In the early hours of Thursday, November 24, 1892, Decew Falls was lit up ‘with the glare from a burning building.’ Wilson Morningstar had left his mill in good order around 9 p.m. the night before, but by 3 a.m., the stone mill had been completely gutted by fire. According to the St. Catharines Daily Standard, the cause of the blaze was unknown, though a ‘hot box’ was suspected.

A ‘hot box’ occurs when a bearing overheats due to inadequate lubrication. In a dry, dusty environment like a grist mill, a poorly oiled bearing can generate enough heat to ignite nearby materials—or even trigger a dust explosion.

The damage was described as ‘heavy.’ It was so severe that it took Wilson and his brother Wallace two years to rebuild the mill. As part of the reconstruction, new horizontal and vertical penstocks were installed along with a new turbine. A larger turbine shed was also built to accommodate equipment for apple cider production. Unlike the original shed, the new turbine shed featured a slanted roof instead of a pitched one—a detail that helps date photographs of the mill from this period.

The stone walls inside the mill were likely plastered during the rebuild to cover the soot-stained surfaces and to give the interior a clean and fresh appearance. During the current restoration of the mill, evidence of the 1892 fire was discovered beneath these plastered walls.

The fire also gave Wilson an opportunity to modernize his milling operation. He installed a state-of-the-art two-break, three-reduction Greey Roller Mill system designed to produce white flour. At the time, roller-milled flour had become increasingly popular for baking because it was finer, whiter and more affordable than white flour produced with traditional millstones.

Lorna, Wilson and Emma’s granddaughter, recounted that her grandfather and her mother—then just five years old—traveled to Toronto to purchase the new equipment from the Greey Company. The machinery was then shipped to Decew Falls and installed by Wilson and Wallace.

The upgraded system included five grinders—two pairs and a single—for coarse and fine grinding, along with six sifters (or ‘dressers’) that worked together to process and separate the different parts of the wheat kernel. The roller milling system produced four distinct products: bran, shorts, middlings, and white flour. Wilson marketed his flour under the names Puritan, Silver Moon, and Superlative, while the bran, shorts, and middlings were sold as animal feed.

On Saturday, April 27, 1895, Wilson sold his first 100 lbs (45 kg) of roller-milled white flour. Testing of the new system had begun just a month earlier, and by June, Wilson had received an order for 3,000 lbs (1,360 kg). In 1896, a 24 lb (11 kg) bag of Puritan Flour sold for 40 cents.

Carla Mackie is Historical Services Coordinator with the City of St. Catharines. Historical Services includes the Morningstar Mill, the Lakeside Park Carousel, and the St. Catharines Museum and Welland Canals Centre.