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SXF from HAUNTED RED MILL
RYAN: The Haunted Red Mill in Clinton, New Jersey is perhaps the mill’s most recognizable iteration today - it's certainly its most popular. Every October teens and adults crowd around the entrance to the mill after 7pm.
VOICES OUTSIDE: “BOO! AHHHH”
RYAN: It plays well on social media too. Here’s Executive Director Gina Sampaio again.
GINA: And she was like, “I've seen it on tick tock!” And I was like, I love that…but that is kind of, um, indicative of our larger problem.
RYAN: That problem being…people don’t know what the Red Mill is when it’s not being “spookified”.
GINA: We like to try to make it a point to always say thanks for supporting the museum when somebody buys a ticket. Somebody said “There's a museum here?” We’re all like, “Yeah, you know, like this is a museum…”
THEME
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. In the early 1960s five residents of Clinton, New Jersey gave the town’s iconic mill the rebrand it so desperately needed. It would no longer be a grist mill, or a woolen mill, or a graphite or a talc mill. It would be The Red Mill: a historical museum that Clinton could be proud of. The only problem was: they had to buy it first.
THEME END
RYAN: In 1958 the town of Clinton, which owned the then empty Red Mill, was looking for a buyer. Several bids were considered too low, until a local man named William Knell offered $11,500 for the site. Here’s Red Mill historian Elizabeth Cole again.
ELIZABETH: He had a lot of different ideas according to newspapers. Like one was turn it into a tie factory or a pencil factory.
RYAN: That purchase would have gone through without question if it were not for “The Red Mill Five.”
MUSIC
ELIZABETH: They decided to call themselves the Red Mill Five because they didn't want to be known as the Five Old Men.
RYAN: James Marsh, Robert Leechner, Cyrus Fox, Monroe DeMott and Ralph Howard. At the news of the Red Mill’s impending purchase, these five local residents spearheaded an 11th hour effort to buy the historic landmark. James Marsh, a metal craftsman and artist, was the visionary of the group. Inspired by a trip he made to Colonial Williamsburg, Marsh advocated for turning the old mill into a folk museum. He envisioned turning the Red Mill into the centerpiece of a “little Williamsburg” in Clinton.
MUSIC END
RYAN: But that vision couldn’t come to fruition until the Red Mill Five secured the site. And William Knell was not going to let his claim to the property go that easily.
ELIZABETH: They went to the town and started to try to negotiate but the town wasn’t receptive I think because they were already in negotiations with William Knell.
RYAN: Throughout the fall of 1958 local newspapers reported on the details of the dispute.
MUSIC
MALE VOICE 1: The Clinton Historical Society last week urged the Clinton Town Council to accept its bid of $11,000 for the Red Mill property owned by the town…
RYAN: On the one hand, Knell’s bid for the mill was the first and highest of the potential buyers. On the other - the town clearly respected the mission of the Red Mill Five, but couldn’t figure out how to justify selling the mill to them for a lower price.
MALE VOICE 1:…felt very strongly that since his was the highest bid and his bid was accepted, the contract should go through…Council’s Edict: Red Mill Belongs to William Knell…
RYAN: Eventually the town of Clinton accepted Knell’s offer and suggested the Red Mill Five negotiate directly with Knell to buy it back.
MUSIC END
RYAN: Which is what happened. Two years later, the Red Mill Five purchased the mill from Knell for $15,000, a nice little profit for the beleaguered businessman. The Red Mill Five were now free to turn the mill into the historic site they envisioned for Clinton.
MUSIC
RYAN: Some of their ideas were truly brilliant. For example, James Marsh realized that to people outside of Clinton, the mill didn’t look very, well, “mill-like”. It was missing something - specifically a giant waterwheel.
ELIZABETH: Like a lot of mills you'll know like the water wheel was like either down underneath or covered in another building to protect it.
RYAN: To make sure people understood what the mill was, the group purchased a brand new water wheel to go on the outside of the building. That’s right - the waterwheel you see today at the mill is just an elaborate prop - a way to explain what the building is before you even go inside it. And it makes for a great photo op.
ELIZABETH: That really goes back to our founders, they were visionaries of their time, really. People just sitting out in the garden can watch it turn around. Or if you're crossing the bridge, you can see the wheel turn.
MUSIC END
RYAN: Then again sometimes giving the people what they want isn’t always the best strategy. For example, turning the Red Mill into a “little Williamsburg" in New Jersey.
ELIZABETH: Like, if you came through this building, you wouldn't even know it was a mill. They had like a section where there was like a Conestoga wagon and it would be all like, it was like a scene set up where it would be like the traveler was parked there to make some food or something. And then you'd go into another section and it was, the cooper making barrels. And then you'd go into another section and it was a Victorian parlor or a colonial kitchen...nothing about what happened here in the mill.
MUSIC END
RYAN: Let’s call this the Red Mill’s “mannequin” era.
DOUG: Claire Young wanted mannequins.
RYAN: Doug Martin is a local resident and historian, and early board member of the Red Mill Museum when the five were just getting started.
DOUG: She was a window dresser in New York, in her early day. And so, she had a flair for this. She's the one that created all these rooms. And it was really nice.
RYAN: Unfortunately in the pursuit of turning the Red Mill into a museum, not everyone was on the same page with regards to historic preservation.
DOUG: In the process they tore out the works of the mill. And, uh, I didn't want that to happen. As a member of the board I versed my feeling that I didn't want to do this. And I left that board meeting that day believing that nothing would happen. The next day I went down there or a day or two later and there was a huge pile of debris outside. They had ripped it out and thrown it out the back.
RYAN: But Doug was not one to put up a fuss. And he had promised to get Claire her mannequins…
MUSIC
RYAN: The concept of “one man’s trash is another man’s treasure” fits nicely here. That and a load of happenstance.
DOUG: If I had tried to go through channels it never would have happened. Because mannequins are very expensive.
RYAN: Because it just so happened that one Doug Martin, the enterprising friend of the Red Mill Museum, had a lunch with a guy. And it just so happened that that guy was the manager of a department store near Easton Pennsylvania. And it just so happened that the department store manager knew where Doug could get his hands on some mannequins.
DOUG: It was a storage building, somewhere north of Easton.
RYAN: And it just so happened that the department store manager who had an excess of mannequins waiting to be liberated also wanted to start a business in Clinton!
DOUG: I put him in touch with the owners of the corner of Main and Leigh Street. He opened a big ice cream store there, Uncle Drew's”
RYAN: Doug scratches the guy’s back, and the ice cream store visionary scratches doug right back - with the arm of a mannequin.
DOUG: As he said it was very secretive that I would haul all these mannequins to Clinton…
RYAN: Doug makes not one but multiple trips to Pennsylvania to liberate said mannequins, in broad daylight. And did we mention that Doug worked as a funeral director?
DOUG: Back in those days all funeral homes had a black station wagon. And maybe there'd be an arm hanging out the window. And, uh, it's, it's a wonder that I wasn't, uh, apprehended, you know. Uh, because, uh, you can imagine.
MUSIC END
RYAN: The vignettes inside the mill, the conestoga wagon…the Victorian mannequins…were a big hit when the Red Mill museum was officially dedicated in 1965.
MUSIC
ELIZABETH: You'd come in here and be like, what are you gonna see next? What's the next scene, you know?
RYAN: Until…they weren’t.
WARPED MUSIC SOUND
ELIZABETH: Over the years, these plaster mannequins cracked there was like mice and they were chewing and these mannequins had the actual clothes on and it was like dirty and dusty.
RYAN: After the “mannequin” era ended the mill got a rebrand and another facelift sometime in the 1990s. It was closed for two years while restoration crews reinforced old beams and exterminated powder beetles. The mannequins were quietly thrown out…and hopefully not asked for again.
MUSIC
RYAN: At the same time, museum standards changed. And the most logical next era for the museum was for it to reflect the mill - its history and the town that claimed it. That might be a little less exciting than the idea of “a little Williamsburg in New Jersey” but it’s a more authentic representation of the building’s 200 year history.
RYAN: Walk through the Red Mill Museum of today and you’ll come across a display about Chester Tomson, a reproduction of a mill owner’s office, a replica of the huge mill stones that once ground grain into a fine powder (the stones are made of styrofoam these days - but they look very real).
RYAN: For anyone who wants to know more about how the town of Clinton was formed and grew along the banks of the Raritan River, about the entrepreneurial spirit of its early owners, its many false starts and family dramas, the Red Mill Museum has everything you need. No mannequins required.
MUSIC END
RYAN: Which doesn’t mean that the Red Mill can’t indulge in a little bit of fakery every October.
Sometimes, it’s the only thing that gets locals out to appreciate their iconic landmark.
SOUNDS OF HAUNTED RED MILL
GINA: When I talk to people, some of them are like, I've lived in Pittstown for 40 years and I've never been here before…And I'm like, what does it take?
RYAN: What’s more ironic than New Jersey being called “The Garden State”? The fact that Clinton’s most iconic structure, a living testimony to over 200 years of history, is most well known for its haunted fundraiser every October. But Gina has found a way to spin that irony into a positive - for history and for the Red Mill.
GINA: I do feel a little conflicted sometimes about this being our biggest fundraiser. It just seems, I don't know, that it doesn't really have to do with history, right? I get like we have people who come and have no idea this is a museum. But to hear people just laughing and having fun, I'm like, okay, I can't be mad about that. You know, like I Like the museum and its environs you know minus the like information or context is giving people entertainment and joy.
MUSIC
RYAN: So we return to the question - what’s so special about Clinton’s Red Mill? The way I see it, every town exists today in some part thanks to the American spirit. Here in Clinton, that spirit meant taking a chance on building a life and a living in the early garden state. It meant harnessing natural resources—like the mill did—to improve daily life. It meant evolving, over 200 years, with each transformation driven by risk-takers who saw the mill’s potential and adapted it to the needs of their time. Some ventures failed, but without the vision and determination of those who took chances, the mill would have crumbled like so many others. Instead, it still stands today, a testament to what makes the small New Jersey town of Clinton - and it’s Red Mill - so special.
THEME MUSIC
Next week on Hometown History, Clinton was once the industrial hub of Hunterdon County. Today, it's known affectionately as the “cultural heart of Hunterdon.” We’ll dig into the stories of three figures who helped build Clinton’s cultural legacy into what it is today.
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