225 3rd Street Southwest
Chatfield, MN, USA

National Register of Historic Places - Samuel Thompson Dickson House

Statement of Significance:

The Sam T. Dickson Mill House is commercially and industrially significant as the home of Samuel Thompson Dickson, owner of the Nonpariel Flour Mill, which was located near the house, and the North Branch Flour Mill, located about one and one-half miles south of the NonPariel on the North Branch of the Root River.

Thomas B. Twiford, an organizer of the Chatfield Land Company which founded Chatfield in 1853 and encouraged its settlement in the spring of iss, built a sawmill in 185^ which was converted and expanded into a flour mill when it was acquired by Sam Dickson in 1855. The completed three-story frame structure was named the Nonpariel (i.e., unrivaled or having no equal). It was powered by means of a mill race cut between two points on Mill Creek Just above the creek's junction with the Root River and later, during winter months, with a steam engine.

Little is known of Dickson's life before arriving in Chatfield in l855 and after leaving in the I89OS. It is known, however, that Dickson, a native of Sangamon County Illinois, arrived in Chatfield with t?2,000 which he promptly and successfully invested in land speculation. He acquired the mill, improved it and did a profitable business.

As an example, in one year in the l860s the mill realized a profit of $90,000 A third of it was paid to the miller in charge in keeping with the terras of a prior agreement. The remainder was retained by Dickson. He dismissed the miller and from then on hired millers at a salary of only $50 a month, gaining considerably by the new arrangement. The mill house, built in I863, with its simple Lin embellished design and still sound construction, stands alone as solid evidence of Dickson's success and thrift.

In 1873, as half-owner, he built the North Branch Flour Mill in partnership with two other men. It went into production early in 1874 and was soon turning out I50 barrels of flour every twenty-four hours. After three years, the mill's capacity was doubled.

In 1887, Dickson acquired full ownership of the North Branch Flour Mill but from then on operated it only intermittently. With local agriculture already diversified, flour prices falling, and Minneapolis mills dominating the flour market, both of Dickson's mills were soon no longer the source of easy profits they once had been.

In 1874, the State Geologist reported thirty-two flour mills on the Root River and its affluents, sixteen of them within twenty miles of Chatfield. In I878, the Minneapolis Tribune (April 15) cited thirty-seven flour mills in Fillmore County with a total of 151 run of stone.

Before the world price plummeted in 1882, repeated wheat crop failures in the Chatfield area had forced local agriculturists to diversify thus saving them from the worst effects of slavery to a one-crop system but also ending the heyday of flour milling in the area which had lasted nearly thirty years and made "Uncle Sam" Dickson a wealthy and influential owner of flour mills.

There were few sole owners of more than one flour mill in the area and of those, only Dickson was exclusively engaged in milling and heat buying. Two large barns, which then stood between the house and mill, provided ample storage for the purchased grain. A spur line of the Chicago and Northwestern Railroad, completed in I878, ran between the mill and the mill house and barns and terminated there at the centerpiece of Chatfield's industrial development in the flour milling period.

The frame barns eventually fell into disrepair and were removed. The spur railroad line was entirely discontinued, and the tracks removed within the last twenty years.

Dickson retired to California in the I89OS. The Nonpariel Mill property was first rented and then, after Dickson's death, sold at auction. In 1903, while the mill was being remodeled by its new owner, it caught fire, burned to the ground, and was not replaced. Yearly floods washed away the debris and filled the mill race.

The North branch Flour Mill was acquired by the Chatfield Electric Light and Power Company in the 1890s and was used to provide the community with its first source of electricity. The power generated there was limited, however. It soon could not meet the growing demand and other sources were found.

The North Branch buildings were dismantled and removed. What was left was swept away by floods. The mill dam survived some years longer but then succumbed to the floods also.

Chatfield's third mill, the Elmira Flour Mill, was located one and one-half miles northwest of the Nonpariel on Mill Greek. It was originally owned in equal partnership by Dickson and James M. Cussons. Cussons purchased Dickson's interest by the mid-l870s and became the mill's sole owner

The Elmira Flour Mill continued to be used until before the First World War, though eventually only for grinding livestock feed. The mill was abandoned before tire 'war's finish, the frame structure was not maintained, and successive floods damaged the foundation. Today, only a few of the stones remain to mark where the mill once stood.
The Cussons mill house, nearby, was substantially altered, added to, and remodeled over the years. Though still standing, it bears little resemblance to its original appearance.
The Sam T. Dickson Mill House, on the other hand, suffered no major and few minor alterations during the 120 years between its construction and its recent restoration. The house's original appearance remained intact, acquiring only a worn look in recent years while the structure itself remained sound.
Mills stand in Rushford, Lanesboro, and in Sumner Township in Fillmore County and at Simpson in Olmsted County. Mill houses also stand at the Rushford and Simpson (Fugel's) mills providing only scant physical evidence of a once extensive and thriving industry in the region.
The Sam T. Dickson Mill House, as the excellently restored home of a major owner of flour mills in the region, is therefore a rare and valuable survivor and the best representative structure from the flour milling period in the Chatfield area history.