History

When settlers first came to the colonies, they were accustomed to mills; they depended on them for necessities such as food and clothing.  Settled areas were eager to attract men skilled in mill building.  In order to attract mill builders, communities offered them free land, labor, and also water rights to get them started.  Laws were even passed to eliminate competition, limiting one mill per area and ensuring economic success (although these laws were routinely broken and competition ensued).  Villages formed around the mills, which were in turn built around water. Rochester benefited because several of the rivers and creeks had enough power to turn a mill wheel.  Mills were the center; built next to the major avenue of transportation (water) and were depended on by the newly formed village.  They were also the major gathering places; centers for gossip and information.  Everyone, at one time, had to go to the mill whether it was for sawn wood or ground grain.  Settlers could barter or use money to pay for the service.  
 
The earliest mills in Rochester "sawed lumber (as long as there were trees), ground grist (for flour), and carded wool (for clothing)."   The first mill in Avon Township was John Hersey's sawmill built in 1819 on Paint Creek (near the present Rochester Hills Public Library); when he added a millstone, the mill became the first mill in Oakland County to grind flour.  Later, the community added flour, lumber, and paper mills.  In 1840, there were about fifty mills located in Oakland County, about eleven in Avon Township alone. As the nineteenth century wore on, more mills were built; all played their part in the development of the region.  Two railroads were built through Rochester because of mill production and this helped expand the mill's market.  It was said that Avon Township was a "mill town with few lovely houses to preserve."
 
By 1880, mills were almost as plentiful as churches.  Almost all early settlers to Avon Township came for the farming; later settlers came to work in the mills and manufacturing firms.   Avon Township, however, remained an agrarian community until approximately 1920.  Factories built during the time either made farm equipment or turned raw farm products into manufactured goods.  From World War I through 1929, however, large numbers of wage earners commuted out of Avon Township to work in automobile factories. The Depression caused some auto and tool plants in Avon Township to close.  The mills, however, were mostly gone by that time; Hersey's sawmill was torn down after "several years," and others were closed or abandoned (due to decline in demand), destroyed by fire, or incorporated into other mills or plants.