the river, to the real deal town of Clinton. But while Bray does more than anyone to put the town of Clinton on the map - literally - he doesn’t benefit financially from his efforts. In fact he gets a reputation for being a bit of a swindler.
ELIZABETH: Bray was going around, borrowing money, trying to be this entrepreneur. They also had like a distillery, and he was buying property. So he ends up that he can't pay any of these debts that he's taken out in Archibald's name. And then he ruins Archibald. He ruins the family.
RYAN: According to research done by local Hunterdon historian Marfy Goodspeed, Archibald Taylor didn’t fully know how his son-in-law, Bray, was spending his money. In 1835, Taylor was forced to give up all his properties to satisfy his creditors. His debts totaled $30,404.00
ELIZABETH: Bray escapes to New Brunswick because, like, he can't show his face anywhere, basically. And the sons of Archibald Taylor track him down, beat him really badly, and cut his ear off.
RYAN: Well, they say you can’t choose your family. So, if you’re counting along at home, that’s two eras of Clinton’s Red Mill down, and two families in financial ruin. Not a great track record so far.
ELIZABETH: After that though, there's a really long period of success. This was a gristmill for like 75 years.
MUSIC
RYAN: By 1847 the mill seemed to finally find its rhythm. Although it changed hands a few more times, it remained a gristmill for the remainder of the 19th century. By the early 1900s, the Clinton mill was showing signs of wear and tear. At the same time the gristmilling industry was dying, due to the influx of cheaper flour and grain from midwestern states.
RYAN: In 1903 another pair of brothers, Elmer and Chester Tomson, purchased the mill for the “ridiculously low sum of $1,500.” But the Tomson brothers didn’t intend to go into the grain milling business. They set about changing it from a grist mill operation to a graphite mill…At the time graphite was used as a blackening agent for kitchen stoves.
RYAN: As one historian put it: ”You could say that the milling of graphite went over like a lead balloon with the townspeople of Clinton.” According to one Clinton resident, the greasy black dust floating through the air turned the town’s laundry an unappetizing gray, angering the housewives of Clinton. As a result, Clinton gave the Tomson operation the very apt nickname: The Black Mill.
MUSIC END
RYAN: In fact this era of the mill may have been the one time when the townspeople of Clinton were not so happy with their local landmark. One such resident happened to be the new owner of The Clinton House, a popular tavern located next door to the mill.
ELIZABETH: He's like, “no one's happy about this black dust floating all over Clinton.” So he hires an arsonist to burn down this mill.
RYAN: Luckily for the Tomsons, the planned arson plot was foiled. But perhaps the Tomson brothers took it as a sign that things REALLY needed to change. So they’re like ‘OK you don’t like black dust, how about white dust?’
RYAN: Just a few years into their tenure as mill owners, the Tomsons switch their operation from graphite to talc production. Talc was a popular ingredient in beauty and personal products at the time - in fact the biggest purchaser of Talc was none other than Colgate. By 1921, the talc mill was going strong. There’s still dust flying all over Clinton, but it’s white dust, which I guess, is a little bit easier to live with. But change was again looming.
ELIZABETH: Chester Thompson goes to Washington because there's gonna be a 1921 tariff on things coming from Canada. And that's where he's getting his soapstone, that they're grinding into this talc. He’s testifying that if this tariff goes through, it will put him out of business because he won't be able to afford it and then make a profit.
RYAN: This would likely have been the Fordney-McCumber Tariff Act of 1922. It was the highest tariff in US history. Unfortunately, the tariff passed and Clinton’s talc mill era would last only another 7 years.
ELIZABETH: After 1928, this mill was just idle, it was empty.
MUSIC END
RYAN: After that, the mill entered it’s “odd jobs” era. It was rented to grind feed for dairy cattle. That drew rats to the property. It was used to grind limestone blasted from the nearby quarry. In 1949, the mill fell into the hands of the town of Clinton, which used some of its buildings for storage. By now both the mill and the town of Clinton were feeling a little tired and dingy.
ELIZABETH: In the late 40s there was like the boom of the time and roads were being built and a lot of these old towns were being bypassed and Clinton was also… there was a lot of abandoned buildings in town.
RYAN: The town of Clinton and the mill it was so closely identified with was ready for a renaissance. A sparkly, glittery era of rebirth that would bring vibrancy back to the town…and put the name of Clinton’s Red Mill on the map. But what that era looked like was still up for much debate.
THEME MUSIC
RYAN: Next time on Hometown History, Part 2 of our Red Mill Eras Tour, and an answer to what makes Clinton’s iconic Red Mill so special.
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